St. Louis Drayage Co. v. Louisville & N. R. R.

65 F. 39 | U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Eastern Missouri | 1894

PHILIPS, District Judge

(after stating the facts). The plaintiff’s action proceeds upon the theory that the transfer company is an independent common carrier, and is engaged in interstate commerce between the cities of East St. Louis and St. Louis, and the defendant is engaged likewise as such common carrier between the states, with its western general terminus at East St. Louis. This being so, the defendant railway company bad the unquestioned right to enter into a contract with the transfer company for a continuous connecting business between East St. Louis and the city of St. Louis. Ho legislature and no court has ever yet undertaken to interfere with such right. As said by the supreme court in Atchison, T. & S. F. R. Co. v. Denver & N. O. R. Co., 110 U. S. 680, 4 Sup. Ct. 185:

“At common law, a carrier is not bound to carry, except on its own lines; and we think it quite clear that if he contracts to go beyond he may, in the absence of statutory regulations to the contrary, determine for himself what agencies he will employ. His contract is equivalent to an extension of his line for the purpose of the contract; and if he holds himself out as a carrier beyond the line, so that he may be required to carry in that way for all alike, he may nevertheless confine himself in carrying to the particular route he chooses to use. He puts himself in no worse position by extending his route with the help of others than he would occupy if the means of transportation employed were all his own. He certainly may select his own agencies and his own associates for doing his own work.”

See, also, Pullman’s Palace Car Co. v. Missouri Pac. Ry. Co., 115 U. S. 598, 6 Sup. Ct. 194; also, Express Cases, 117 U. S. 1-26, 6 Sup. Ct. 542, 628; Little Rock & M. R. Co. v. St. Louis, I. M. & S. Ry. Co., 41 Fed. 559.

The proposition that it is not competent for a railroad company to make sneb a contract with another company without admitting every other like concern into a corresponding arrangement, and conceding to them equal facilities and opportunities, has been expressly denied in the recent case of Little Rock & M. R. Co. v. St. Louis S. W. Ry. Co., 63 Fed. 775. In this case it is expressly held that the interstate commerce law does not require the common carrier to treat all other common carriers alike, without regard to its own interests; that the courts have no power to compel interstate carriers to enter into arrangements with each other for through rates; that for legislatures or courts to undertake to deprive railway carriers of the right to make their own contracts and arrangements with other companies for a continuous line would be an attempt to deprive such carriers—

“Of the management and control of their own property, by destroying their right to determine for themselves what contracts and tariff arrangements with connecting carriers are desirable, and what are undesirable.”

And the conclusion reached’ by the court is that it—

“Is unable to adopt a construction of the interstate commerce act which will practically compel a carrier, when it enters into an arrangement with one carrier for through billing and rating, * * * to make the same arrangement with all other connecting carriers, if the physical connections for an interchange of traffics are the' same, and to do this without reference to the question whether the enforced arrangement is or is not of any material advantage to the public.”

So Mr. Justice Field, in Oregon Short-Line & U. N. Ry. Co. v. Northern Pac. R. Co., 51 Fed. 475, observed:

“It follows from this that the common carrier is left free to enter into arrangements for the use of its tracks or terminal facilities with one or more lines without subjecting itself to the charge of giving undue or unreasonable preferences or advantages to such lines, or of unlawfully discriminating against other carriers. In making arrangements for such use by other companies, a common carrier will be governed by considerations of what is best for its own interests.”

The defendant company, by reason of its terminus on the east bank of the Mississippi river, was placed at a great disadvantage in competing with the St. Louis & Iron Mountain Railroad for traffic between the city of St. Louis and competing points' south of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi rivers. It therefore became, as the evidence shows, a matter of supreme importance to the defendant company to effect such arrangement as to best enable it to bill freights immediately from the city of St. Louis' through to such points at the same rates as the Iron Mountain Railroad. To this end it was essential that, in selecting a company for the transfer of its freights between St. Louis and East St. Louis, it should secure one fully equipped for doing the business, — solvent and reliable. It could not afford to take chances in so grave a matter. It might be unsafe to trust to the caprice of competing transfer companies, or to sporadic rivalries. It could not foresee how long it would be before the railroad company, in such dependence, might find itself a prey to a “combine” among the transfer companies, or become exposed to the not improbable contingency of a rivalry between competing companies, which would break both down, leaving the rail- . road company without a certain, reliable connection with the city. It would be harsh, unreasonable, and questionable legislation that would deny to the common carrier the protection of a provident, reliable contract, like the one in question. It was essential to a reliable and permanent arrangement that the transfer company should establish and maintain sufficient warehouse buildings for the reception and storage of freights collected from the city of St. Louis, and that the company with which it contracted should have ample facilities and equipments to successfully carry out such connecting arrangement. All this, the evidence shows, was represented in the business character, standing, and capital of the transfer company, which, without disparaging the business character of the younger company, it is not too much to say, the defendant would not find in the plaintiff company to the extent presented in the transfer company. So long as the public enjoys the advantages of the competition between the defendant company and other railroad companies, in securing through rates for freights to competitive points, it is of no concern to the public that the plaintiff drayage company cannot share equally in the business of the defendant company. Especially so when the plaintiff makes no showing of any benefit to the shipper by admitting it to equal facilities with the transfer company. It certainly was not in the mind of congress, in enacting the interstate commerce law, to interfere with such contract as this defendant company entered into in 1881. And, as the defendant has kept and performed its contract to the letter, the court ought not to interfere, when such contract neither contravenes any statute law, nor is contrary to sound public policy. The result cannot be different whether the contract between the transfer company and the defendant be regarded as a connecting line between two independent carriers engaged in interstate commerce, or whether it be regarded as a selection by the railroad company of the transfer company as an agency for the delivery of the defendant’s freight between East St. Louis and the city of St. Louis. The law is that the plaintiff cannot recover. Judgment accordingly.