219 Mo. 156 | Mo. | 1909
Defendant was convicted and fined $100 as if for failure to obey the requirement of an Act of the General Assembly approved March 19, 1907 (Laws 1907, p. 180), entitled, “An Act to compel all railroad corporations or persons operating a railroad or part of a railroad in this State to run at least one passenger train over said railroad each way every day, and fixing penalties for violation thereof.”
The first section of that act is as follows:
*161 “Section 1. That all persons, copartnerships, companies or corporations operating any railroad or part of a railroad in this State shall, unless hindered hy wrecks or providential hindrance, run at least one regular passenger train each way every day over all lines, or part of line, of railroad so operated hy such person, copartnership, company or corporation in this State, which train shall stop at all regular stations along the line of such railroad for the purpose of receiving and discharging passengers.”
Section 2 prescribes the penalty of not less than $100 nor more than $500 for each violation.
The information charges that defendant owned and operated a railroad extending from Sedalia to Warsaw, connecting at Sedalia with its main line; that on February 14, 1908, there being no wreck or providential hindrance, defendant did “fail and refuse to operate a regular passenger train each way over ’ ’ that railroad. Defendant filed a motion to quash the information on the ground that it charged no offense against the law, because the act of the General Assembly above mentioned, on which the information was based, was unconstitutional in several particulars, specifying in the motion certain clauses in the State and in the Federal Constitution which defendant thought were violated. The same points were also presented in the motions for a new trial and in arrest of judgment. It was the constitutional question that brought the appeal to this court, but unless we find in the record evidence sufficient to sustain the court’s finding of guilty as charged in the information, we will have to decide the case before we reach the constitutional question.
The information charged the defendant with failure to run a regular passenger train each way on the 14th February, 1908. One indicted for committing an act in violation of law on a certain day may be con
Tbe evidence in this case wandered farther than it should. Tbe defendant was charged with having failed to run a regular passenger train both ways on this road on tbe 14th February, 1908, in violation of tbe statute, and, to sustain that charge, tbe State proved that on tbe 14th February, 1908, tbe defendant ran, both ways on the road, a train composed of an engine, tender, two or more freight cars, a combined baggage-mail-and-passenger car and a passenger coach, and that no other train was run on that day. That proof was a complete identification of tbe act specified in tbe information and a complete identification of tbe day specified on which it was committed, therefore there was no occasion to go over a period of six months, as tbe State was allowed to do, to prove what kind of trains defendant ran on other days during that period and the delay in tbe arrival and departure of some of those trains.
The title to the act does not use the term “regular passenger train”, but says it is “an actio compel all railroad corporations ... to run at least one passenger train over said railroad each way every day,” etc. In the body of the act it says “one regular passenger train.” We have no right to presume that the Legislature by using the term “regular passenger train” in the body of the act intended to call for a train of a different construction or composition from that mentioned in the title under the term “passenger train,” because if we did we would have to say that they intended to express a diff erent purpose in the body than that indicated in the title, which the Constitution forbids. Our task now is to find what the Legislature-meant by the use of those terms in the title and in the-body of the act. What is a passenger train? What is-a regular passenger train? What is the difference in meaning between the two terms, “a passenger train”’ and “a regular passenger train?” The General Assembly has used those terms, but has not undertaken
Words of doubtful meaning in a statute are to be interpreted by their context and in view of the purpose of the lawmaker. The words we are now considering have been interpreted by courts of other States when used in a statute having reference to a particular purpose. In Words and Phrases, vol. 6, p. 5227, reference is made to a case in Minnesota, in which the defendant being under contract to furnish the plaintiff railroad company depot facilities for its “passenger trains,”, refused to allow the plaintiff to use the passenger depot for its mixed trains, that is, trains composed of freight cars and passenger cars, but the court held that such a train was a “passenger train” within the meaning of the contract. [Railroad v. Union Depot Co., 68 Minn. 220, l. c. 223-4.] And the same author, vol 7, p. 6038, takes up the phrase “Regular Passenger Train” and refers to some Illinois cases in which that phrase is considered in reference to the purpose of the
Since, therefore, there is no recognized technical definition of the phrase “regular passenger train” we must go to our statute and ascertain if we can what our General Assembly meant by it, in the Act of 1907, and if we cannot with reasonable certainty determine what it means we cannot convict a person or corporation of violating it.
The word “train” is used in reference to railroad traffic to mean all kinds of trains, freight train, pas
The answer to a question we have in this opinion above suggested, to-wit. what is the difference in the
We have in another section of our statutes express recognition by the General Assembly that a passenger train may carry freight cars — section 1101, Revised Statutes 1899, Ann. Stat. 1906, p. 938: “In forming a passenger train, baggage, freight, merchandise or lumber cars shall not he placed in rear of passenger cars. ’ ’ In the train in question in this case the freight cars were not placed in rear of the passenger cars.
That it was the running and the operating of the train that the General Assembly had in mind when it used the word “regular” in this connection is indicated also in the closing sentence of the first section of the act: “which train shall stop at all regular stations along the line of such railroad for the purpose of receiving and discharging passengers.”
This train complied with that requirement. The purpose of the act was to afford the travelling public railroad facilities fit least once a day at regular times and at all the regular stations, not leaving the public to the whim or caprice of the railroad company whether it would send a train over its road on a particular day. If the General Assembly had seen fit to say that, in order to render the passenger service more agreeable and expeditious, the railroad company should carry no freight cars in the train it would have said so, or if it had seen fit to define what it meant by a passenger train we would have had no trouble with construing the act as we now have it} but it has been satisfied to say that the defendant must run ‘ ‘ a passenger train,” and we do not feel justified in saying' that the defendant did not run a passenger train as the statute
All the evidence in the case being the State’s evidence, the court should have found the defendant not guilty as charged in the information. This conclusion disposes of the case before we reach the constitutional question concerning which much learning and ability has been shown in the briefs and in the oral arguments. But before this corporation can have our judgment on the question of the impairment of its religious liberty it will have to take off its Sunday train on that branch of its road and incur the wrath of State for so doing.
The judgment is reversed and the defendant is discharged.