Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 9.djvu/526

498 498 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. on the subject as applied in New York,^ in favor of the railway company. The principle of the decision we will discuss later. While this case was going through its successive stages in New York, the telephone and electric railway were waging war at other points along the line from New York to Utah. In Cincinnati a lively fight was carried on in the case of City & Suburban Tele- graph Association v. Cincinnati Inclined Plane Railway Co.^ The Superior Court upheld the telephone company, but the Supreme Court reversed this decision on the same ground which the New York Court of Appeals adopted. In the United States Circuit Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, a similar fight oc- curred,^ and the electric railway came out victorious. In Louis- ville, Ky., the same point was brought up in June, 1890.* Even in Utah, the telephone company tried to occupy the field.^ In England the fight broke out in the case of National Tele- phone Co. V. Baker,^ somewhat after the tide of war had subsided in the United States. Mr. William Sebastian Graff Baker, the defendant, was a contractor who had been employed by the makers of electric railway apparatus in the United States for the purpose of introducing the apparatus in England, and he succeeded in get- ting the requisite authority from Parliament, and in equipping a tramway for the corporation of Leeds. By his contract with Leeds he was bound to operate the tramway for a trial period, and it was during this period that the telephone company brought suit against him for causing a nuisance to their lines by the operation of his tramway. The court decided in favor of the tramway for reasons which we will examine later. We have thus seen that the war between the telephone com- panies and the electric railway companies for the right to occupy the highways with their lines began in the United States about the fall of 1889, and was continued with great energy until the fall of 1892, with results generally favorable to the railways. And the single English case which has been decided on this point reached 1 135 N. Y. 393. 2 Superior Court, Feb. 12, 1890; Supreme Court, June, 1891, 48 Oh. St. 390. 3 Cumberland Telephone & Telegraph Co. v. United Electric Railway Co., 42 Fed. Rep.. 273, May, 1890. Eq. Court, Pamphlet Opinion. 5 Rocky Mountain Bell Telephone Qo.v. Salt Lake Railway Co., 3d Jud. Dist. Utah Terr., Jan. 1890, Pamphlet Opinion. e L. R. 1893, 2 Ch. 1S6, Feb. 4, 1893.
 * Louisville Bagging Mfg. Co. v. Central Passenger Railway Co., Louisville Law &