Fertilizing Company v. Hyde Park/Concurrence Miller

by Samuel Freeman Miller

United States Supreme Court

97 U.S. 659

Fertilizing Company  v.  Hyde Park

MR. JUSTICE MILLER.

I concur in the judgment of the court, but cannot agree to the principal argument by which it is supported in the opinion. As the question turns upon the existence of a contract and its nature, and not upon the power of the legislature to pass laws affecting the health and comfort of the community, a reference to them and to the power to repeal and modify them, where no contract is in question, is irrelevant. It is said that such contract as may be found in the present case was made subject to the police power of the legislature over the class of subjects to which it relates. The extent to which this is true depends upon the specific character of the contract and not upon the general doctrine. This court has repeatedly decided that a State may by contract bargain away her right of taxation. I have not concurred in that view, but it is the settled law of this court. If a State may make a contract on that subject which it cannot abrogate or repeal, it may, with far more reason, make a contract for a limited time for the removal of a continuing nuisance from a populous city.

The nuisance in the case before us was the very subject-matter of the contract. The consideration of the contract was that the company might and should do certain things which affected the health and comfort of the community; and the State can no more impair the obligation of that contract than it can resume the right of taxation which it has on valid consideration agreed not to exercise, because in either case the wisdom of its legislation has become doubtful.

If the good of the entire community requires the destruction of the company's rights under this contract, let the entire community pay therefore, by condemning the same for public use.

But I agree that contracts like this must be clearly established, and the powers of the legislature can only be limited by the express terms of the contract, or by what is necessarily implied. In the case before us, the company has two correlative rights in regard to the offal at the slaughter-houses in Chicago. One is to have within the limit of that city depots for receiving it, and the other is to carry it to a place in Cook County south of the dividing line between townships 37 and 38. The city or the State legislature is not forbidden by the contract to locate such depots within the city, where the health of the city requires; in other words, the company has not the choice of location within the city. So, in regard to the chemical works. The company, by its contract, is entitled to have them in Cook County south of the line mentioned; but the precise locality within that large space is a fair subject of regulation by the police power of the State, or of any town to which it has been delegated. If within the limits of Hyde Park, that town may pass such laws concerning its health and comfort as may require the company to seek another location south of the designated line, without impairing the terms of the contract.

It is said that the only railroad by which the company can carry offal passes through Hyde Park, and that the ordinance is fatal to the use of the road. But the State did not contract that the company might carry by railroad, still less by that road. In short, in my opinion, there is within the limits of the original designation of boundary ample space where the company may exercise the power granted by the contract, without violating the ordinances of Hyde Park, and they, as a police regulation of health and comfort, are therefore valid, as not infringing that contract.

For this reason alone, I think the decree should be affirmed.