Stanley Matthews

“ The damage is attributable to the competition, and to that alone. But the competition is not illegal. It is not unlawful for any one to compete with the company, although the latter may not be authorized to engage in the same business. The legal interest which qualifies a complainant other than the State itself to sue in such a case is a pecuniary interest in preventing the defendant from doing an act where the injury alleged flows from its quality and character as a breach of some legal or equitable duty. ”

“ And if the right to assert it exists, it must rest, not upon the claim that the premises are thus used for purposes to which they might not be lawfully devoted if owned and used by a natural person, but on the allegation merely that such use is beyond the corporate powers of the company. ”

“ The New Orleans, Mobile, and Texas Railroad Company, one of the appellants, and the principal defendant below, is a corporation of the State of Alabama, by the original name of the New Orleans, Mobile, and Chattanooga Railroad Company, which has constructed a line of railroad from Mobile to New Orleans. ”

“ But if the competition in itself, however injurious, is not a wrong of which he could complain against a natural person, being the riparian proprietor, how does it become so merely because the author of it is a corporation acting ultra vires? ”

“ A stockholder of the company has such an interest in restraining it within the limits of the enterprise for which it was formed, because that is to enforce his contract of membership. The State has a legal interest in preventing the usurpation and perversion of its franchises, because it is a trustee of its powers for uses strictly public. ”

“ The claim of Ellerman is, that the administration of the wharves and levees within the city limits is intrusted by law to the municipal government; that with this administration is coupled a franchise, that the city may charge and receive a reasonable remuneration for the expense of the facilities afforded to commerce; that under this franchise the city expended out of its revenues very large sums on the wharves and levees in permanent works and improvements for the benefit of commerce ”

“ It was further provided that if, from over-powering force, the city should not be able to protect the transferee in receiving the said revenues, or if they should by any such cause be diminished over one-third, the transferee might, after satisfying all obligations incurred under the contract up to the time, surrender it and be discharged from further responsibility ”