Atlantic Coast Line R. Co. v. North Carolina Corporation Comm'n

Syllabus

<p>Railroad companies from the public nature of the business by them carried on, and the interest which the public have in their operation are subject as to their state business to state regulation, which may be exerted either directly by the legislative authority or by administrative bodies endowed with power to that end.</p> <p>The public power to Tegulate railroads and the private right of ownership of such property coexist and do not the one destroy the other; and where the power to regulate is so arbitrarily exercised as to infringe the rights of ownership the exertion is void because repugnant to the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.</p> <p>An order of a state railroad commission requiring a railroad company to so arrange its schedule as to furnish transportation between two points so as to make connections with through trains, held, under the circumstances of this case, not to be so arbitrary or unreasonable as to transcend the limits of regulation and to be in effect either a denial of due process of law or a deprivation of the equal protection of the laws, or a taking of property without compensation.</p> <p>Whether a regulation of a state railroad commission otherwise legal is arbitrary ajid unreasonable because beyond the scope of the powers delegated to the commission is not a Federal question.</p> <p>It is within the power of a state railroad commission to compel a railroad company to make reasonable connections with other roads -so as to promote the convenience of the traveling public, and an order requiring the running of an additional train for that purpose, if otherwise jüst and reasonable, is not inherently unjust and unreasonable because the running of such train will impose some pecuniary loss on the company.</p> <p>While the enforcement by a State of a general scheme of maximum rates so unreasonably low' as to be unjust and unreasonable may. be confiscation and amount to taking property without due process of