Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 18.pdf/614

NOTES OF RECENT CASES ing the city connect, and which is the only avail able market in the city and for a large scope of country around it, for the selling, feeding, and resting of live stock, is a business affected with a public interest, and is subject to public regula tion and control in respect to rates. The court calls attention to the fact that the business of banking has been subjected to governmental con trol and regulation and that the exercise of the police power in controling the business of insur ance, common carriage, the operation of mills, hotels, theaters, wharves, markets, warehouses for the storage of grain and tobacco, etc., have been upheld in numerous instances. Munn v. Illinois, 94 U. S. 113. is referred to as expressly deciding that a warehouseman who receives and stores grain for compensation is engaged in a business of a public nature, that the public has an interest in the use to which he devotes his property, and that for the public good he must submit to public control. The cases of Budd v. New York. 143 U. S. 517, 12 Sup. Ct. 468; Bross v. North Dakota. 153 U. S. 391, 14 Sup. Ct. 857; W. W. Cargill Co. v. Minnesota, 180 U. S. 452, a i Sup. Ct. 423, and Cotting v. Kansas City Stock Yards Co., 183 U.S. 97, 22 Sup. Ct. 30, are cited as upholding the principle upon which Munn v. Illinois was decided. Regarding that prin ciple as correct, the court argues that the opera tion of stock yards has more of the character istics of a public business than the carrying on of an elevator or warehouse. The conditions referred to in the first portion of this note are reviewed and it is held that because of them the company owning the stock yards has a practical monopoly of a vast business affecting thousands of people who are almost obliged to make use of the yards at whatever rates the company may choose to charge, and for this reason it is declared that public control and regulation is not only proper but almost necessary.

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WITNESSES. (Privilege of Witness — Immu nity from Prosecution.) Wis. Sup. Ct. — The case of State v. Murphy, 107 N. W. 470, contains a construction and application of a comparatively recent statute of Wisconsin which had not previ ously been presented to the court in exactly the same way. The statute declares that a witness in an action by the state involving the official conduct of any officer thereof shall not be excused from testifying on the ground that his testimony may expose him to prosecution, but that he shall not be prosecuted on account of any transaction concerning which he may testify. The defend ant was an alderman of a city and was charged with soliciting and accepting a bribe as an in ducement to vote in favor of an ordinance allow ing a certain person to lay a sidetrack across a street in the city. He pleaded in bar immunity from prosecution on the ground that prior to the filing of the information he had testified before a grand jury as to the transactions alleged in the information. The clerk of the grand jury pro duced his minutes showing that accused testified that he knew of no alderman demanding or re ceiving money to support any contract, special privilege, or franchise. Defendant testified that he was asked as a witness before the grand jury if he had received any money for his vote on spe cial privileges of certain varieties, and that he answered the question, no. Upon this state of facts the court declares that defendant did not testify before the grand jury concerning the trans action for which he was prosecuted and hence was not within the immunity provision of the statute. The substance of the court's reasoning merely is that the statutes would be rendered wholly nuga tory and unenforceable if the mere fact that a person who was called before the grand jury and gave no evidence excepting protestations of inno cence and ignorance were thereafter to be held immune from prosecution for the offensejwhich the grand jury was investigating.