People ex rel. New York Electric Lines Co. v. Squire

The relator was incorporated in 1882, for the purpose of “owning, constructing, using, maintaining and leasing lines of telegraphic wires or other electric conductors for telegraphic and telephonic communication, and for electric illumination to be placed under the pavements of the streets, etc., in the counties of New York and Bangs.” Their organization was effected under chap. 265 of the Laws of 1848, which by a general law authorized the formation of corporations of that character, and in 1883 it applied to and received from the common council of the city of New York, by virtue of, the power conferred upon such council by chap. 397 of the Laws of 1879, permission to construct conduits and lay wires in certain streets of New York, under certain conditions named in the ordinances, which, among other things, required that such work should be performed under the control and supervision of the commissioner of public works.

The relator, in 1883, also filed with the clerk of New York county certain maps, plans and tabular statements, as required by the ordinance, and proceeded to collect the material and equipments necessary to build its structures and transact its business. No further progress seems to have been made by the relator until July, 1886, when application was made by it to the department of public works of New York for permission to open some of the .streets in the city for the purpose of laying therein its wires

This proceeding was brought to obtain a peremptory mandamus requiring the commissioner of public works to grant a permit to the relator authorizing it to excavate in the streets of the city to enable it to construct conduits and lay electric wires and conductors therein. The application was denied at special term ( 1 N. Y. St. Rep., 633 ), and the general term, upon appeal to that court, affirmed the order denying the writ. 6 id., 281.

Section 1 of chapter 534 of the Laws of 1884 provides that “ all telegraph, telephonic and electric light wires and cables used in any incorporated city of this state, having a population of 500,000 or over, shall hereafter be placed under the surface of the streets, lanes and avenues of said city.” Section 2 requires that “every corporation owning or controlling telegraph, telephone, electric or other wires or cables shall, before the first day of November, 1885, have the same removed from the surface of all streets or avenues in every such city of this state.” And section 3 provides that in case the owners of such property do not comply with the provisions of the act within the time limited, the local governments of the said cities shall cause such wires, etc., to be removed and placed under ground.

These provisions do not seem to have been impaired in any material respect by the subsequent legislation of 1885 and 1886, and by express terms this act applies as well to existing companies as to those thereafter to be formed.

By chapter 499, Laws of 1885, it was provided that three persons should be appointed to constitute a board of commissioners of electrical subways in cities having a population exceeding 500,000. By section 2 such boards were charged with the responsibility of enforcing the provisions of the act of 1884, and it was made their duty to cause to be removed from the surface of the streets, etc., all wires and cables used in the business of such electric companies, and to put them under ground wherever practicable, and cause them to be there operated and maintained, and said act of 1884 was declared to be amended to conform to the provisions of this act. Section 3 of said act provided that “When any company operating, or intending to operate, electrical conductors in any such city, shall desire or be required to place its conductors or any of them under ground, it shall be obligatory upon such corporation to file with said board of commissioners a map or maps made to scale, showing the streets or avenues or other highways which are desired to be used for such purpose, and giving the;

These acts seem to have been intended to apply to all companies and to whatever stage of then organization they may have reached.

It is not claimed by the relator that it has ever filed with the board of commissioners its maps and plans as required by said act, or that it has obtained from them an approval of such maps, etc., and it is, therefore, clear that section 3 of the act of 1885 constitutes an insuperable objection to the relator’s application unless for some reason it be adjudged to be void for unconstitutionality.

The relator has met this question squarely and challenges the constitutionality of the act upon several grounds which may be summarized as follows:

First. That it violates section 16 of article 3, in that it is a local bill and embraces more than one subject not expressed in its title.

Second.. That it violates section 17 of article 3, providing that “No act shall be passed which shall provide that any existing law, or any part thereof, shall be made or deemed a part of said act, or which shall enact that any existing law, or any part thereof, shall be applicable, except by inserting it in such act.”

Third. That said act levies a tax upon such companies, in that it provided that the costs and expenses of such board of commissioners are authorized to be assessed by the comptroller of the state, when paid by him, upon the several companies operating electrical conductors in any such city of the state which shall be required to place and operate its conductors underground.

Fourth. That if said act of 1885 applies to the relator, it was unconstitutional as it impaired the rights which it had secured by virtue of the grant from the authorities of New York to construct conduits and lay wires and conductors in the streets of that city, and its acceptance thereof.

We are of the opinion that none of the points taken by the appellants are tenable.

It is convenient to consider these questions in the order in which they have been stated.

First. The act referred to is not subject to the condemnation expressed in section 16, article 3, for the reason that it is neither a private or local bill, nor does it embrace more than one subject. The three acts of 1884, 1885 and 1886, all relate to the same subject, viz.: that of placing all elec

Neither is the act a local or private one within the meaning of the section referred to. Such was the decision of this court In the Matter of the New York Elevated R. R. Co. ( 70 N. Y., 327 ) and In the Matter of Church ( 92 N. Y., 1 ). This act is general in its terms applying to all cities in the state of a certain class and to every corporation carrying on a business requiring the use of electrical wires or conductors in such cities. That the number of such cities is limited or restricted does not make the bill a private or local one within the constitutional meaning and intent of these -words, was expressly decided in the cases referred to.

How many companies there are to which this bill applies we have no means of determining, but the fact that a general law is passed regulating the operations of all such companies, in cities of the class referred to, does not constitute it a private or local bill, although it may happen that such companies are all located in one or more cities of the state.

Second. Neither do we think the act obnoxious to the objection that it incorporates in its provisions a prior act without inserting such act therein. The act is neither within the letter or spirit of the constitutional provision. There was no attempt to re-enact the law of 1884 by the law of 1885. The act of 1884 was a law by the force of its own enactment and so continues. It has never been repealed or re-enacted. The act of 1885 treats that of 1884 as a valid and existing law and purports simply to provide methods by which it may be more conveniently carried out -and enforced. It might be better, perhaps, to have all the laws relating to this subject incorporated in a single act, but I apprehend it is no objection to a law, under the constitution that other laws on the same subject exist in other volumes of the statutes, or that the arrangement and location of such laws are faulty; or perhaps intricate and awkward, or involve labor and trouble to determine what in fact -the -law is.

The object and intent of the constitutional provision was to ¡prevent statute laws relating to one subject from being made applicable to laws passed upon another subject through ignorance and misapprehension on the part of the

Third. The claim that this law is void because it imposes a tax on the companies referred to, cannot be maintained. The act of 1884 imposes the duties upon such companies to remove and cause to be laid underground, all such wires and cables as are required in their business, and there is no reason why such companies should not be subject to the payment of all expenses incurred in the construction of works required to carry on their own business.

This question has received a practical construction in. the legislation of the state by its laws imposing upon banking and insurance corporations the expenses incurred by the government in the management and regulation of such institutions and their business operations. It has never been supposed that these laws imposed a tax within-the meaning of the Constitution. A further answer to this point is found in the circumstance that even if it ■ he-admitted that the law does not impose a tax, it does- not necessarily invalidate the other provisions of the statute. The comptroller of the state is required to pay their expenses in the first instance, and no question now arises over the liability of the companies until they are called upon, by the comptroller, to refund to him the amount of such expenses. This provision of the statute may be eliminated from it without impairing in the least the general scheme of the act, and upon well settled principles, when this can be done, it affects so much of the act "only as may be declared unconstitutional.

Fourth. The relator also claims that the act is obnoxious to the clause of the Constitution, which forbids the enactment of any law impairing the obligation of contracts.

But we are of the opinion, for other reasons, that this legislation did not and was not intended to materially impair or restrict the enjoyment of the franchise secured by the relator. The necessity of these acts springs out of a great evil, which in recent times has grown up and afflicted large cities by the multiplication of rival and competing companies organized for the purpose of distributing light, heat, water, the transportataion of freight and passengers, and facilitating communication between distant points, and which require in their enterprises the occupation not only of the service of and air above the streets, but indefinite space under ground. This evil has become so great that every large city was covered with a net work of cables and wires attached to poles, houses, buildings and elevated structures, bringing danger, inconvenience and annoyance to the public; extensive spaces under ground were also required to lay pipes and build trenches and arches to transact the business of the various corporations requiring them. These works not only called for great skill to harmonize the various and conflicting claims of competing companies to rights above as well as beneath the ground, but a comprehensive plan and supervision to prevent the constant disruption of the streets and the interruption of travel. The necessity of a remedy for these public annoyances had long been felt and it finally culminated in the enactment of the several statutes referred to.

These statutes were obviously intended to restrain and control, as far as practicable, the evils alluded to by requiring all such wires to be placed under ground in such cities and be subject to the control and supervision of local officers who could reconcile and harmonize the claims of conflicting companies, and obviate, in some degree, the evils which had grown to be almost, if not quite, intolerable to the public. The scheme of these statutes was not to annul or destroy the contract rights of such companies but to regu

That regulations of the character provided for in these acts are strictly police regulations, and such as no chartered rights can nullify or override, is too clear to admit of dispute. The primary and fundamental object of all public highways is to furnish a passageway for travelers in vehicles, or on foot, through the country. Bouvier’s Institutes, sec.

They were originally designed for the use of traveler’s alone, but in the course of time, and in the interest of the general prosperity and comfort of the public, they have been put especially in large cities to numerous other uses, but such uses have always been held to be subordinate to the original design and use. Thus they have been appropriated in recent times for the reception of sewers, water-pipes, gas-pipes, pipes for heating and manufacturing purposes, underground railroads, trenches for wires for telegraph, telephone and other purposes, which all require in their construction the disruption of the pavements and the temporary interruption at least of the rights of travelers in the public highways. The due and orderly arrangement of the various and conflicting claims to privileges in the streets of large cities would seem imperatively to require the creation of a nuetral board with controlling authority to form a comprehensive plan by which these various enterprises might be harmonized and carried on without detriment to each other and with due regard to the rights of the public. Such power is pre-eminently a police power, and it is within the legitimate authority of a legislature to delegate its exercise to municipal corporations.

An elementary writer has said that “The police of a state, in a comprehensive sense, embraces its system of internal regulation by which if is sought, not only to preserve the public order and to prevent offenses against the state, but also to establish for the intercourse of citizen with citizen those rules of good manners and good neighborhood which are calculated to prevent a conflict of rights .and to insure to each the uninterrupted enjoyment of his own so far as is reasonably consistent with a like enjoyment of rights by others.” Cooley on Const. Limitations, 572.

Justice Shaw said in Commonwealth, v. Alger ( 7 Cush.,

Ch. J. Redfield, in Thorpe v. Rutland and Burlington R. R. Co. ( 27 Vt., 149 ), says: “This police power of the state extends to the protection of the lives, limbs, health, comfort and quiet of all persons, and the protection of all property within the state.”

The right to exercise this power cannot be alienated, surrendered or abridged by the legislature, by any grant, contract or delegation whatsoever, because it constitutes the exercise of a governmental function, without which it would become powerless to protect those rights which it was specially designed to accomplish. Thus it was held in Presbyterian Church v. City of New York (5 Cowen, 540), where the corporation had granted, with a covenant for quiet enjoyment, a piece of land to the plaintiff to be used for church purposes and as a cemetery, that the power of the municipal government to pass an ordinance forbidding the use of such premises as a cemetery for the interment of the dead, constituted no breach of the covenant. It was said that “the defendants are a corporation, and in that capacity are authorized by their charter and by laws to purchase and hold, sell and convey real estate in the same manner as individuals. They are also clothed as well by their charter as by subsequent statutes of the state, with legislative powers; and in the capacity of a local legislature, are particularly charged with the care of the public morals and the public health within their jurisdiction. They had no power as a party, to make a contract which should control or embarrass their legislative powers and duties. ”

To the same effect is People v. Morris, 13 Wend., 325 . In Wynehamer v. People ( 13 N. Y., 421 ), Judge Comstock says, in speaking of rights of property: “The substantial right cannot be destroyed; its enjoyment is not an offense. At the same time, the mode of enjoyment in its broadest sense, is subject to legislation, though it be effected very injuriously, provided a substantial right is left.”

The claim made by the relator in this case would authorize it to tear up the streets of the city at such times, in such places and under such circumstances as it might itself determine, regardless of the public convenience and welfare and the rights of other claimants to the occupation thereof,

We do not think such a claim can be sustained. It is neither within the terms of their contract, and if it were, it is still subject, in the. respects mentioned, to the police power of the state.

The order of the general term is affirmed, with costs.

All concur.