Norwood Borough v. Western Union Telegraph Co.

Citations

• 25 Pa. Super. 406
• 1904 Pa. Super. LEXIS 79

Syllabus

<p>Telegraph companies — License tax — Boroughs—Turnpike.</p> <p>If a corporation, although engaged in the business of interstate commerce, so carries on its business as to justify at the hands of any municipality a police supervision of the property and instrumentalities used therein, the municipality is not bound to furnish such supervision for nothing, and may, in addition to ordinary property taxation, subject the corporation to a charge for the expense of the supervision.</p> <p>The liability of a borough to pay for injuries that might arise from the bad condition of telegraph poles and wires arising from the neglect of the telegraph company to inspect and supervise the same, is not a liability which the municipality is entitled to recover from the company in advance of its happening, but it is simply one of the reasons for an inspection by the borough, which shall be most carefully and continuously performed in order that injuries may not arise from the neglect of such supervision.</p> <p>A borough may impose a license tax for the inspection of telegraph poles and wires, although such poles and wires are on a road owned by a turnpike company.</p> <p>A telegraph company can acquire no right from a turnpike company, whose road is a borough street, to maintain its wires and poles in such negligent manner as to endanger the lives and limbs of those who traverse the same or to interfere, unnecessarily, with the extinguishment of fires, or, unnecessarily, to impede travel.</p> <p>In an action against a telegraph company to recover a license tax on telegraph poles and wires, the company may show that the municipality has made no inspection, and has neither paid out any money nor incurred any expense for .that purpose, and that the fee is grossly disproportioned to the amount of any expense that might have been reasonably and fairly incurred for the most careful, thorough and efficient inspection and supervision possible, and for all measures and precautions that coul