Mahoning & Shenango Railway & Light Co. v. New Castle

Citations

• 233 Pa. 413
• 82 A. 501
• 1912 Pa. LEXIS 844

Syllabus

<p>Equity — Injunction—Jurisdidion—Ordinance—Police power — Street railway — Threat to arrest employees — Municipalities.</p> <p>1. Equity has jurisdiction to interfere by injunction against a municipality where the validity of a police power ordinance is in question, and there is a threat to take the employees of a street railway company off its cars by arrest.</p> <p>Municipalities — City of the third class — Penal ordinances — Regulation of common carriers — Standard of care — Safety devices — Powers.</p> <p>2. In the absence of express authority conferring the power of enactment such a penal ordinance as one purporting to regulate the safety devices to be adopted-by a street railway, which undertakes to enforce a higher standard than that imposed by the principles of common-law, should not be sustained.</p> <p>3. An ordinance of the city of New Castle, a city of the third class, required all companies operating street railway lines in the city to equip every car operated with “the latest, best and most approved safety brakes,” and specified by name two kinds of brakes to be used, with provision for fine or imprisonment for violation of the ordinance. On appeal from a decree dismissing bill praying for an injunction declaring the ordinance invalid, held, that there is nothing in the Act of February 25,1869, P. L. 249 (incorporating the city of New Castle), in the Act of May 16,1901, P. L. 224, or in the Act of March 22,1887, P. L: 8, which confers upon the city the express right to enact such an ordinance; nor has the city any incidental or implied power which would enable it to do so.</p> <p>Railroads — Operation of road — Duty to protect public — Board of directors.</p> <p>4. In the operation of its road and in the running of its cars the judgment of the board of directors of a railroad company, in the absence of statutory provision, is supreme and exclusive. The public safety imperatively requires that there be no division of this great responsibility with oth