Murfreesboro Railroad v. Board of Commissioners

Avery, J. After stating the facts: The salutary provision of the Constitution (Art. 8, § 1), which reserves to the Legislature, the right to alter or repeal all acts incorporating companies, enacted thereafter, does not authorize the passage of a subsequent act, which, under the pretence of protecting the public or of exercising an acknowledged police power, .appropriates a portion of the corporate property to the public use. Cooley’s Con. Lim., Mar., pp. 577 and 578. The amendatory law under which the County Commissioners proposed to proceed would not be allowed, if by its terms it provided for perpetrating such a wrong, to operate so as to divest the right of the plaintiff company to the bonds or to compel it, against the protest of its directors, to do other and possibly much more costly work than it stipulated to do as a consideration for said bonds. But, in fact, the Legislature did not attempt a vain thing, but simply gave to the plaintiff company the power to extend its road in a new direction, and to be absolved from its obligation to construct a part of the line previously proposed, if the township, by a vote of its qualified electors, on its part should signify its assent to the new arrangement. The statute provides that “the company may extend its main line,” &c., and therefore does not purport to compel, but only permits, the change to be made by agreement of both parties interested. *61 As a stimulus to diligence the company was required to begin work within three years from the 7th of March, 1887, and it seems that they had not only begun, but had made the necessary contracts looking to the completion of the entire line which the parties originally contemplated constructing, wdien, as the plaintiffs insist, the defendants proposed to take a step that would for the time destroy the market value of the bonds in which the plaintiff Winder was to be paid for the construction, and thereby cause a suspension of operations on his part. The holding of the election would obviously be productive of no benefit or profit to the people of the township, since the company has already agreed, as it had the right to do, with a contractor to finish the original line. The township cannot possibly gain anything by submitting the question of transferring a subscription, which cannot be divested from application to the original purpose for which it was made, and the expense of holding the election would be incurred without reasonable ground to expect any substantial advantage to the taxpayers in return for it. Conceding that a Court of Equity has not the power to restrain the municipal authorities from ordering an election in pursuance of any provisions of law for the purpose of selecting officers or determining any question that may be settled by the result of such election, we think that a different rule prevails where, though the election may be lawfully held, it is apparent that no possible benefit will accrue from holding it to the persons at whose instance it is ordered, and where irreparable injury may be done to others- who cannot be compensated in damages. Not only unlawful but improper acts of public officers may be restrained in order to prevent irreparable injury, when the relief can be manifestly granted wdthout imperiling the rights or interests of the officer restrained or the public represented by him. 3 Pom. Eq. Jur., § 1345, p. 377 and *62 note 1. While we do not hold- that the plaintiffs can demand the extraordinary aid of a Court of Equity on the ground that the holding of the election will cast a cloud upon the right of the company to the bonds, we can see how the plaintiffs may be made to suffer by the temporary depreciation of those securities, and the work of construction of the railroad embarrassed or delayed, without the possibility that any corresponding benefit can accrue to the defendants or the county or township for which they are acting, by holding the election. Marshall v. Commissioners, 89 N. C , 103; McCorkle v. Brem, 76 N. C., 407. When no conceivable injury can be done by granting an injunction to the hearing, the courts are the more ready to interpose if the injury complained of has a tendency to embarrass or prevent the completion of a railroad or canal in which the public have an interest. Roanoke Nav. Co. v. Emry (decided at this term). We think that the judgment of the Court should be affirmed. Affirmed.