172 Ga. 45 | Ga. | 1931
Lead Opinion
The ordinance of the City of Atlanta, adopted March 28, 1929, relating to plumbing, provides for creation of a board of examiners and for appointment of members of the board, and prescribes their powers and duties. Among the latter are the issuance of certificates of proficiency and licenses to persons who have successfully stood examination. In section 6 it is made an offense for any person to follow “the trade of a plumber” as defined by the ordinance, without having successfully passed the prescribed examination. Section 1 provides: “Plumbers must be licensed as such. No person shall engage in or work at the business of plumbing, or follow the trade of a plumber, unless such [person?] shall have theretofore submitted to an examination before a Board of Examiners, hereinafter provided for, and shall have successfully passed the examination as to his experience and qualifications to follow the trade of a plumber. The trade of a plumber is hereby defined to be the trade or calling of working upon or engaging-in working about plumbing fixtures in buildings of any kind where sewer connections are being made with city sewers, performing any other work which requires the approval of the plumbing inspector; provided that persons engaged in repair and maintenance work upon plumbing fixtures installed in homes, apartments, and buildings where sewer connections have already been made, and persons engaged in installation or repair of steam, gas, or water pipes shall not be required to stand examination.” The words of the proviso just quoted qualify the preceding words defining the “trade of a plumber.” Such qualifying words exclude from the definition and from operation of the ordinance all persons coming within such qualifying words. With such persons eliminated, the ordinance applies to all persons as a class “working upon or engaging in working about plumbing fixtures in buildings of any kind where sewer connections are being made with city sewers;” but excludes from its requirements persons engaged in repair and maintenance work upon plumbing fixtures installed in homes, apartments, and buildings where sewer connections have already been made. If the
In Felton v. Atlanta, 4 Ga. App. 183 (61 S. E. 27), it was said by Powell, J.: “The common inherent right which every citizen has of enjoying the inestimable blessing of laboring at any honest employment he may choose, save only so far as restrictions are necessary to the protection of the public peace, health, safety, and morality, is so well established that limitations thereon are to be strictly construed. Salus populi suprema lex; this, as Judge Bleckley has so happily expressed it (Green v. Coast Line R. Co., 97 Ga. 34, 24 S. E. 814, 33 L. R. A. 806, 54 Am. St. R. 379), is the whole gospel of public policy, condensed in a single text. Wherever the salus populi ends, restrictions upon the right to labor become unreasonable and violative of common right. Plumbing is a business which affects public health, and is therefore subject to regulation under the police power. Most courts so hold. 1 Abbott on Municipal Corporations, § 123; Singer v. State, 72 Md. 464 (19 Atl. 1044, 8 L. R. A. 551); Nechamcus v. Warden, 144. N. Y. 529 (39 N. E. 686, 27 L. R. A. 718); State ex rel. Chapel v. Justus, 90 Minn. 474 (94 N. W. 124); State v. Gardner, 58 Ohio State, 599 (51 N. E. 136, 41 L. R. A. 689, 65 Am. St. R. 785). Nevertheless there is respectable authority for saying that since a city may easily protect itself against the consequences of bad plumbing, by a system of inspecting the work itself, rather than by limiting the number of persons who shall engage in it, those statutes and ordinances which provide that none but examined and licensed persons shall engage in plumbing fskirt pretty closely that border line beyond which legislation ceases to be within the
The rulings announced in the second and third headnotes do not require elaboration.
Judgment reversed.
Dissenting Opinion
dissenting. I concur in the ruling stated in the first division of the decision, with reference to the constitutionality of the ordinance of the City of Atlanta. I dissent from the ruling in the second headnote, because, under the facts of the case, there was no sufficient ground for the interference of a court of equity,