Missouri Rate Cases

Citations

• 230 U.S. 474
• 33 S. Ct. 975
• 57 L. Ed. 1571
• 1913 U.S. LEXIS 2687

Syllabus

<p>These suits were brought to restrain the enforcement of the freight-rate and passenger-fare acts of the State of Missouri, passed in 1907. The question of interference with interstate commerce is, the same as that presented in the Minnesota Rate Cases, ante, p. 352, and the decision is the same.</p> <p>Where an act fixing rates and imposing penalties for violation is repealed by a subsequent act which saves the penalties and simply substitutes other rates, the essential features of a controversy involving the constitutionality of the statute are the same; and, under the circumstances of this case, a supplemental bill may be filed setting up the new and additional legislation and praying relief in regard thereto.</p> <p>Where the ends of justice are advanced and no substantial rights of the objectors are violated, this court will not interfere with the reasonable. discretion of the trial judge in a matter of practice.</p> <p>Where the Federal court already has jurisdiction of an action to determine the constitutionality of a state statute fixing rates, that jurisdiction is not. ousted by a substitution of rates by the legislature, because the State files a bill to enforce the new rates; the Federal court retains jurisdiction under a supplemental bill.</p> <p>Minnesota Rate Cases, ante, p. 352, followed to effect that, the legislative acts of Missouri establishing maximum rates for transportation wholly intrastate are not unconstitutional as an unwarranted interference with interstate coihmercc.</p> <p>Legislative'acts of a State establishing maximum freight and passenger rates for wholly intrastate commerce will not be declared unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment as confiscatory in the absence of clear and convincing proof as to the valiie of the property used by the carrier and on which returns are based. General evidence as to assessed valuations without showing the method of appraisement are insufficient, either as to value of property or apportionm