Fertilizing Company v. Hyde Park

97 U.S. 659

Case Year: 1878

Case Ruling: 7-1

Opinion Justice: Swayne

FACTS

The Northwestern Fertilizing Company was created by an act of the Illinois state legislature in 1867 for the purpose of converting dead animals and animal parts (offal) into agricultural fertilizer and other chemical products. The legislature also gave the company permission to build a rendering plant within an authorized area outside the city of Chicago and to transport dead animals and animal parts from the city slaughterhouses to the plant. The company was given a charter to operate for fifty years. Northwestern Fertilizing built a plant in a state-approved location in Cook County, outside Chicago. At the time the area was swampy and largely uninhabited but within the limits of the Village of Hyde Park. Dead animals were procured in Chicago and transported by rail to the village, where they were unloaded and transported to the company’s plant. The Hyde Park population began to grow, and the state approved a revision of its charter to give the village the power to abate “nuisances.” The fertilizing company plant and the transportation of dead animals through the village became increasingly offensive to residents.

The stench from the plant caused nausea and discomfort, as well as a decrease in property values. The transportation of animal parts through the streets of the village was offensive to sight and smell. In response, the village passed an ordinance making it illegal to transport offal through the village. Northwestern Fertilizing refused to comply with the ordinance because the rail line through the village was the only effective means of transporting the dead animals from Chicago to the company’s plant.

When the village began arresting employees engaged in transporting offal through the city, Northwestern Fertilizing took legal action, asking the courts to prohibit the city from interfering with the company’s activities. The Illinois courts upheld the right of the village to take action against a public nuisance. The company appealed to the Supreme Court claiming that the village ordinance was an unconstitutional impairment of the company’s contract with the state.

 

MR. JUSTICE SWAYNE DELIVERED THE OPINION OF THE COURT.

The rule of construction in this class of cases is that it shall be most strongly against the corporation. Every reasonable doubt is to be resolved adversely. Nothing is to be taken as conceded but what is given in unmistakable terms, or by an implication equally clear. The affirmative must be shown. Silence is negation, and doubt is fatal to the claim. This doctrine is vital to the public welfare. It is axiomatic in the jurisprudence of this court....

If the intent of the legislature touching the point under consideration be sought in the charter and its history, it will be found to be in accordance with the view we have expressed as a matter of law. Three days before the charter of the plaintiff in error became a law, the legislature declared that the power of the village as to nuisances should not extend to those engaged in the business to which the charter relates. The subject must have been fully present to the legislative mind when the company’s charter was passed. If it were intended the exemption should be inviolable, why was it not put in the company’s charter as well as in that of the village? The silence of the former, under the circumstances, is a pregnant fact. In one case it was doubtless known to all concerned that the restriction would be irrepealable, while in the other, that it could be revoked at any time. In the revised village charter of 1869, the exemption was limited to two yeas from the passage of the act. This was equivalent to a declaration that after the lapse of the two years the full power of the village might to applied to the extent found necessary. Corporations in such cases are usually prolific of promises, and the legislature was willing to wait the event for the time named.

That a nuisance of a flagrant character existed, as found by the court below, is not controverted. We cannot doubt that the police power of the State was applicable and adequate to give an effectual remedy. That power belonged to the States when the Federal Constitution was adopted. They did not surrender it, and they all have it now. It extends to the entire property and business within their local jurisdiction. Both are subject to it in all proper cases. It rests upon the fundamental principle that every one shall so use his own as not to wrong and injure another. To regulate and abate nuisances is one of its ordinary functions. The adjudged cases showing its exercise where corporate franchises were involved are numerous....

In the case before us it does not appear that the factory could not be removed to some other place ... where it could be operated, and where offal could be conveyed to it from the city by some other railroad, both without rightful objection....

The charter was a sufficient license until revoked; but we cannot regard it as a contract guaranteeing, in the locality originally selected, exemption for fifty years from the exercise of the police powers of the State, however serious the nuisance might become in the future, by reason of the growth of population around it. The owners had no such exemption before they were incorporated, and we think the charter did not give it to them.... Decree affirmed.

MR. JUSTICE MILLER

... I agree that contracts like this must be clearly established, and the powers of the legislature can only be limited by the express terms of the contract, or by what is necessarily implied. In the case before us, the company has two correlative rights in regard to the offal at the slaughter-houses in Chicago. One is to have within the limit of that city depots for receiving it, and the other is to carry it to a place [within an approved area of] Cook County. The city or the state legislature is not forbidden by the contract to locate such depots within the city, where the health of the city requires it; in other words, the company has not the choice of location within the city. So, in regard to the chemical works. The company, by its contract, is entitled to have them in [the approved area of] Cook County; but the precise locality within that large space is a fair subject of regulation by the police power of the State, or of any town to which it has been delegated. If within the limits of Hyde Park, that town may pass such laws concerning its health and comfort as may require the company to seek another location ..., without impairing the terms of the contract.

It is said that the only railroad by which the company can carry offal passes through Hyde Park, and that the ordinance is fatal to the use of the road. But the State did not contract that the company might carry by railroad, still less by that road. In short, in my opinion, there is within the limits of the original designation of boundary ample space where the company may exercise the power granted by the contract, without violating the ordinances of Hyde Park, and they, as a police regulation of health and comfort, are therefore valid, as not infringing that contract.

For this reason alone, I think the decree should be affirmed.

MR. JUSTICE STRONG

I cannot concur in the judgment directed by the court in this case. That the charter granted by the legislature, March 8, 1867, and accepted by the company, is a contract protected by the Constitution of the United States, cannot be denied, in the face of Dartmouth College v. Woodward, and the long line of decisions that have followed in its wake and reasserted its doctrines. And if the company holds its rights under and by force of that contract, those rights cannot be taken away or impaired, either directly or indirectly, by any subsequent legislation. This I believe to be incontrovertible, though the opinion just delivered may seem to express a doubt of it....

... In my judgment, the decision of the court denies the power of a State legislature to legalize, during a limited period, that which without its action would be a nuisance. It enables a subsequent legislature to take away, without compensation, rights which a former one has accorded, in the most positive terms, and for which a valuable consideration has been paid. And, in its application to the present case, it renders it impossible to remove from Chicago the vast bodies of animal offal there accumulated; for if the ordinance of Hyde Park can stand, every other municipality around the city can enforce similar ordinances.