Union Pacific Railroad v. Anderson

First. Construction of the “fifteen continuous miles” provision.

We are aware of no principle of statutory construction under which the court can say that the legislature intended that a railroad operation outside of this state should be added to one within the state in order to subject to the provisions of the act the freight operations of the plaintiff over the road of the Oregon Short Line east of Huntington. It will be remembered from the statement above that that line is not continuous for more than fifteen miles in this state, but is broken up into two parts — one 2.5 miles in length,…