People ex rel. Waugh v. Auburn & Yankee Jim's Turnpike Co.

When this cause was in Department the following opinion was prepared by Mr. Commissioner Haynes; *336 upon further consideration of said cause in Bank we are satisfied with the views therein expressed; and for the reasons therein given the judgment is reversed, with directions to the court below to dismiss the action:

The defendant was incorporated in 1853 under an act approved May 12th of that year, entitled “An act to authorize the formation of corporations for the construction of plank or turnpike roads” (Stats. 1853, p. 169), for the purpose of constructing and operating a turnpike toll road between Auburn and Yankee Jim’s.

The corporation fixed the term of its existence at twenty years, which was the longest period permitted by the statute, and constructed the road within the time fixed by law, and thereafter and until the month of May, 1873, continued to exist and to take tolls on said road, under tire said act, and at the date last mentioned,which was less than twenty years from the date of its organization, it elected to continue its existence as a corporation under the provisions of sections 287 and 402 of the Civil Code for the term of fifty years, and continued to…

I dissent. The only new rights obtained by the corporation were: 1. To continue its corporate existence to the full term of fifty years; 2. To exercise its corporate franchise under the prescriptions and regulations of the code. An analysis of People v. Pfister, 57 Cal. 532 , will disclose that the sole objection there presented to the defendant’s right to collect tolls was based upon the contention that it had ceased to be a corporation. That proposition having been resolved in the defendant’s favor, the right to collect tolls was not decided, but conceded.

Beatty, C. J., and Temple, J., concurred in the dissenting opinion.