492
The Green Bag
1911, p. 1324), providing that "every contract, rule, regulation or device whatsoever the pur pose or intent of which shall be to enable any common carrier to exempt itself from any lia bility created by this act shall to that extent be void." The decision followed the authority of Chicago v. McGuire (219 U. S. 561, see 23 Green Bag 320). Juries. Right of Jurors to Utilize their own Expert Knowledge. Wis. The right of jurors, in weighing the evidence, to utilize whatever personal expert knowledge they may have of the subject under considera tion, and give the benefit of their knowledge to other jurors who may lack it, is sustained in Solberg v. Robbins Lumber Co. (Wis.) 37 L. R. A. (N. S.) 790. The question of the right of jurors to act on their own knowledge is treated in an exhaustive note to this case. Jurisdiction. See Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Monopolies. See Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Obligation of Contracts. Rights of Bond holder not Impaired by Statute Consolidating Bor rowing Company with Another — Fourteenth Amendment. U. S. Complainant, a bondholder of a street rail way company, sought to set aside the consolida tion of the company with another similar com pany on the ground that the legislative act authorizing the consolidation was unconstitu tional because it impaired her contract and was a taking of property without due process of law. In Young v. West End Street Ry. Co., decided by the United States District Court for Massa chusetts Sept. 5, Judge Colt dismissed the action, holding the statute not unconstitutional. "It is difficult," said the Court, "to see how the plaintiff's constitutional rights are impaired by the statute in question. In its essence the statute is simply the case of a state legislature authorizing one solvent corporation to sell all its property, privileges and franchises to another solvent corporation, the latter corporation assum ing and being responsible for the liabilities and indebtedness of the former corporation. The purpose of the statute is not to wind up the business of the West End Company but to continue its business under the name of the Boston Elevated Company, and since the sale of the assets of the West End Company is upon condition that the Boston Elevated Railway
so assume all its liabiliteis and indebtedness the effect of the whole transaction is simply a change of name. Since that is the real effect of the transaction there is clearly no impairment of the plaintiff's right or remedy under her contract." Even if the transaction were a sale of the West End to the Boston Elevated company as distinguished from a consolidation of the two companies, and the West End company were dissolved, such a result, said the Court, under the authorities, in no way impaired either the plaintiff's right or remedy under her contract. Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Remedies Pro vided for by the Statute not Exclusive — Suits in Equity May be Brought in State Courts — Parallel and Competing Railroads. N. Y. In Delaware v. New York, N. H., & H. R. Co. et al., decided in July, the New York Supreme Court, Special Term, Part I, held that an action to restrain acts of a railroad in violation of the federal anti-trust law might be maintained in a state court by a person directly injured in respect to the matters involved in the illegal transaction. ( New York Law Journal, Sept. 6.) The Court (Gerard, J.) considered the adverse observations of Mr. Justice Harlan, in Minne sota v. Northern Securities Co. (194 U. S. 48) to apply to original suits in equity brought in state courts in the interest of the general pub lic, or of all alike, and not to proceedings brought in the interest of directly interested parties. The Court consequently held the remedies in cluded in the Sherman act not to be exclusive, relying for this conclusion on the decisions in Shawmut Compress Co. v. Anderson (209 U. S. 423), Bigelow v. Calumet & Hecla Co. (155 Fed. Rep. 869), Continental Wall Paper Co. v. Voight (212 U. S. 227) and other cases. It was held that the lines of the Rutland Rail road Company and of the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad system are parallel and competing within the meaning of the Sher man Anti-Trust Act and the fact that the ability of the two railroads to compete may be affected to a greater or less extent by the circumstance that the grades on parts of the two lines differ is immaterial. An injunction pendente lite restraining the New Haven road from acquiring any of the stock of the Rutland road was accordingly granted.
Street Railroads. See Obligation of Con tracts.
