City of St. Louis v. Allen
| Decision Date | 16 July 1918 |
| Citation | 204 S.W. 1083,275 Mo. 501 |
| Parties | CITY OF ST. LOUIS v. HUGH ALLEN, Appellant |
| Court | Missouri Supreme Court |
Appeal from St. Louis Court of Criminal Correction. -- Hon. Benjamin F. Clark, Judge.
Reversed.
Leahy Sanders & Barth for appellant.
(1) An automobile has, subject to valid statutory regulations, the same rights on the streets of a city as any other vehicle. 2 Elliott on Roads and Streets (3 Ed.), sec. 1107, p. 647; 2 Dillon on Municipal Corporations (5 Ed.), sec. 714, p. 1086; State v. Swagerty, 203 Mo. 522; Hall v Compton, 130 Mo.App. 679; Daily v. Maxwell, 152 Mo.App. 423. (2) The easement acquired by the public in the streets of a city is intended, inter alia, for purposes of travel and transportation and as a means of communication with all the incidental rights which accompany these purposes. 3 Dillon on Municipal Corporations (5 Ed.), sec 1211, p. 1907. (3) Travelers, whether on foot or in vehicles, have a right to stop along the ways, roads or streets, for a reasonable time, for their own convenience in the ordinary course of business or social life; and they do not thereby lose their rights as travelers to the protection of constitutional guaranties to person and property. 2 Elliott on Roads and Streets (3 Ed.), sec. 1100, p. 640; Smethurst v. Independent Church, 148 Mass. 266; Odom v. Schmidt, 52 La. Ann. 2131; Lacy v. Winn, 3 Pa. Dist. 811; Mark v. Fritschy, 195 N.Y. 283. (4) The ordinance (Sections 1351 and 1357) provides that drivers of vehicles in said city must at all times comply with any direction of any member of the police force, as to stopping or starting a vehicle, or approaching or departing from any place; or as to the manner of receiving or discharging passengers or freight in any place; makes a violation a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of not over one hundred dollars. It therefore attempts to confer upon the police officer the power to make traffic rules and regulations, and is void because a delegation of legislative power. Seibel-Suessdorf Co. v. Manufacturers Ry. Co., 230 Mo. 82; City of St. Louis v. Howard, 119 Mo. 47; State v. Thompson, 160 Mo. 343. (5) As an agency of the State the city of St. Louis has the power to reasonably regulate the use of its streets by vehicles and pedestrians, by proper legislative action, but the city neither has, nor could the Legislature confer upon it, the right to delegate to its police officers the unlimited and unregulated power to improvise, make or declare, rules and regulations governing the use of its streets by owners or drivers of vehicles, or pedestrians, because such delegation of power violates the fundamental principle that reasonable regulation is governed by or subject to rules or restrictions duly promulgated and certain in character, and is, in effect, a grant of despotic power. 2 Dillon on Municipal Corporations (5 Ed.), sec. 665, 1002; City of St. Louis v. Heitzeberg Packing & Provision Co., 141 Mo. 388; Elkhart v. Murray, 165 Ind. 307; Hays v. Poplar Bluff, 263 Mo. 516; Commonwealth v. Roy, 140 Mass. 433; Cicero Lumber Co. v. Town of Cicero, 176 Ill. 27. (6) These ordinance provisions, Sections 1351 and 1357, are in conflict with Sections 4 and 30 of Article 2 of the Constitution of Missouri and the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, because the liberty and property of the citizen are thereby subjected to deprivation and loss in an arbitrary manner, without notice, by arrest and fine, and are not due process, and deny the equal protection of the laws. Freund on Police Power (1 Ed.), sec. 611, 633; Clark v. Mitchell, 64 Mo. 579; State v. Loomis, 115 Mo. 313.
Charles H. Daues and H. A. Hamilton, for respondent.
(1) The city of St. Louis has authority to regulate the traffic upon its streets. (2) Section 1351, Revised Code of St. Louis 1912, requires drivers of vehicles to obey the direction of police officers in the use of the city streets. This is not a delegation of legislative authority, and traffic in congested sections cannot be regulated except by the contant oversight and supervision of the traffic officer.
Appellant was tried and fined in the police court of St. Louis. He appealed to the Court of Criminal Correction and met the same fate. He has appealed to this court, a constitutional question being involved.
The complaint, omitting formal parts, is as follows:
Section 1358 of the ordinance has no application to the case. The other two sections mentioned in that complaint are as follows:
In the Court of Criminal Correction and previous to the trial there, the defendant moved to quash the complaint on the ground that it did not state facts sufficient to constitute an offense under the ordinances of the city and because said Section 1351 of the ordinance is contrary to the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, in that it deprives the defendant of his liberty and property without due process of law, and deprives him of the equal protection of the law. The motion was overruled.
The affair out of which this prosecution arose occurred on Grand Avenue in front of the Metropolitan Building, which fronts west on that avenue about 150 feet, and south on Olive Street about the same distance. It is an eight-story office building, almost entirely occupied by professional men. About the middle of the west front at the curb are two posts twenty-three feet apart, on each of which is the sign, "Don't stand between these posts." The defendant was the chauffeur of Mr. Leahy, one of his counsel in this case. On July 9, 1915, near four o'clock in the afternoon, the defendant drove his car to said entrance. The wife of his employer was in the car on her way to the office of her dentist in that building. The defendant backed his car so that the rear thereof was near the south post, and most of the car was in front of the entrance at an angle of about forty-five degrees. Backed against the north post was an express wagon extending directly into the street, and to some extent in front of the entrance, engaged in receiving and delivering packages. Cars were parked closely on both sides of the street at that point for a distance not definitely shown here. Nat-B. Clark, the traffic officer at that point, testified that, after defendant had occupied that position fifteen or twenty minutes, the elevator starter in the Metropolitan Building asked him to make defendant move his car from the entrance. The officer testified:
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