110 F. 3 | U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Nebraska | 1901
This is a demurrer to a supplemental bill of the complainants, which discloses these facts: In 1893 the legislature of the state of Nebraska passed an act commonly called the “Maximum Freight Rate Law,” which named certain rates of transportation, required the railway companies operating in that state to reduce their rates to those there prescribed, and provided that they should become liable to severe penalties for any failure to comply with its provisions. Comp. St. Neb. 1893, c. 72, art. 12. The complainants were stockholders of the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railway Company; and on August 3, 1893, they exhibited to this court their bill in equity against the railway company, George H. Hastings, who was. then the attorney general of the state of .Nebraska, and numerous other parties, officers of the state, upon whom the discharge of some duty devolved under the act of the legislature to which we have adverted. They alleged in this bill that the rates prescribed by this act were confiscatory, and that the law was unconstitutional, and prayed for a temporary and perpetual injunction against the defendants, forbidding them from taking any action to put in operation or to enforce any of the provisions of the law. On August 3, 1893, this court issued a temporary injunction upon a bond for $10,000, which forbade the railway company from putting in operation the rates prescribed by the law and from complying with its provisions; prohibited George H. Hastings, the attorney general, from bringing, or aiding in bringing, or causing or advising to be brought, any proceeding by way of injunction or mandatory or other process or civil action or indictment against said company for or on account of any act or omission commanded or forbidden by the act; and restrained the members of the board of transportation of the. state from taking any action under the law until the further order of this court. At about the same time that this suit was commenced, the stockholders of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Company, of the Chicago & Northwestern Railway Company, and of the Union Pacific Railway Company
“The judicial power of the United States shall not he construed to extend' to any suit at law or in equity commenced or prosecuted against one of the*6 United States by citizens of another state or by citizens or subjects of any foreign state.”
The contention of Mr. Prout is that this court has no jurisdiction to enjoin him from enforcing the maximum freight law, because he-is acting not for himself, but for and in the name of the state, and that this proceeding is in reality a suit against the state.
This court is not at liberty to disregard the decisions of the supreme court of the United States. Its duty is completely performed when it protects the rights and administers the remedies of litigants in strict accord with the rules of law established by those decisions. In the case b.efore us the opinions of that court, and the decrees which it has rendered -or affirmed, have conclusively' settled every question which has been presented, and have left nothing open for our^ discussion or decision. We shall accordingly content ourselves with a brief statement of the principles which determine and the authorities which compel our action.
i. The federal courts must determine for themselves the limits of their jurisdiction, and the supreme court of the United States is the final arbiter in all questions of this nature. A renunciation of this power or a failure to discharge this duty would be fatal to our system of government. It would withdraw, the keystone of the arch. U. S. v. Peters, 5 Cranch, 115, 3 L. Ed. 53; Freeman v. Howe, 24 How. 450, 459, 460, 16 L. Ed. 749.
2. Wherever a federal court and a state court have concurrent jurisdiction, the tribunal whose jurisdiction first attaches holds it to the exclusion of the other until its duty is fully performed and the jurisdiction involved is exhausted. This rule applies equally to civil and criminal proceedings. Harkrader v. Wadley, 172 U. S. 148, 164, 19 Sup. Ct. 119, 43 L. Ed. 399; Sharon v. Terry (C. C.) 36 Fed. 337; Wallace v. McConnell, 13 Pet. 135, 10 L. Ed. 95; Clark v. Five Hundred and Five Thousand Feet of Lumber, 65 Fed. 236, 12 C. C. A. 628; 24 U. S. App. 509; Gates v. Buckeye, 12 U. S. App. 69, 4 C. C. A. 116, 53 Fed. 961; Chittenden v. Brewster, 2 Wall. 191, 17 L. Ed. 839; Orton v. Smith, 18 How. 263, 265, 15 L. Ed. 393; Union Trust Co. v. Rockford, R. I. & St. L. R. Co., 6 Biss. 197, 24 Fed. Cas. 704 (No. 14,401); Owens v. Railroad Co. (C. C.) 20 Fed. 10; Union Mut. Life Ins. Co. v. University of Chicago (C. C.) 6 Fed. 443; Freeman v. Howe, 24 How. 450, 16 L. Ed. 749; Peck v. Jenness, 7 How. 612, 622, 625, 12 L. Ed. 841; Taylor v. Carryl, 20 How. 583, 596, 597, 15 L. Ed. 1028; Wiswall v. Sampson, 14 How. 52, 14 L. Ed. 322; Covell v. Heyman, 111 U. S. 176, 4 Sup. Ct. 355, 28 L. Ed. 390; Heidritter v. Oilcloth Co., 112 U. S. 294, 302, 5 Sup. Ct. 135, 28 L. Ed. 729; Riggs v. Johnson Co., 6 Wall. 166, 196, 18 L. Ed. 768; Central Trust Co. of New York v. South Atlantic & O. R. Co. (C. C.) 57 Fed. 3.
■ 3. .The foregoing principle is so indispensable to the harmonious working of our systems of federal and state jurisprudence that neither the eleventh amendment to the constitution, nor section 720 of the Revised Statutes, which prohibits the issue by a court of the United States of a writ of injunction to stay proceedings in any court of- a state, can be permitted to interfere with its maintenance.
_ 4. In suits to enjoin officers of a state from inflicting threatened injury upon property rights, two classes of cases arise: (1) Those in which the suits are held to be in reality against the state, and of which the federal courts may not take jurisdiction on account of the eleventh amendment to the constitution; and (2) those in which the threatened acts may not be justified under the authority of a state of which the national courts have jurisdiction, and to which the prohibition of the eleventh amendment has no application. In Pennoyer v. McConnaughy, 140 U. S. 1, 10, 11 Sup. Ct. 699, 35 L. Ed. 363, the supreme court thus distinguished these classes:
‘•The first class is where the suit is brought against the officers of the state, as representing the state’s action and liability, thus making' it, though not a party to the record, the real party against which the judgment will so operate as to compel it to specifically perform its contracts. Ex parte Ayers, 123 U. S. 443, 8 Sup. Ct. 164, 31 L. Ed. 216; Louisiana v. Jumel, 107 U. S. 711, 2 Sup. Ct. 128, 27 L. Ed. 448; Antoni v. Greenhow, 107 U. S. 769, 2 Sup. Ct. 91, 27 L. Ed. 468; Cunningham v. Railroad Co., 109 U. S. 446, 3 Sup. Ct. 292, 609, 27 L. Ed. 992; Hagood v. Southern, 117 U. S. 52, 6 Sup. Ct. 608, 29 L. Ed. 805. The other class is where a suit is brought against defendants, who, claiming to act as officers of the state, and under the color of an unconstitutional statute, commit acts of wrong and injury to the rights of property of the plaintiff acquired under a contract with the state. Such suit, whether brought to recover money or property in the hands of such defendants unlawfully taken by them in behalf of the state, or for compensation in damages, or, in a proper case, where the remedy at law is inadequate, for an injunction to prevent such wrong and injury, or for a mandamus, in a like case, to enforce upon the defendant the perform anee of a plain, legal duty, purely ministerial, is not, within the meaning of the eleventh amendment, an action against ihe state. Osborn v. Bank, 9 Wheat. 738, 6 L. Ed. 204; Davis v. Gray, 16 Wall. 203, 21 L. Ed. 447; Tomlinson v. Branch, 15 Wall. 460, 21 L. Ed. 189; Litchfield v. Webster Co., 101 U. S. 773, 25 L. Ed. 925; Allen v. Railroad Co., 114 U. S. 311, 5 Sup. Ct. 925, 962, 29 L. Ed. 200; Board of Liquidation v. McComb, 92 U. S. 531, 23 L. Ed. 623; Poindexter v. Greenhow, 114 U. S. 270, 5 Sup. Ct. 903, 962, 29 L. Ed. 185.”
This classification has since been repeatedly approved. Ex parte Tyler, 149 U. S. 164, 192, 13 Sup. Ct. 785, 37 L. Ed. 689; Scott v. Donald, 165 U. S. 107, 17 Sup. Ct. 262, 41 R. Ed. 648; Tindal v. Wesley, 167 U. S. 204, 220, 17 Sup. Ct. 770, 42 L. Ed. 137.
5. This casé falls in the second class. It is a suit to enjoin individuals, acting as officers of the state, from enforcing an unconstitutional enactment to the injury of the rights of the complainants. It is not governed by the eleventh amendment to the constitution, and this court has complete jurisdiction of its subject-matter and of the parties to the litigation. Reagan v. Trust Co., 154 U. S. 362,
This suit, then, was commenced in 1893. This court at that time obtained jurisdiction of the subject-matter of this litigation, of the issue whether or not this l.aw of Nebraska was constitutional and enforceable, and of the parties to this suit, — the railway company and those who were then acting as officers of the state." It rightfully enjoined the company from reducing its rates to those prescribed by the law, and it lawfully prohibited the attorney general of the state and its other officers from enforcing its provisions That injunction has never been vacated or modified, and it still remains in force. Vulcanite Co. v. Folsom (C. C.) 3 Fed. 509. The defendant Frank N. Prout is prosecuting actions commenced in 1900, six years after this suit was begun, to recover of the defendant railway company penalties to the amount of $450,000 because it obeyed the injunction of this court, and failed to reduce its charges to those specified by the unconstitutional law. In other words, the effect of these later actions is to toll off to another court the question which has long been and still is properly in litigation here, to severely punish one of the parties to this suit for its obedience to an injunction lawfully issued upon a prayer of the complainants in this court, and to forestall and nullify any decision and decree of this court regarding issues of which it first lawfully took jurisdiction. The impropriety, the inadmissibility, of such a proceeding, in the light of the fundamental rules of our judicial systems, to which we have now adverted, is so manifest that we have no doubt that the learned attorney general, when his attention is once directed to them, will at once perceive the propriety and necessity of suspending all action in other courts involving the unconstitutionality of this law, ,an.d the right and duty of this railway company to reduce its charges