Town of Essex v. New England Telegraph Company of Massachusetts

Citations

• 239 U.S. 313
• 36 S. Ct. 102
• 60 L. Ed. 301
• 1916 U.S. LEXIS 1526

Syllabus

<p>The contention that an act of Congress as construed and applied by the District Court transcends the power of Congress, if of sufficient substance gives this court jurisdiction of a direct appeal under § 238, Judicial Code.</p> <p>The Post- Road Act of 1866 substantially declares, in the interest of commerce and the convenient transmission of intelligence from place to place by the Government of the United States and its citizens, that the erection of telegraph lines shall, so far as state interference is concerned, be free to all who will submit to the conditions imposed. Pensacola Tel. Co. v. West. Un. Tel. Co., 96 U. S. 1.</p> <p>A State has no authority to say that a telegraph company may operate lines constructed over postal .routes within its borders. West Un. Tel. Co. v. Massachusetts, 125 U. S. 530.</p> <p>A city may not arbitrarily exclude wires and poles of a telegraph company from its streets, but may impose reasonable restrictions and regulations. West. Un. Tel. Co. v. Richmond, 224 U. S. 160.</p> <p>Where a town has given written permission to a telegraph company specifying how posts could be placed and wires run, and the company has complied with such permission, such lines are protected by the Post Road Act of 1866 against subsequent exclusion or other arbitrary action by the town.</p> <p>A municipality may, under exceptional circumstances, be held to have waived its rights, or to have estopped itself to assert them as by acquiescing for a long'period in the maintenance of the system and large expenditures of money in connection therewith by a telegraph company.</p> <p>The Post Road Act of 1866 must be construed and applied in recognition of the existing conditions and with a view to effectuate the purposes for which it was enacted.</p> <p>Where rights of a telegraph company, under the Post Road Act’would be violated by threatened arbitrary action by a municipality, they may be protected by injunction; but the injunction should not prevent the muni