vaded by railroad companies in the manner indicated in the section. The views which we have expressed lead to an affirmance of the judgment brought up by the writ of error. FREDERICK M. BOLLES, PROSECUTOR, v. THE MAYOR AND COMMON COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF NEWARK. Argued February 24, 1911-Decided June 23, 1911. An act entitled "An act to regulate and control the business of the making of loans on pledges of personal property, chattel mortgages, or assignments of salary or wages" (Pamph. L. 1910. p. 466), by which in cities of the first class a minimum annual license fee of $500 is imposed upon each person engaged in conducting such business, is a taxing or revenue raising statute, which object not being expressed in its title the act is invalid under article 4. section 7, paragraph 4 of the constitution. On certiorari. Before Justices GARRISON, PARKER and VOORHEES. For the prosecutor, Gilbert Collins. For the defendant, Herbert Boggs. The opinion of the court was delivered by GARRISON, J. The head-note really says about all that needs to be said by way of stating the ground of decision in this case. While the writ brings up an ordinance adopted under the power conferred by the statute cited in the syllabus the prosecutor attacks only the statute. We have considered but one of many contentions and that is that the act is invalid as a taxing act because the title does not express such object. That the act is a taxing act in the sense of a revenue raising measure is perfectly clear from the fact that its minimum annual charge is $500 in cities of the first class. If there are in the city of Newark no more than a bare score of persons engaged in the business described in the title of this act, the annual revenue from this source will be $10,000, a sum so utterly disproportionate to the cost of printing a score of blanks and filling in the names of as many licensees that it cannot be said with any show of reason to be merely incidental or inadvertent or anything but one of the objects for which the act was passed. Especially must this be so when we consider that the business on which this impost is annually levied is a lawful one that has no tendency to disturb the public peace or to call for the expenditure of public moneys for policing it. How an annual fee of $500 tends to the regulation of such a business is not perceived any more than how an annual poll tax of a like sum would tend to regulate elections or to purify the ballot. The title of the act therefore violates article 4, section 7, paragraph 4 of the constitution, both in letter and spirit; in letter because the taxing object is not expressed therein; in spirit because neither legislators nor citizens who concurred in the propriety of the legislative regulation of such business have had any notice from its title that this act was a revenue raiser of relatively enormous proportions. The ordinance is set aside. Kyle, Adm'x, v. Lehigh Valley R. R. Co. 81 N. J. L. JOSEPHINE KYLE, ADMINISTRATRIX, v. LEHIGH VALLEY RAILROAD COMPANY. Argued February 27, 1911-Decided July 5, 1911. 1. The ordinary duty of a railroad company with respect to the precautions to be used when its road crosses a public road is regulated in this state by the legislature, who, by granting to such companies the right to cross such roads at grade, coupled with the legislative requirement as to the signals to be then given, has subjected the public to the risks ordinarily attendant upon the exercise of the right so granted, without other protection than that afforded by the signals so prescribed; it is only when the company has created extraordinary dangers that render a crossing so hazardous that prudent persons cannot use the public road in safety even if such statutory signals be given, that precautions other than those prescribed by the legislature must be used. Hence to charge the law to be that "if any extraordinary dangers are created the company is bound to use extraordinary precautions" is erroneous since it leaves out an essential part of the law by which its application to the given case can alone be tested. 2. Pennsylvania Railroad Co. v. Matthews, 7 Vroom 531, applied: 3. Where the position taken by a party at the trial is that a certain point should not be submitted to the jury, he is not obliged to provide his adversary or the court with his idea as to the proper way to submit such point; and his right to review the charge upon such point is not so conditioned. On rule to show cause. This rule reviews a verdict rendered at the Somerset Circuit in which there was a finding by the jury in favor of the plaintiff for the sum of thirty-five thousand ($35,000) dollars as damages alleged to have been sustained by the widow and next of kin of Robert H. Kyle. The deceased was killed in a crossing accident that occurred early in the evening of April 9th, 1910, near a station known as Hillsboro, in Somerset county, where a highway crosses the main line of the defendant's railroad. West of this highway and on the northerly side of the railroad, the defendant's property extended about eighty feet northerly from the most northerly 52 Vroom. Kyle, Adm'x, v. Lehigh Valley R. R. Co. rail to a fence, and the defendant had erected and maintained on the property (and between the highway and the direction from which the train which struck Mr. Kyle approached) a passenger station, water closet, tool house and cattle pens, and had permitted to grow certain trees and shrubs. There were gates at the crossing, but at the time of the accident they were not being operated. Two grounds of recovery were alleged by the plaintiff— first, that the employes of the defendant neglected to give the statutory crossing signals, and second, that the defendant, by its method of constructing and maintaining the tracks, created a condition of extraordinary danger, which required some warning of the approach of trains in addition to that prescribed by the statute. The case was submitted by the trial judge to the jury on both of these grounds, and there was a general verdict in favor of the plaintiff. On behalf of the defendant on this rule the following points were submitted: First. The clear weight of the evidence shows that the statutory signals were given. Second. Contributory negligence on the part of the deceased was conclusively shown. Third. The situation was not one of extraordinary danger requiring extra care on the part of the railroad. Fourth. There was material error in the charge. Fifth. The damages were excessive. Before Justices GARRISON, PARKER and VOORHEES. For the plaintiff, Theodore Rurode and William D. Edwards. For the defendant, Gilbert Collins. The opinion of the court was delivered by GARRISON, J. Without regard to the weight of evidence as to the giving of the statutory signals cr the propriety of submitting to the jury the question of contributory negligence, Kyle, Adm'x, v. Lehigh Valley R. R. Co. 81 N. J. L. this rule to show cause must be made absolute. The negligence of the defendant was submitted under an erroneous instruction as to its duty to use precautions other than those required by the statute. Upon this point the charge was as follows: "The law has established the rights of the railroad company as to these crossings in certain respects. Many years ago a statute was passed providing that where a railroad crosses a public road at grade, and it is nothing but an ordinary grade crossing, if the engineer blows a whistle or rings a bell commencing nine hundred feet from the crossing and continues either one or the other until the crossing is passed, then the railroad company has performed its duty, and although an accident might occur, yet no liability is imposed upon the railroad company if that duty has been discharged. "But there is another rule which our courts have also established, and that is this, that where there are dangers created at a railroad crossing by the railroad itself, either by the erection of buildings or by allowing cars to remain at the crossing so as to obstruct the view-if any extraordinary dangers are created, then they are bound to use extraordinary precautions to protect the public against the necessary dangers of that crossing. "So, the first question, it seems to me, that you will have to decide in this case, will be whether or not this was merely an ordinary railroad crossing. If it was, if it was not surrounded with any extraordinary dangers created by the railroad company itself, then, of course, they are only bound to comply with the law, to ring a bell or to blow a whistle." If the statutory signals were given the jury were instructed. that a further question was whether or not "there were extraordinary dangers created at the crossing by the railroad company. It appears that there was a line of trees maintained there upon the railroad property, and also the station house which obstructed in some degree the view down the track on which the train came which caused this accident. "It also appears that the railroad company had recognized the necessity of having extraordinary precautions there, because they had erected gates. Those gates were not in use |