68 Minn. 381 | Minn. | 1897
The defendants in these actions were severally indicted for a refusal to turn over to a public warehouseman certain goods which had not been called for by the consignee, pursuant to the provisions of Laws 1895, c. 149, § 11, entitled
“An act to license and regulate the business of storage companies and public warehousemen (other than warehousemen of grain in bulk) and to provide a penalty for violation of the same.”
Section one of the act provides that
“the governor may license any suitable person, persons, or corpor*384 ations established under the laws of this state, and having their place or places of business within this state, to carry on the business of storage companies or public warehousemen, who may keep and maintain public warehouses for the storage of goods, wares and merchandise, etc., excepting grain in bulk. Said license must be obtained within thirty days from and after the passage of this bill, upon the payment into the treasury of the state of the sum of ten dollars, and annually thereafter, by the payment of a like sum, to be credited to the school fund of the state.”
Section nine makes it unlawful for any one not duly licensed under the provisions of the act to conduct or carry on the business of a storage company or warehouseman in this state. Section ten makes a violation of the provisions of sections nine and eleven a misdemeanor punishable by fine.. Section eleven, under which the indictments were drawn, reads as follows:
“Sec. 11. This act shall not be construed to apply to any railroad or transportation company who holds goods, wares, or merchandise in cars, freight houses or warehouses for a period not exceeding twenty days after receipt. Provided, such railroad or transportation company shall, within forty-eight hours after the receipt of such goods, wares, and merchandise, notify the consignee of the arrival thereof in writing, and in case such consignee, or his assigns, fails and neglects to call for or receive said goods, wares or merchandise within twenty days after such receipt of same by any railroad or transportation company as aforesaid, said railroad or transportation company must then turn over said goods, wares, or merchandise to a storage company or public warehouseman, licensed as in this act provided, upon the payment of the charges of said carrier thereon, which charges thus paid by said storage company or warehouseman to said carrier shall be a lien on said goods, wares or merchandise, and en-forcible in accordance with sections one, two, three and four, chapter two hundred and two of the General Laws of 1885.”
Among other objections to the sufficiency of these indictments, it is urged that the act in question is unconstitutional. The act is certainly a remarkable one. Its provisions contain strong intrinsic evidence that the real purpose of it was not the protection of the public by regulating public warehousemen or by adopting reasonable regulations for the preservation of unclaimed property in the hands of common carriers, but to subserve the interests of a certain class of ware-housemen. We have no doubt that the public storage and ware
But, while the police power of the state is a very extensive one, it is not without limits. A law enacted in the exercise of the police power must be a police regulation in fact. If it will not conduce to any legitimate police purpose, or if it amounts to an arbitrary and unwarranted interference with the right of the citizen to pursue any lawful business, the courts have a right, and it is their duty, to declare the law unconstitutional. The business of a common carrier and the storage and warehouse business are both lawful without any license or authority from the state. Every one has a right to engage in them, subject only to such regulations and restrictions as are necessary to promote the general welfare. Neither of them is a business which the state has any right to prohibit altogether, or to limit to a favored few by giving them a monopoly of it. Therefore the police power must, when exercised over them, be confined to such restrictions and burdens as are necessary to promote the public welfare, or, in other words, to prevent the infliction of a public injury.
If the first section of this act is to be construed literally as it reads, it would give a monopoly of the public storage and warehouse business to those to whom the governor granted licenses “within thirty days from and after the passage of the act.” Under such a construction, the act would be clearly unconstitutional. Again, while the act
But we shall assume that the law might be cut down by judicial construction so as to obviate all these objections, and that we would be justified in holding that the storage and warehouse business is not limited to those who obtained licenses within 30 days after the act was passed; that public warehousemen are required to advance the charges and receive all unclaimed property tendered them by a common carrier, regardless of the amount of the charges or the value of the property, a construction, which we apprehend warehousemen would be loth to assent to; and that the only property which carriers are required to turn over to a warehouseman is property shipped for immediate delivery, and which remains unclaimed for 20 days, in the absence of any agreement between the carrier and consignee that the former should continue to hold it for the latter. There is still an objection to the law which is fatal to it.
There are, and necessarily will be, many places in the state where there is no storage company or public warehouseman who has complied with the provisions of this act. We are justified in stating, by
The orders overruling the demurrers are therefore reversed and the causes remanded, with directions to the court below to dismiss the indictments.