Joseph McKenna, Fifth Avenue Coach Company v. City of New York…
“ If plaintiff be right, however the advertisements may be displayed is immaterial. There can be no limitation of rights by degrees of the grotesque. If such rights exist in plaintiff, they exist in all wagon owners, and there might be such a fantastic panorama on the streets of New York that objection to it could not be said to have prompting only in an exaggerated esthetic sense. ”
Joseph McKenna, Fifth Avenue Coach Company v. City of New York…
“ No matter what may be the general rights of corporate property, it cannot be contended that a state granting a charter may not strictly define and limit the uses of the property necessary to the exercise of the powers granted. And this is what the court of appeals has decided the laws of New York have done, and that the Fifth Avenue Transportation Company was, and the plaintiff, as the successor of its rights, is, subject to the limitations imposed by those laws. ”
Joseph McKenna, Fifth Avenue Coach Company v. City of New York…
“ It is surely competent for the courts of New York to construe the laws of the state, and decide what powers a corporation derives under them, or to what uses it may employ its property necessary for the exercise of those powers. And the stages used on the streets of the city transporting passengers is the very exercise of the franchise granted to plaintiff, and is not like the instances of the cited cases, where property was not intimately used in the exercise of charter rights. ”
