Seaboard Air Line Railway v. Florida/Opinion of the Court

by David Josiah Brewer

United States Supreme Court

203 U.S. 261

Seaboard Air Line Railway  v.  Florida

 Argued: March 2, 5, 1906. --- Decided: December 3, 1906

There are no special findings of facts in these cases, and only from an examination of the opinions filed by the supreme court can we ascertain what its conclusions were or upon what its judgments were based. It may well be doubted whether a railroad company can rely, as evidence in its own behalf, upon a report made and filed by it, and while a report of the railroad commission to the governor may undoubtedly be used against it in an application made at its instance to secure compliance with one of its orders, yet there is little in its report which throws light upon the questions in these cases.

Referring to the first case, in which is presented the reasonableness of an order made by the commission respecting local rates for business on, to, or from the Florida West Shore Railway, we find it stated in the brief of the plaintiff in error that the railroad commission on December 22, 1903, made an order, to go into effect July 1, 1904, reducing local freight rates generally; that from this order no appeal was taken; that in November, 1903, an order was made reducing by 10 per cent rates on certain freights going over two or more roads, and that from such order no appeal was taken. These are the orders referred to in the report of the commission to the governor. But the order in controversy was made on June 25, 1903, to go into effect July 1, 1903, and is applicable solely to the Florida West Shore road. Now, whether this order of June 25, 1903, was simply operative to make the rates on the Florida West Shore road the same as those then obtaining generally in the state, or whether it made them higher or lower than such rates, does not appear. For some reason, not disclosed, the order touched only the local freight rates to and from the Florida West Shore Railway and over the Seaboard Air Line Railway. Even if the total receipts by the latter company from local freight rates were insufficient to meet what could properly be cast as a burden upon that business, such insufficiency would not justify it in an inequality of rates between different parts of the state, in one part too high and in the other too low. The state might properly insist that there should be equality in the rates,-the conditions being the same, and, if nothing more was accomplished by the order of the commission than to establish such equality, we cannot hold that the judgment of the supreme court was erroneous.

With reference to the second of these cases, the order made by the railroad commission is said by the plaintiff in error to be an 'irregular, unjust, and unreliable method of rate fixing;' and this upon the theory that the order makes the rate per mile the same for any distance, whether one mile or a hundred miles. It appears that 16.43 per cent of all the local freight business of the company in Florida comes from the carrying of phosphates, and reference is made to several cases in which the courts have noticed the fact that the cost of moving local freight is greater than that of moving through freight, and the reasons for the difference. But evidently counsel misinterpret the order of the railroad commission. It does not fix the rate at 1 cent per ton per mile. It simply provides that it shall not exceed 1 cent per ton per mile,-prescribes a maximum which may be reduced by the railway company, and, if distance demands a reduction, the company may and doubtless will make it. In addition it must be borne in mind that it is to be presumed that the railroad commission acted with full knowledge of the situation; that phosphates were in Florida possibly carried a long distance, the place of mining being far from the place of actual use or preparation for use. Further, when we turn to the report of the railroad company (which, of course, is evidence against it), we find that the company's average freight receipt per ton per mile in the state of Florida was 8 15/100 mills; so that the rate authorized for phosphates was nearly 2 mills per ton larger than such average. Under these circumstances it is impossible to say that there was error in the conclusions of the Supreme Court of the state, and its judgments are affirmed.

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