Atlantic Coastline v. Florida ex Rel. Ellis, ante, p.
203 U. S. 256,
followed.
Where the record does not disclose why an order of a state
railroad commission was made applicable only to certain local and
intrastate rates, but the state law provides that rates so fixed
are to be considered in all courts as
prima facie just and
reasonable, and the effect of the order was to equalize rates, this
Court will not hold the judgment of the highest court of the state
sustaining the rate was erroneous. A state may insist upon equality
of intrastate railroad rates, the conditions being the same,
without depriving the railroad company of its property without due
process of law.
It will be presumed that a state railroad commission acts in
fixing an intrastate railroad rate with full knowledge of the
situation, and where the record does not disclose all the evidence,
a rate sustained by the highest court of the state will not be held
by this Court to be confiscatory and depriving the railroad company
of its property without due process of law where it appears by the
report of the company that the rate exceeds the average rate
received by the company during the previous year.
48 Fla. 129 and 150 affirmed.
These cases resemble the one immediately preceding, in this:
that review is sought in each of an award of a peremptory writ of
mandamus by the Supreme Court of Florida to compel compliance with
an order of the state railroad commission. In the first, the court
sustained an order of the commission, made June 25, 1903, and to go
into effect July 1, 1903, prescribing rates on the Florida West
Shore Railway, charged to be under the control and management of
the plaintiff in error, 48 Fla. 129, 152, the order being in these
words:
"It is hereby ordered and adjudged by the Railroad Commission of
the State of Florida that the following schedule of freight tariffs
shall be allowed and adopted for freight shipments over the
Page 203 U. S. 262
Seaboard Air Line Railway, to apply only to shipments from or
destined to points on the Florida West Shore Railway, and from
points on the Florida West Shore Railway to points on the Florida
West Shore Railway, and the same shall be put into operation and be
effective on the first day of July, A.D. 1903,"
and followed by the schedule, and in the second, it enforced the
order of the commission in respect to phosphates (which was noticed
by us in the opinion in the preceding case). 48 Fla. 150.
The proceedings before the commission are not disclosed, nor is
there anything to show upon what the orders were based. There was
notice and a hearing. And in the pleadings in the first case appear
the contracts between the plaintiff in error and the Florida West
Shore Railway.
In the supreme court the relator presented no testimony, relying
upon the statutory presumption which attends an order of the
commission. The defendant introduced the report which it had made
to the railroad commission for the year ending June 30, 1904, and
the report of the railroad commission to the governor of the state
for the year ending March 1, 1904, and upon these two reports the
cases were considered by the supreme court.
Page 203 U. S. 268
MR. JUSTICE BREWER delivered the opinion of the Court.
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 ten percent rates on certain freights
going over two or more roads, and that from such order no appeal
was taken. These are the
Page 203 U. S. 269
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 percent 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 one cent per ton per mile.
It simply provides that it shall not exceed one cent per ton per
mile -- prescribes a maximum which may be reduced by the railway
company, and, if distance
Page 203 U. S. 270
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 two 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.
