Mr. Winfred T. Denison, Assistant Attorney General, Mr. Thurlow M. Gordon, Special Assistant to the Attorney General, Messrs. Jared How, Judson Harmon, Herbert S. Hadley, and Charles H. Aldrich;
[Argument of Counsel from pages 493-495 intentionally omitted]
Mr. R. C. Johnson, Attorney General of South Dakota, with Mr. P. W. Dougherty, Mr. Grant G. Martin, Attorney General of Nebraska, and Mr. William T. Thompson, Former Attorney General; Mr. George E. Cosson, Attorney General of Iowa, with Mr. J. H. Henderson; Mr. John S. Dawson, Attorney General of Kansas, with Mr. S. M. Brewster; Mr. R. C. Brickell, Attorney General of Alabama, with Mr. Harry C. Selheimer, and Mr. Charies West, Attorney General of Oklahoma, with Mr. Frederick N. Judson, as amici curice.
Mr. Justice Hughes, after making the above statement, delivered the opinion of the court:
1. The contention of the appellants that the court erred in permitting the filing of the amended and supplemental bills is without merit. Although the commodity rate act of 1907 repealed that of 1905, it saved the penalties and liabilities incurred under the repealed statute. Both the original and supplemental bills proceeded upon the broad ground that the returns of the companies from their intrastate business, prior to the act of 1905, were unreasonably low, and that any reduction in rates would only diminish the income, already inadequate. The additional legislation pending the suits, and the substitution of slightly higher rates on certain commodities embraced in the earlier act, did not alter the essential features of the controversy. There was identity of parties and subject-matter, although nominally different acts were involved. To have required original bills would have involved double litigation, double costs, and great delay. The ends of justice were advanced by allowing the amended and supplemental bills, and we are not inclined to interfere with the reasonable discretion of the trial judge in a matter of practice which in no way violated any of the substantial rights of the appellants.
Neither can it be said that the state court had prior jurisdiction. That the state filed in one of its courts bills for the enforcement of the act of 1907, before the actual filing of the supplemental bills, may be true; but the application for leave to file the supplemental bills was pending in the circuit court of the United States, and action was suspended, merely to give opportunity for hearing, the court meanwhile restraining the enforcement of the new rates. In view of the pending bills assailing the act of 1905, the substantial identity of the question arising under the acts of 1907, and the pendency of the motion for leave to file supplemental bills, we are clearly of opinion that priority of jurisdiction belonged to the United States, and the state court could not properly oust that jurisdiction.
2. It is insisted by the cross appellants that the legislative acts, although relating exclusively to intrastate transportation, constituted an unwarrantable interference with interstate commerce, and that the decrees should have afforded relief upon this ground. We need not review the arguments addressed to conditions of transportation in Missouri and the relation of intrastate to interstate rates, for wile the case has its special facts by reason of the location of the state, and the use of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers as basing points in rate-making, the controlling question thus presented with reference to the authority of the state to prescribe reasonable intrastate rates throught its teritory, unless limited by the exercise on the part of Congress of its constitutional power over interstate commerce and its instruments, is not to be distinguished in any material respect from that which was considered and decided in the Minnesota rate cases. Simpson v. Shepard, 230 U.S. 352, 57 L. ed. , 33 Sup. Ct. Rep. 729. For the reasons stated in the opinion in those cases, it must be held that the court below properly refused to sustain this objection to the Missouri statutes.