U.S. Supreme Court INTERNATIONAL PAPER CO. v. UNITED STATES, 282 U.S. 399 (1931)

[Page 282 U.S. 399, 408]

Falls Manufacturing Co., 112 U.S. 645, 656, 5 S. Ct. 306. Of course it does not matter that by a subordinate arrangement it directed the use of the power to companies that would fulfill its purposes rather than to machinery of its own. That arrangement it was able to make only because it took the power.

We perceive no difficulty arising from the case of Omnia Commercial Co. v. United States, , 43 S. Ct. 437. There the taking of the whole product of a company went no further than to make it practically impossible for that company to keep a collateral contract to deliver a certain amount of steel to the appellant. But here the Government took the property that the petitioner owned as fully as the Power Company owned the residue of the water power in the canal. Our conclusion upon the whole matter is that the Government intended to take and did take the use of all the water power in the canal; that it relied upon and exercised its power of eminent domain to that end; that, purporting to act under that power and no other, it promised to pay the owners of that power, and that it did not make the taking any less a taking for public use by its logically subsequent direction that the power should be delivered to private companies for work deemed more useful than the manufacture of paper for the exigencies of the national security and defence. See Mt. Vernon-Woodberry Cotton Duck Co. v. Alabama Interstate Power Co., 240 U.S. 30, 36 S. Ct. 234.

Judgment reversed.

Mr. Justice McREYNOLDS, Mr. Justice STONE, and Mr. Justice ROBERTS are of opinion that the judgment of the Court of Claims should be affirmed.