International & Great Northern Railway Co. v. Anderson County

Citations

• 246 U.S. 424
• 38 S. Ct. 370
• 62 L. Ed. 807
• 1918 U.S. LEXIS 1562

Syllabus

<p>With respect to a railroad within its territory, a state court has jurisdiction to decide whether the owner is under a public duty to maintain the offices and shops at a particular place, even though it were assumed, as a rúle of decision; that’ a foreclosure and confirmed sale in a federal court conferred immunity from the obligation which that court alone could withdraw.</p> <p>Foreclosure and sale of a railroad in a federal court will, not relieve the purchaser from a contractual or statutory duty, which rested' on its predecessors under the state law, to maintain offices and shops at a particular place, if the state law holds the obligation indelible by fbreclosure.</p> <p>T’he prohibition against removal of offices and shops located by contract within a county in consideration of county bond aid extends, under the Texas Office-Shops Act of 1889, to the successor by mortgage foreclosure of the contracting railroad.</p> <p>In its provision that offices and shops shall be at the place named in -the charter, and if no certain place is there named then at such place as the company shall have contracted to locate them, etc., this statute does not intend that a valid contract for location may be evaded by a purchasing company by naming another place in its charter filed under a. general law.</p> <p>Semble, that a contract to maintain the offices and shops of a railroad at a particular place survives mortgage foreclosure and sale of the railroad where the purchaser succeeds to the mortgagor’s franchise to be a corporation.</p> <p>Semble, that, generally speaking, a state legislature, dealing, with a local railroad corporation, has power to fix the place of its domicile and principal offices.</p> <p>A corporation, organized under general laws expressly declaring that charters thereunder should be subject to provisions and limitations imposed by law, while another act prohibited changing locations of railroad office's and shops in certain cases, purchased a railroad u