American Transfer Company's Petition

Citations

• 237 Pa. 241
• 85 A. 143
• 1912 Pa. LEXIS 925

Syllabus

<p>Corporations — Charter powers — Eminent domain — Bight to tahe private property — Transmission of electricity — American Transfer Company.</p> <p>1. The American Transfer Company possessing the powers granted by the Act of April 11, 1866, P. L. 1867, page 1447, incorporating the Dispatch Company and providing that it should have power “to provide, erect, operate and maintain machinery, engines, tubes and apparatus, which may be deemed necessary for the transmission of property of any kind, entrusted to the cafe of said corporation, whether upon the surface of the earth, or under the same,” and that it should have the right “to enter upon such lands and enclosures, streets, lanes and alleys, roads, highways and bridges, as it may be necessary to occupy, for the purposes aforesaid,” and the powers of the Act of April 26, 1870, P. L. 1872, page 1240, incorporating the Novelty Power Company, and providing “that the business of said corporation shall be the receipt, delivery, transportation, storage, transmission, conveyance of goods, merchandise, letters, packages, messages, parcels, property of any and every kind and description,” and the Act of March 16, 1868, P. L. 331, a supplement to the act incorporating the Dispatch Company, and providing “that nothing contained in said act shall be held to prohibit the said corporation from transporting persons within their pneumatic tubes,” has no right to exercise power of eminent domain for the purpose of appropriating rights of way over private property for the purpose of transmitting electric power.</p> <p>2. Corporate powers can never be created by implication nor extended by construction. No privilege is granted unless it be expressed in plain and unequivocal words testifying the intention of the legislature in a manner too plain to be misunderstood. When a corporate body asserts its right to do a thing, or to deprive an individual of his property even for an adequate compensation, it must he able to show that the righ