Oklahoma ex rel West v. Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railway Company/Opinion of the Court

by by John Marshall Harlan

United States Supreme Court

220 U.S. 302

Oklahoma ex rel West  v.  Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railway Company

 Argued: March 13, 1911. --- Decided: April 3, 1911

The state contends that this court has authority, under § 709, of the Revised Statutes of the United States (U.S.C.omp. Stat. 1901, p. 575), to review the final judgment of the supreme court of Oklahoma, and that the dismissal of the case without giving the state the relief asked was a denial of its right, based on the enabling act of Congress, to have the railway company restrained from charging the people of the state, doing business with it, with greater rates of freight than were allowed by Kansas for like services.

We concur with the supreme court of the state in the view that this question, raised by the original petition, has become and is wholly abstract.

The Chicago, Rock Island, & Pacific Railway Company is the successor in interest, subject to all the burdens imposed and having all the rights granted by the act of Congress of March 2d, 1887 (24 Stat. at L. 446, chap. 319). The Chicago, Kansas, & Nebraska Railway Company, the predecessor in interest of the present defendant, was, as we have seen, authorized to locate and maintain a railway through the Indian territory, charging the inhabitants of said territory no greater rate of freight than the rate authorized by the laws of Kansas for services or transportation of the same kind. But by the same act, Congress reserved 'the right to regulate the charges for freight and passengers on said railway . . . until a state government or governments shall exist in said territory within the limits of which said railway or a part thereof shall be located; and then such state government or governments shall be authorized to fix and regulate the cost of transportation of persons and freights within their respective limits by said railway.' The same provision was in the act of July 4th, 1884 [23 Stat. at L. 73, chap. 179], granting a right of way through the Indian territory to the Southern Kansas Railway Company.

In 13, Original, just decided [[[220 U.S. 277]], 55 L. ed. ___, 31 Sup. Ct. Rep. 434], the provision in the act prohibiting the inhabitants of the territory from being charged greater rates than those allowed in Kansas was held not to be binding when the state government was established in Oklahoma, after which the whole subject of rates passed under the control of the state. Whatever may have been the rights of the inhabitants of the territory and of the railway company, under the act of 1887, the state cannot insist that, under the authority of the United States, and after Oklahoma became a state, that the railway company was bound to accept, in the matter of rates for domestic business, the test furnished by the laws of Kansas. Whether any particular rates charged by the railroad company after Oklahoma became a state were illegal, as being unreasonable and purely arbitrary, depended upon the laws of that state touching the matter, or upon the provision of the Federal Constitution, protecting property against undue exactions without due process of law.

Passing by other questions, the determination of which cannot affect the result, we hold, for the reasons stated by it, that the judgment of the state court was right, and its judgment must be affirmed.

It is so ordered.

Notes