Duquesne Light Co. v. City of Pittsburgh

Citations

• 251 Pa. 557
• 97 A. 85
• 1916 Pa. LEXIS 504

Syllabus

<p>Municipalities — Electric companies — Overhead poles and wires —Bight of municipality to require removal — Ordinances—Title—. Construction — Equity—Injunction—Dismissal of hill.</p> <p>1. Ordinances adopted pursuant to statutory authority, requiring overhead wires and electric conductors to be removed and placed underground, are a proper exercise of the police power.</p> <p>2. The title and preamble of an ordinance are parts thereof as they are of a statute.</p> <p>3. In a suit in equity to enjoin a municipality from enforcing an ordinance which required public service corporations for furnishing electric light, heat'or power, or for operating telegraph or telephone lines, to construct conduits and to complete the same before the work of completing the improvements on certain streets were completed, and to remove overhead poles or wires and place the same underground, and which provided that where the city had any of its lines upon such poles the companies owning said poles should first remove their own wires therefrom and place the same underground and that when that was done, the city should remove its lines or wires, the lower court found upon abundant evidence that defendant’s overhead wires carried electricity of a high voltage so as to be dangerous to anyone coming in contact therewith, and that they amounted to an obstruction and constituted a source of additional danger in fighting fires and created additional fire risk; refused a request to find, as a conclusion of law, that plaintiff had a vested right to construct and maintain its poles upon the city streets, where the request did not include a statement by way of modification that such right was subject to the reasonable control by the city authorities, and decided that the ordinance applied as well to poles used exclusively by the company as to poles which the city also used for its wires, and dismissed the bill. Held, no error.</p> <p>Practice, Supreme Court — Appeals—Equity—Assignments <ff error —