The Binghamton Bridge/Dissent Grier

The CHIEF JUSTICE, and Justices FIELD and GRIER dissented. The latter delivering an opinion, as follows:

I feel unable to concur in the opinion of the majority of my brethren, which has just been read. The general principles of law, as connected with the question involved in the case, are, no doubt, correctly stated, as to the strict construction of statutes as against corporations claiming rights so injurious to the public. My objection is, that they have not been properly applied to the case before us.

The power of one legislature to bind themselves and their posterity, and all future legislatures, from authorizing a bridge absolutely required for public use, might well be denied by the courts of New York; and as a construction of their own constitution, we would have no right to sit in error upon their judgment. But assuming a power for one legislature to restrain the power of future legislatures, those who assert that it has been exercised should prove their assertion beyond a doubt. Such intention must be clearly expressed in the letter of the statute, and not left to be discovered by astute construction and inferences. Although an act of incorporation may be called a contract, the rules of construction applied to it are admitted to be the reverse of these applied to other contracts. Yet the opinion of the court, while admitting the rule of construction, proceeds on a contrary hypothesis, and with great ingenuity, and astute reasoning, has given a construction most favorable to the monopolist, and injurious to the people.

The judgment given by the majority of my brethren regards the general language of the act of incorporation as first bringing to the Susquehanna company a provision that 'it shall not be lawful for any person or persons to erect any bridge,' &c., across the east and west branches of the Delaware: as then bringing this specific clause into the charter of the Chenango company, and applying it to the Chenango River (a river with but a single stream); making it, moreover, apply to that stream for two miles, indeed, above the bridge, but for three-quarters of a mile only below it, the river's entire extent in that direction, and finding the complement of the 'two miles,' in a mile and a quarter of the river Susquehanna, into which the Chenango falls and is lost. While withal, by like construction only, the original limitation of thirty years disappears, and the charter becomes perpetual.

This mode of interpreting a legislative grant appears to me irrational, and beyond the most liberal construction that has been given to that class of enactments. Indeed, the fact that it required so ingenious and labored an argument by my learned brother to vindicate such a construction of the act seems to me, of itself, conclusive evidence that the construction should not be given to it.

[See infra, p. 210, Turnpike Co. v. The State.-REP.]

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