Northern Pacific Takes Its Rate Fight to Federal Court
The railroad will challenge Washington's sweeping grain-rate cut as unconstitutional, warning the reduction is ruinous and confiscatory.
Seattle.—Resistance to the 12½ per cent reduction in the grain rate recently ordered by the Washington Railroad Commission will be made by the Northern Pacific. This is one of the most sweeping reductions ever made by a State Commission in the West, and in the ultimate would affect rates on all commodities handled in the Northwest. The fight will be made on constitutional grounds in that the proposed reduction is held to be prohibitive, ruinous and confiscatory. As now planned, the proceedings will take the form of an injunction in the Federal court.
“The fight will be made on constitutional grounds in that the proposed reduction is held to be prohibitive, ruinous and confiscatory.”
Railroads and utilities once fought state regulators in court; today the same arguments echo in battles over utility rates and corporate power. The Northern Pacific's 1909 injunction threat shows how quickly a public victory at the commission could be undone in federal court.
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