Statement by Mr. Justice Peckham: This bill was filed in the United States circuit court for the northern district of Ohio on the 21st of March, 1905, against the city of Cleveland and the Forest City Railway Company, for the purpose of obtaining an injunction to restrain the city from carrying out a certain ordinance relating to the Garden street branch of complainant's railroad, passed by the city council January 11, 1904, on the ground that it was null and void, because it impaired the obligations of various contracts which the complainant alleged had been entered into between the complainant and the city, providing for the use until either July 13, 1913, or July 1, 1914, of certain streets by the railroad owned by the complainant, and known as the Garden street or Central avenue branch, and hereafter called the Garden street branch. The ordinance granted to the Forest City Railway Company (a stranger to the original grants) the renewal right to maintain and operate the existing street railroads through the streets named therein, which were the same streets theretofore granted to the Garden street railroad. The right was granted upon condition that the grantee should pay to the owners of the poles and other property being in the streets an amount to be agreed upon therefor, or such sum as should be finally adjudicated upon by a court. A temporary restraining order was granted. The defendants made separate answers, denying the existence of any contract between the complainant and the city upon the subject of the Garden street branch subsequent to March 22, 1905, and the Forest City Railway Company claimed under the ordinance of January, 1904, the right to take possession of such Garden street branch after March, 1905, and to use the tracks of the complainant's railroad. The case was heard upon the pleadings and various ordinances and resolutions of the council of the city.
After hearing, a decree was made by the circuit court (137 Fed. 111) which decreed that the right claimed by the complainant to operate its Garden street branch railroad in the streets named in the bill expired on the 22d day of March, 1905. It was also decreed that the ordinance of January 11, 1904, was inoperative, so far as it assumed to confer upon the defendant the Forest City Railway Company any legal right to take the tracks, poles, wires, and appliances erected and maintained by the complainant in the streets, because such ordinance authorized the taking of the property of complainant without due process of law. The railroad company, therefore, was enjoined from interfering with the complainant in the peaceable possession of the property mentioned, and the city was enjoined from attempting in any manner, by virtue of the ordinance, to put the defendant the Forest City Railway Company into possession of the same. From the decree the complainant and both of the defendants appealed directly to this court, as involving questions arising under the Constitution of the United States. The complainant's appeal is No. 197, and is from that portion of the decree which adjudges that the right of the complainant to maintain and operate its Garden street branch railroad expired on the 22d of March, 1905. The cross appeal of the defendants is from that portion of the decree which enjoins the Forest City Railway Company from taking possession of the property described, and which also enjoins the city from in any manner attempting to put that company into possession thereof. It thus appears that the whole controversy turns upon the question whether the right of the Garden street railroad terminated March 22, 1905, or lasts until July 1, 1914, or possibly only until July 13, 1913.
The record shows that there are, among others, two lines of railroad belonging to the complainant, one of which is known as the Euclid avenue, sometimes called the 'main' line, and the other the Garden street branch. Both lines run from east to west through the city in different, though generally parallel, streets up to the point of their intersection at Erie street and Euclid avenue (or Prospect street) from which point west, for a short distance, to the public square and Water street, the Garden street branch is authorized to use the Euclid avenue tracks.
The following (among many other) ordinances and resolutions of the council of the city were put in evidence on the trial, together with the various resolutions of complainant, in which it accepted such ordinances and resolutions. These constitute the case between the parties, and there is no contradictory evidence. Complainant contends that the Garden street grant must be measured in time by that provided for the termination of the Euclid avenue grant.