Potomac Coal Co. v. Cumberland & Pennsylvania Railroad

Grason, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. This is an action of indebitatus assumpsit for money had and received to the plaintiff’s use, and is brought to recover the sum of forty-two thousand, three hundred and seventy-eight dollars and twenty-one cents, that sum being the difference between the sum charged and received from the plaintiff, for freights on its coal transported over the defendant’s road, from July 1st, 1864, to March 10th, 1871, and the amount the plaintiff would have had to pay had it been charged the lowest rate at which the defendant transported coal for any other person or company during the same time. The case was tried upon an agreed statement of facts, which is set out in the record, and at the trial the plaintiff offered six prayers, all of which were rejected, and the Court granted an instruction that upon the agreed state of facts, the plaintiff was not. entitled to recover, and the judgment being in favor of the defendant the plaintiff appealed. One of the grounds relied upon by the appellee’s counsel for sustaining the rulings of the Court below is, that the payments'of the freights charged by the appellee were voluntarily made by the appellant, and therefore cannot be now recovered, even conceding that they were illegally charged.

This question has been clearly and definitively settled in this State by the cases of Mayor and City Council of Baltimore vs. Lefferman, 4 Gill, 431 ; John B. Morris vs. The Mayor and City Council of Baltimore, 5 Gill, 247 , and ²²⁹ Lester vs. The Mayor and City Council of Baltimore, 29 Md., 418 . In the first of these eases Lefferman had received a notice from the City authorities to build a stone wall upon his property, binding upon Jones’ Palls, and that, if he failed to build it by the time specified in the notice, they would build it and charge the cost to him. Lefferman accordingly built the wall and then brought suit to recover from the City the money ho had expended in its erection, on the ground that the Act of 1821, chap. 252, under authority of which the Mayor and City Council had acted, was unconstitutional and void. The case was very fully argued and the Court, in its opinion, says: “It is now established by an unbroken series of adjudications in the English and American Courts, that where money is voluntarily and fairly paid with a full knowledge of the facts and circumstances under which it is demanded, it cannot be recovered back in a Court of law upon the ground that the payment was made under a misapprehension of the legal rights and obligations of the party.” And on page 436 of the same case, the Court further say: “We consider, therefore, the doctrine as established, that a payment is not to be regarded as compulsory,