City of St. Paul v. Dalsin

• Decision Date: 22 July 1955
• Docket Number: No. 36593,36593
• Citation: 71 N.W.2d 855,245 Minn. 325
• Parties: CITY OF SAINT PAUL, Respondent, v. Russell C. DALSIN, Appellant.
• Court: Minnesota Supreme Court

Page 855

71 N.W.2d 855

245 Minn. 325

CITY OF SAINT PAUL, Respondent, v. Russell C. DALSIN, Appellant.

No. 36593.

Supreme Court of Minnesota.

July 22, 1955.

Syllabus by the Court

1. Since a municipal ordinance is presumed constitutional, the burden of proving that it is unreasonable or that the requisite public interest is not involved, and consequently that the ordinance does not come within the police power of the city, rests on the party attacking its validity.

2. Although a municipality may by license regulate an occupation which is affected with the public interest, the licensing requirements must be reasonable in their terms and conditions so as not to go beyond the demands of the occasion whereby unnecessary, unreasonable, or oppressive restrictions are imposed in contravention of the state and federal constitutions.

3. Since the ordinance here involved embraces unnecessary, unreasonable, and oppressive requirements as a prerequisite to a license to install sheet metal flashings as an incidental part of the process of laying a roof, it must be held unconstitutional Insofar as applies to the roofing trade.

4. A regulation valid for one sort of business may be invalid for another business, or for the same business under other circumstances, since the reasonableness of a regulation depends upon the relevant facts.

5. A classification to be valid must embrace and uniformly affect all who are similarly situated, and the distinctions which separate those who are included from those who are excluded must, upon some reasonable view of the facts, be genuine and substantial so as to provide a reasonable--as distinguished from a merely capricious and arbitrary--basis for the imposition of special legislative regulations.

6. When a municipal ordinance imposes restrictions upon one class of persons engaged in a particular business which are not imposed upon others engaged in the same business and under similar circumstances, there is a violation of the equal protection clause, thereby rendering the ordinance unconstitutional.

Harry G. Costello, Jr., B. Warren Hart, Faricy, Moore & Costello, Saint Paul, for appellant.

Marshall F. Hurley, Corp. Counsel, James F. Sullivan, Asst. Corp. Counsel, Saint Paul, for respondent.

Lewis L. Anderson, for Amicus curiae Roofing & Sheet Metal Contractors Association, Inc.

MATSON, Justice.

Defendant appeals from a municipal court judgment convicting him of conducting his business as a roofer without having a license for performing warm air heating, ventilation, and general sheet metal work as required by an ordinance of the city of St. Paul.

Defendant is a partner of the firm of John A. Dalsin & Son whose place of business is located in Minneapolis. On August 5, 1954, in the course of placing a roof on the Minnesota Veterans Service Building, a sheet metal worker, employed by the Dalsin firm, was installing copper flashings on such roof. The use of copper flashings is an integral part of the roofing process.

On the complaint of a building inspector for the city of St. Paul, defendant was arrested, tried, and convicted of violating Building Code of City of St. Pual, § 111, ¹ which requires a license for performing 'Warm air heating, ventilation and general sheet metal work installing and repair.' Neither the defendant nor any member of his firm had any such license. There is no claim and no evidence in the record which indicates that defendant is engaged in the business of warm air heating or that of ventilation. The building inspector was of the opinion, and the trial court must necessarily have so found, that the installation of copper flashings constituted sheet metal work. Under the ordinance in question, and it was so admitted upon argument, there are no separate licenses for warm air heating, ventilation, and general sheet metal work. A single license is issued for all three categories.

In order for a firm to receive a license, at least one of the partners, according to the ordinance, must hold a certificate of competency as a master tradesman ² which can be obtained by taking an examination. ³ There is no provision for a separate examination for general sheet metal work only, and the examination for the certificate of competency, which is relevant in this case, therefore includes questions covering warm air heating, ventilation, And general sheet metal work. According to the record, there is no requirement that A roofing contractor as such have a license to operate in St. Paul.

Defendant's firm, however, could not qualify for a license to operate in St. Paul by merely having one of its members obtain a certificate of competency as a master tradesman, since another provision of the building code ordinance, applicable to a nonresident from Minneapolis, required in addition that such firm establish and maintain a place of business in St. Paul. Pursuant to such section (§ 111--3), a nonresident of St. Paul must maintain a place of business in St. Paul in order to qualify for a St. Paul license If the municipality from whence he comes has a similar requirement with respect to a nonresident. Thus, for defendant to receive a license from St. Paul, he must maintain a place of business in St. Paul since Minneapolis, from whence he comes, would require a St. Paul resident to maintain a place of business in Minneapolis in order to obtain a Minneapolis license. It is to be noted, however, that a nonresident from a city which has no requirement as to place of business would receive a license from St. Paul without maintaining a place of business in St. Paul if he were otherwise qualified. ⁴

Defendant was adjudged guilty of violating the ordinance and was sentenced to serve ten days or pay a fine of $100. This appeal is from the judgment of conviction.

There are two reasons why the judgment of conviction cannot be sustained: First, because the licensing requirements as applied to the installation of copper flashings as an incident of the roofing trade is unreasonable and oppressive; and, secondly, because the section of the ordinance which requires a defendant to establish a place of business in St. Paul is based upon a classification which discriminates between persons similarly situated in violation of the equal protection clause of U.S.Const. Amend. XIV. ⁵

1. Generally speaking, pursuant to its police power a municipality may regulate by license any business or trade which may injuriously affect the public health, morals, safety, convenience, or general welfare. ⁶ Since a municipal ordinance is presumed constitutional, ⁷ the burden of proving that it is unreasonable or that the requisite public interest is not involved, and consequently that the ordinance does not come within the police power of the city, rests on the party attacking its validity. ⁸ Judicial concepts of what is a sufficient public interest to invoke the police power, and of whether a certain remedy is reasonably appropriate to accomplish its purpose without going beyond the reasonable demands of the occasion so as to be arbitrary, are not static but are geared to society's changing conditions and views. In short, the police power keeps pace with social and economic developments of the day so as to justify regulatory restrictions which might well have been thought intolerable and unconstitutional when social relations were less complex. ⁹ We are here concerned with the regulation of the legitimate business or occupation of a roofer which incidently involves the application of sheet metal flashings. Assuming for the purposes of this opinion that such occupation is affected with the required public interest, we turn directly to the building code ordinance, under which the defendant was convicted, to determine whether the remedy therein prescribed is reasonable and appropriate for accomplishing its purpose.

2--3--4. Although a municipality may by license regulate an occupation which is affected with the public interest, the licensing requirements must be reasonable in their terms and conditions so as not to go beyond the demands of the occasion whereby unnecessary, unreasonable, or oppressive restrictions are imposed in contravention of the state and federal constitutions. ¹⁰ In the instant case no license could be obtained by the defendant unless he demonstrated that he was qualified in the entire field of 'Warm air heating, ventilation And general sheet metal work installing And repair.' (Italics supplied.) It should be noted that in the ordinance the word And is used as the connective; whereas, in a prior enumeration of other businesses covered by the licensing provision, the word Or is used. ¹¹ It follows, and it is so admitted, that the examination for the relevant certificate of competency, which is a prerequisite to the issuance of a license, includes questions relating to all three fields, I.e., warm air heating, ventilation, and general sheet metal work. There is no separate license available for general sheet metal work alone. In other words, the defendant was effectively barred from doing roofing work in St. Paul unless he, or some other member of his firm, qualified himself in the three fields of warm air heating, ventilation, and general sheet metal work. The requirement that a roofer must qualify himself in warm air heating and ventilation has no reasonable relation to any justifiable regulation of the roofing trade. Since the ordinance embraces unnecessary, unreasonable, and oppressive requirements as a prerequisite to a license to install sheet metal flashings as an incidental part of the process of laying a roof, it must be held unconstitutional Insofar as applies to the roofing trade. ¹² A legislative act may be unconstitutional and void in its application to some persons or separable subject matters and constitutional as to others. ¹³ A regulation valid for one sort of business may be invalid for another business, or for the same business under other circumstances, since the...