Susquehanna Transmission Co. v. St. Clair

Briscoe, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. These are cross-appeals from the Circuit Court for Harford County, in equity, under Article 5, section 31 of the Code of Public General Laws, and by an agreement the two appeals were heard at the conclusion of the April Term of this Court. On the 23rd of June, 1910, a per curiam order ⁶⁶⁹ was passed announcing our conclusion in the case, to the effect that so much of the order as granted the injunction to prevent interference on the part of the defendant with the construction of the telephone line proposed by the complainant must be reversed, and that part of the order denying the injunction to restrain the defendant from interfering with the erection of the towers for the complainant’s transmission lines would he affirmed. The reason for the conclusion heretofore reached by us will now he stated.

It appears that the plaintiff and defendant are tenants in common of a strip of land containing 3 46/100 acres, one hundred feet wide, and about fifteen hundred and fifty-two feet long, situate in Harford County, Maryland; the former owning four-fifths interest therein and the latter owning the remaining one-fifth interest. The plaintiff is a corporation formed on the 19th day of April, 1910, by the merger and consolidation of the Susquehanna Pole Line Company of Baltimore County and the Susquehanna Pole Line Company of Harfoi’d County, and is known as the Susquehanna Transmission Company, of Maryland. On the 14th day of May, 1910, the date of the filing of the hill of complaint in this case, this corporation was engaged in the construction of a transmission line of electrical energy, consisting of towers, cables, poles, wires, etc., for the purpose of carrying electric power or energy from McCall’s Ferry, on the Susquehanna River in York County, Penn., through York, Baltimore and Harford Counties, to Baltimore City. The hill alleges that the plaintiff proposed to construct a transmission line from McCall’s Ferry in Pennsylvania to the City of Baltimore upon and over the strip of land, containing 3.46 acres and that it will he an overhead line, consisting of cables supported on steel towers resting on concrete or stone bases, at intervals of five hundred feet or more, the interval depending on the topography or lines of contour or elevation of the contiguous strips.

The hill further ⁶⁷⁰ charges that in its capacity and function as a public service corporation, it has become necessary for the plaintiff as a preliminary step in the construction of its transmission line “to build a telephone line upon and along this strip of land, and that the plaintiff is about to dig holes therein, and is about to plant in the holes telephone poles, and may cut down several trees on the strip which are neither ornamental nor shade trees, but has not yet dug holes nor planted poles as aforesaid, nor cut down any trees thereon. The bill also avers that the land has for many years and is now used for farming purposes, particularly for pasture and grazing, and' that neither the construction and equipment of a transmission line through the farm, nor the construction of the preliminary telephone line has in reality interfered or will interfere with the farming operations of the defendant, either upon his farm or upon the strip of land. The bill then charges and avers that the defendant has forbidden the plaintiff to enter upon the strip of land for the purposes herein set out, and is interfering with, hindering and impeding in the performance of its duties to the public in the application of its ownership of its four-fifths interest in the strip to the public utility and public service charged thereon, and to which its title thereto is subject, and the defendant has threatened to cut down, dismantle, destroy and waste the property of plaintiff, if said lines be constructed upon the strip, and that such threats and- acts of interference and hinderanee and waste by the defendant, if continued or executed, will wantonly interfere with the plaintiff's rights and prevent the performance of its public duties and in effect will maliciously waste and destroy the rights of the plaintiff and of the public in the strip, whereof the plaintiff is a trustee, and will not only maliciously waste and destroy the physical property of the plaintiff thereon, but also thereby cause a forfeiture of the plaintiff’s charter, and therefore the plaintiff has an equity to call for the interposition and aid of a Court of Equity by way of an injunction, mandatory and ⁶⁷¹ prohibitive, to protect it in its estate, and the public in their rights from threats or acts of the defendant. The prayer of the bill was for a sale of the land for the purposes of division and for an injunction, mandatory and prohibitive, against the defendant. i The application for an injunction was resisted by the defendant and from an order of Court, passed on the 9th day of June, 1910, granting an injunction to