In Atchison, Topeka &c. Railroad v. Matthews, 174 U.S. 96 (1899), the majority of the court decided that in consequence of the great peril and possibility of fires being communicated by the locomotives of railroad corporations, it was in the power of the State of Kansas to impose on them, in a suit successful against them, an attorney's fee, and not impose it on an unsuccessful plaintiff. It was said by Mr. Justice Brewer, after a review of the cases that - "It is the essence of a classification that upon the class are cast duties and burdens different from those resting upon the general public. Thus, when the legislature imposes on railroad corporations a double liability for stock killed by passing trains, it says, in effect, that if suit be brought against a railroad company for stock killed by one of its trains it must enter into the courts under conditions different from those resting on ordinary suitors. If it is beaten in the suit it must pay not only the damage which it has done, but twice that amount. If it succeeds it recovers nothing. On the other hand, if it should sue an individual for destruction of its live stock it could under no circumstances recover any more than the value of that stock. So that it may be said in matter of liability, in case of litigation, it is not placed on an equality with other corporations and individuals; yet this court has unanimously said that this differentiation of liability, this inequality of right in the courts, is of no significance upon the question of constitutionality. Indeed, the very idea of classification is that of inequality, so that it goes without saying that the fact of inequality in no manner determines the matter of constitutionality." (174 U.S. 106.)