McNeill v. Southern Railway Co.

Citations

• 202 U.S. 543
• 26 S. Ct. 722
• 50 L. Ed. 1142
• 1906 U.S. LEXIS 1552

Syllabus

<p>Although the dispute which was the origin of the controversy involved less than $2,000, where the controversy presented by the bill involves the right of enforcement of statutory penalties ágainst complianant of over $2,000, and also its right to carry on interstate business within the State, which is worth more than $2,000, the Circuit Court has jurisdiction so far as the amount in controversy is concerned.</p> <p>A suit brought by a railway company against the members of a state railway commission to restrain them from interfering with complainant’s property and interstate business under a state statute alleged in the bill to be unconstitutional as imposing burdens on interstate commerce is not a suit against the State within the meaning of the Eleventh Amendment.</p> <p>The interstate transportation of cars from another State which have not been delivered to the consignee, but remain on the track of the railway company in the condition in which they were originally brought into the State, is not completed and they are still within the protection of the commerce clause of the Constitution.</p> <p>While a State in the exercise of its police power may confer power on an administrative agency to make reasonable regulations as to the place, time and manner of delivery of merchandise moving in channels of intérstate commerce, any regulation which directly burdens interstate commerce is a regulation thereof and rppugnant to the Federal Constitution, and so held that an order of the North Carolina Corporation Commission requiring a railway company to deliver cars from another State to the consignee on a private siding beyond its own right of way was a burden on interstate commerce and void.</p> <p>Quaere whether such an order applicable solely to state business would be repugnant to the due process clause of the Constitution.</p> <p>An injunction granted by the final decree should not be broader than the necessities of the case require and if broader than that it will