Iron Railroad v. Lawrence Furnace Co.
Ohio Supreme Court
Error to the District Court of Lawrence county. This was an action by the Lawrence Furnace Company against the Iron Railroad Company to recover a penalty for charging and receiving rates of freight exceeding those allowed by the act of March 30, 1875 (72 Ohio L. 142). The defendant (the railroad company) was organized prior to the adoption of the present constitution, under a special act of incorporation passed in 1849, and which, by express-provision, gave to the company-…
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Error to the District Court of Lawrence county. This was an action by the Lawrence Furnace Company against the Iron Railroad Company to recover a penalty for charging and receiving rates of freight exceeding those allowed by the act of March 30, 1875 (72 Ohio L. 142). The defendant (the railroad company) was organized prior to the adoption of the present constitution, under a special act of incorporation passed in 1849, and which, by express-provision, gave to the company- all the rights, and subjected it to all the liabilities, created or imposed by the general railroad act of February 11,…
1Opinion of the CourtWelch, C. J.
If either of the defenses set up in this-answer is a bar to the action, the court erred in sustaining the demurrer, and its judgment should have been reversed. The defenses are needlessly separated, and might, as it seems to me, have been conjoined as a single ground of defense. Without undertaking to decide upon the value or sufficiency of each of the several defenses, separately considered, it is sufficient to say that, in our judgment, the second, which alleges that the company’s profits for the ten years next preceding the date of the act of 1875 was less than ten per cent., is a bar to…