Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 September 1895 — HELPS THE SEABOARD. [ARTICLE]

HELPS THE SEABOARD.

Decision by the Supreme Court of Georgia Favors This Famous Line. In the suit of the Seaboard Air Line Railroad against the Western and Atlantic and the Nashviße, Chattanooga and St. Louis railroads, a decision was handed down in the Supreme Court of Georgia at Atlanta which is decidedly in favor of the Seaboard Air Line, and gives this noted litigation a new turn. This litigation was caused by the boycott which the Southern Railway and Steamship Association declared against the Seaboard Air Line, causing all the associated roads to refuse to allow the Seaboard prorating privileges on through shipments. There had been a contract made between the Seaboard and the Western and Atlantic and Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis railroads which guaranteed the Seaboard as advantageous rates as they should give to other connecting lines. The Seaboard therefore brought suit rgainst those roads to enjoin them from entering the boycott ordered by the Southern Railway and Steamship Association. The injunction was temporalily granted, but subsequently Judge Lumpkin ruled that the Western and Atlantic and the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis had a perfect right to enter the boycott in so far as through business was concerned, but on local business originating on the Western and Atlantic or destined to points on the road the defendants could not refuse to grant all concessions to the Seaboard allowed the other connecting lines. The case was appealed by the Seaboard Air Line to the Supreme Court, and the latter filed its opinion last Saturday. The decision in brief is as follows: “Where, upon a valuable consideration, a railway company contracted with a railroad company to ‘interchange business, both through and local,’ with the latter and its connecting lines for a specified term of years ‘upon terms as favorable and advantageous to said road and its connecting lines as those given to any other rai-road entering’ a designated city, the railway company was bound by the terms of this contract, not only as to freight shipped from or to points upon its own line, but also as to freights destined to or coming from points beyond the same; and, therefore, could not, so long as it pursued a different and more favorable course as to other railroads entering the city in question, lawfully do anything to deprive the railroad company with which it had contracted, and its connections, of the benefits of ‘through rates and through proportions of rates and bills of lading founded thereupon’ as to freights of the latter class. “Under this contract, therefore, it was not, in view of the facts as found by the trial judge, lawful for the railway company, during the period therein stipulated, to voluntarily enter into contracts or maintain business relations with transportation companies beyond its oyta line, with the intention or purpose of depriving the other party to the contract (the railroad company) of the benefits above indicated; nor, with such intention or purpose, to refuse to receive from such transportation companies shipments of freight routed over the railroad company’s line upon bills of lading giving to it the benefit of ‘through rates and through proportion of rates’ upon such shipments.”