People ex rel. Hunt v. Chicago & Alton Railroad

Citations

• 130 Ill. 175

Syllabus

<p>1. Railroads—location of freight and passenger stations—how far subject to control. There is no statute of the State which attempts to prescribe rules,by which railway companies are to be governed in the location of their freight and passenger stations, or to confer upon the courts the power to interpose and direct as to their location.</p> <p>2. The act of 1877, which requires all railway companies to build and maintain depots for the comfort of passengers and for the protection of shippers, applies only to towns.and villages on their lines of road, having a population of five hundred or more, at which they are in the practice of receiving and delivering passengers and freights. The act does not compel a railway company to establish a station where none has before existed.</p> <p>3. Railway companies, in the absence of statutory provisions limiting and restricting their powers, are vested with a very broad discretion in the matter of locating, constructing and operating their railways, and of locating and maintaining their freight and passenger stations. This discretion, however, is not absolute, but is subject to the condition that it must be exercised in good faith, and with a due regard to the necessities and convenience of the public.</p> <p>4. It is in recognition of the paramount duty of railway companies to establish and maintain their depots at such points and in such manner as to subserve the public necessities and convenience, that it has j)een held by all the courts, with very few exceptions, that contracts materially limiting their power to locate and relocate their depots are against public policy, and therefore void.</p> <p>5. A petition for a mandamus against a railway company to compel it to locate and maintain a station and depot on its line of road in a village Of eighteen hundred inhabitants, on grounds there owned by the company, showed, by facts and circumstances detailed, the public importance and necessity for such station, and the refusal