United States Supreme Court Cases & Opinions

U.S. Supreme Court

Norfolk & Western R. Co. v. Pendleton, 156 U.S. 667 (1895)

Norfolk and Western Railroad Company v. Pendleton

Nos. 153, 359

Submitted January 14, 1895

Decided March 4, 1895

156 U.S. 667

Syllabus

The fifth section of the charter from the Virginia to the Atlantic, Mississippi and Ohio Railroad Company, which vested it "with all the rights and privileges conferred by the laws of this Commonwealth," and

Page 156 U. S. 668

subject to such as apply to railroad corporations generally, subjected it to state laws regulating rates, notwithstanding provisions of exemption in statutes organizing other previous companies to whose rights it succeeded, and the Norfolk and Western Railroad Company, when it became possessed of the property and rights of the Atlantic, Mississippi and Ohio Railroad Company, took them subject in like manner to such laws.

In the absence of express statutory direction, or of an equivalent implication by necessary construction, provisions, in restriction of the right of the state to tax the property or to regulate the affairs of its corporations, do not pass to new corporations succeeding, by consolidation or by purchase under foreclosure, to the property and ordinary franchises of the first grantee.

A mortgage of the franchises and property of a corporation, made in the exercise of a power given by statute, confers no right upon purchasers at a foreclosure sale to exist as the same corporation, but, at most, to reorganize as a new corporation subject to the laws existing at the time of the reorganization.

The case is stated in the opinion.