United States Supreme Court Cases & Opinions

U.S. Supreme Court

General Railway Signal Co. v. Virginia, 246 U.S. 500 (1918)

General Railway Signal Company v. Virginia

No. 177

Argued March 11, 1918

Decided April 15, 1918

246 U.S. 500

Syllabus

A foreign corporation, for lump sums, made and performed contracts to furnish completed automatic railway signal systems in Virginia, in the performance of which the materials, supplies, machinery, devices, and equipment were brought from without, but their installation, as structures permanently attached to the soil, required employment of local labor, digging of ditches, construction of concrete foundations, and painting. Held that local business was involved, separate and distinct from interstate commerce, and subject to the licensing power of the state. Browning v. Waycross, 233 U. S. 16. The Virginia law imposing a fee for the privilege of doing local business of $1,000 on foreign corporations with capital over $1,000,000 and not exceeding $10,000,000 (Acts 1910, c. 53, § 38a), upheld as not arbitrary or unreasonable under all the circumstances, though the case is on the border line.

118 Va. 301 affirmed.

Page 246 U. S. 501

The case is stated in the opinion.

Page 246 U. S. 508