Lehigh Valley Railroad v. Pennsylvania

145 U.S. 192 (1892)

LEHIGH VALLEY RAILROAD COMPANY
v.
PENNSYLVANIA.

No. 275.

Supreme Court of United States.

Argued April 5, 1892. Decided May 2, 1892. ERROR TO THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA.

Mr. M.E. Olmstead for plaintiff in error.

Mr. James A. Stranahan, Deputy Attorney General of the State of Pennsylvania, for defendant in error.

MR. CHIEF JUSTICE FULLER, after stating the case, delivered the opinion of the court.

The Lehigh Valley Railroad Company is a Pennsylvania corporation, which owns and operates an extensive system of railroads in that State, but has no line of its own to Philadelphia. For the traffic from Mauch Chunk to Philadelphia, it makes use of two routes, one by the way of the Philadelphia and Reading road, being wholly within the State, and the other by its own line connecting with the lines of the Pennsylvania Railroad at Phillipsburg, New Jersey, and thence via Trenton, in that State, to Philadelphia. Detailed reports of its receipts show that the passenger traffic of the Lehigh Company to Philadelphia from Mauch Chunk is almost wholly taken over the Philadelphia and Reading, while its coal and general freight traffic reaches Philadelphia by the other road. Phillipsburg, New Jersey, lies across the Delaware River, opposite Easton, Pennsylvania. By the running arrangements between the Lehigh and Pennsylvania Companies, the transportation of through freight and passengers is continuous from Mauch Chunk to Philadelphia.

The receipts named in class two are confined to that part of the transportation from Mauch Chunk to Phillipsburg, and the taxation to the mileage wholly within the State of Pennsylvania; and the question is whether this taxation in respect of such receipts from freight and passengers carried by continuous transportation to Philadelphia from Mauch Chunk by way of Trenton, New Jersey, amounts to a regulation of interstate commerce.

The conflict between the commercial regulations of the several States was destructive to their harmony and fatal to their commercial interests abroad, and this was the mischief intended to be obviated by the grant to the Congress of the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the States. But, as was said by Chief Justice Marshall, the words of the grant do not embrace that commerce which is completely internal, which is carried on between man and man in a State, or between different parts of the same State, and which does not extend to nor affect other States. "Commerce," observed the Chief Justice, "undoubtedly, is traffic, but it is something more; it is intercourse. It describes the commercial intercourse between nations, and parts of nations, in all its branches, and is regulated by prescribing rules for carrying on that intercourse." Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1, 189. This is no more than an expansion of its simplest signification, that of an exchange of goods, the bringing of them from the seller to the buyer, however vast the range now comprehended by the term in the progress of society.

Taxation is undoubtedly one of the forms of regulation, but the power of each State to tax its own internal commerce, and the franchises, property or business of its own corporations engaged in such commerce, has always been recognized, and the particular mode of taxation in this instance is conceded to be in itself not open to objection. And while interstate commerce cannot be regulated by a State by the laying of taxes thereon, in any form, yet whenever the subjects of taxation can be separated so that that which arises from interstate commerce can be distinguished from that which arises from commerce wholly within the State, the distinction will be acted upon by the courts, and the State permitted to collect that arising upon commerce solely within its own territory. Ratterman v. West. Union Tel. Co., 127 U.S. 411, 424.

The tax under consideration here was determined in respect of receipts for the proportion of the transportation within the State, but the contention is that this could not be done because the transportation was an entire thing, and in its course passed through another State than that of the origin and destination of the particular freight and passengers. There was no breaking of bulk or transfer of passengers in New Jersey. The point of departure and the point of arrival were alike in Pennsylvania. The intercourse was between those points and not between any other points. Is such intercourse, consisting of continuous transportation between two points in the same State, made interstate because in its accomplishment some portion of another State may be traversed? Is the transmission of freight or messages between two places in the same State made interstate business by the deviation of the railroad or telegraph line on to the soil of another State?

If it has happened that through engineering difficulties, as the interposition of a mountain or a river, the line is deflected so as to cross the boundary and run for the time being in another State than that of its principal location, does such detour in itself impress an external character on internal intercourse? For example, the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railway Company is a corporation created under the laws of Tennessee, and through freight and passengers transported from Nashville to Chattanooga pass over a few miles in Alabama and perhaps two miles in Georgia, but we had not supposed that that circumstance would render the taxation of that company, in respect of such business, by the State of Tennessee invalid.

So as to the traffic of the Erie Railway between the cities of New York and Buffalo, we do not understand that that company escapes taxation in respect of that part of its business because some miles of its road are in Pennsylvania, while the New York Central is taxed as to its business between the same places, because its rails are wholly within the State of New York.

It should be remembered that the question does not arise as to the power of any other State than the State of the termini, nor as to taxation upon the property of the company situated elsewhere than in Pennsylvania, nor as to the regulation by Pennsylvania of the operations of this or any other company elsewhere, but it is simply whether, in the carriage of freight and passengers between two points in one State, the mere passage over the soil of another State renders that business foreign, which is domestic. We do not think such a view can be reasonably entertained, and are of opinion that this taxation is not open to constitutional objection by reason of the particular way in which Philadelphia was reached from Mauch Chunk.

Nor is the contrary conclusion supported by Coe v. Errol, 116 U.S. 517, and Lord v. Steamship Company, 102 U.S. 541, much relied on by plaintiff in error.

In Coe v. Errol, logs cut in Maine and detained at Errol, New Hampshire, on their way down the Androscoggin River to Lewiston, Maine, were held by the Supreme Court of New Hampshire not taxable at Errol, while logs cut in New Hampshire and hauled down to that town for similar transportation were held taxable, and this court sustained the judgment of the state court in reference to the New Hampshire logs, upon the ground that they were still part of the general mass of property of the State, and had not commenced "their final movement for transportation from the State of their origin to that of their destination." The Maine logs had never been part of the property of New Hampshire, and had no situs there. They were therefore not taxable, though whether they were or not was not drawn into decision. These logs were also in course of transportation from the place of cutting to another place likewise in Maine, and as that transportation required them to arrive and remain for a time in New Hampshire, the predicament in that regard was referred to in the opinion by way of argument, as being such that New Hampshire could not impose a burden on that transportation. But the right of Maine to tax them was not disputed.

The single question in Lord v. Steamship Company was, as stated by Mr. Chief Justice Waite, delivering the opinion of the court, whether Congress had power to regulate the liability of the owners of vessels navigating the high seas, but engaged only in the transportation of goods and passengers between ports and places in the same State, it being conceded that the voyages of the steamship in respect of whose loss the question arose were always ocean voyages. The argument was that "while on the ocean her national character only was recognized, and she was subject to such laws as the commercial nations of the world had, by usage or otherwise, agreed on for the government of the vehicles of commerce occupying this common property of all mankind. She was navigating among the vessels of other nations and was treated by them as belonging to the country whose flag she carried. True, she was not trading with them, but she was navigating with them, and consequently with them was engaged in commerce. If in her navigation she inflicted a wrong on another country, the United States, and not the State of California, must answer for what was done. In every just sense, therefore, she was, while on the ocean, engaged in commerce with foreign nations, and as such, she and the business in which she was engaged was subject to the regulating power of Congress."

But it was unnecessary to invoke the power to regulate commerce in order to find authority for the law in question. As stated by Mr. Justice Bradley in In re Garnett, 141 U.S. 1, 12: "The act of Congress which limits the liability of ship owners was passed in amendment of the maritime law of the country, and the power to make such amendments is coextensive with that law. It is not confined to the boundaries or class of subjects which limit and characterize the power to regulate commerce; but, in maritime matters, it extends to all matters and places to which the maritime law extends." In that case the limited liability act was applied to a steamer engaged in commerce on the Savannah River.

In Ex parte Boyer, 109 U.S. 629, it was decided that the admiralty jurisdiction extended to a steam canal-boat, in case of collision between her and another canal-boat, whilst the two boats were navigating the Illinois and Lake Michigan Canal, although the libellant's boat was bound from one place in Illinois to another place in the same State.

The principle is well settled, and the cases are largely referred to in In re Garnett.

In Pacific Coast Steamship Co. v. Board of Railroad Commissioners, 9 Sawyer, 253, the Circuit Court for the District of California held, Mr. Justice Field delivering the opinion, that the California State Board of Railroad Commissioners had no power to regulate or interfere with the transportation of persons or merchandise by a steamship company between ports within the State, if they were in transit to or from other States, or if the transportation consisted of voyages upon the ocean, bringing the steamships under the exclusive control of Congress.

But that case involved the direct regulation by a State of transportation which had passed beyond the jurisdiction of the State, and did not decide the question of the power of a State to tax its own corporations in respect of transactions within it in the course of a continuous carriage from one point to another in the State, in accomplishing which a part of another State was incidentally traversed.

This Pennsylvania Company was not taxed in respect of its receipts from transportation from points in foreign States to other points in foreign States not touching Pennsylvania; nor from transportation by continuous carriage from points in a foreign State passing through Pennsylvania and ending into a third State; nor from transportation by continuous carriage from points in Pennsylvania to points in other States; nor from transportation by continuous carriage from points in other States to points in Pennsylvania; nor from transportation by continuous carriage from points in another State to other points in the same State passing through Pennsylvania; but only in respect of receipts from transportation from points in Pennsylvania to other points in Pennsylvania without passing out of the State, and from transportation by continuous carriage from points in Pennsylvania to other points therein, but passing out of Pennsylvania into another State and back again in the course of transportation.

We do not deem it necessary to continue the discussion. We concur with the state court in sustaining the validity of the tax herein involved, and the judgment is

Affirmed.