Dyer v. City Council of City of Beloit
| Decision Date | 10 June 1947 |
| Citation | 27 N.W.2d 733,250 Wis. 613 |
| Parties | DYER v. CITY COUNCIL OF CITY OF BELOIT et al. |
| Court | Wisconsin Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Appeal from a judgment of the Circuit Court for Rock County; Jesse Earle, Judge.
Affirmed.
September 11, 1946, Lawrence Dyer, petitioner and appellant, filed a petition praying for a writ of mandamus directing the city council of the city of Beloit, Rock county, Wisconsin, A. D. Telfer, city manager of the city of Beloit, R. H. Calland, city clerk of the city of Beloit, and Stanley J. Goldschmidt, city sanitarian of the city of Beloit, defendants and respondents, to issue to him a license as a milk distributor in the city of Beloit. Case was tried to the court, and judgment entered December 20, 1946, dismissing the petition. Petitioner appeals. The facts will be set forth in the opinion.
McGowan, Geffs, Geffs & Block, of Janesville, for appellant.
Clarence L. Haugan, of Beloit (Arnold, Caskey & Robson, of Beloit, of counsel), for respondents.
The city of Beloit passed an ordinance under its police power regulating the sale and distribution of whole milk for direct human consumption, and the question presented involves the constitutionality of this ordinance. The only provision attacked is sec. 8.09(x)(2) of the general ordinance, which provides:
It is claimed this is a trade barrier, violates the right of contract guaranteed under the Fourteenth Amendment of the constitution of the United States, and is in conflict with the interstate commerce clause of the United States constitution, sec. 8, Art. I.
The material facts, part of which were stipulated, are that Lawrence Dyer, appellant,applied for a license to distribute milk in the city of Beloit under the ordinance, setting forth in his application for a license that he was going to obtain his milk from a pasteurizing plant of the Dean Milk Company located in Chemung, Illinois, a distance of between twenty-five and thirty miles from the point indicated by the ordinance of the city of Beloit, and truck the same to the city of Beloit. As required by the ordinance he filed with the city clerk a list of farmers who furnished milk to the Dean Milk Company plant, the total number of farms being one hundred and ninety-seven. These farms are located in four counties, three of which are in the state of Illinois and one in the state of Wisconsin. The application was denied under the ordinance. The state line between Wisconsin and Illinois is the south city limits of the city of Beloit.
That cities have a right to pass a milk ordinance for the welfare and health of their citizens is not disputed, and milk ordinances are general in the state of Wisconsin and elsewhere in the nation. Such an ordinance must be reasonable and not arbitrary, must not go beyond the reasonable demands of the occasion, and must tend to accomplish the purpose of its adoption. Courts will not interfere with the exercise of police power by a municipal corporation in the absence of a clear abuse of discretion and unless it is manifestly unreasonable and oppressive, for it is not within the province of the courts, except in clear cases, to interfere with the exercise of this power reposed by law in municipal corporations. 11 Am.Jur. p. 1092, sec. 307. Municipal corporations are prima facie the sole judges respecting the necessity and reasonableness of ordinances under their police power, and every intendment is to be made in favor of the lawfulness and reasonableness of such ordinance. The city is presumed to have full knowledge of local conditions, and its adoption of an ordinance in the light of this knowledge creates a prima facie presumption that it is reasonable. 3 McQuillin, Mun. Corp., 2d Ed., p. 110, sec. 951. The reasonableness of an ordinance depends upon the purpose sought to be accomplished and the effect upon all who must comply with it.
The city of Beloit is in the center of an area producing great quantities of milk, containing a large number of pasteurization plants, condenseries and creameries. The area described in the ordinance includes pasteurization plants both in Wisconsin and in Illinois. Over four hundred farms are included in the area and slightly over one hundred farms produce sufficient milk to supply the demand of the city of Beloit. Thus three-fourths of the milk produced in the area is not required to supply the city of Beloit and is shipped elsewhere for such purposes as it may properly be used. The supply of milk in the area is ample for a large number of additional milk plants of any type that may desire to engage in the business. The ordinance clearly was not passed for the purpose of limiting the business to the plants then in operation. Milk is usually delivered to nearby plants as a matter of economy and convenience, which answers the...
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...when the one or the other is necessary to insure justice to the litigants before the court. For instance, in Dyer v. City Council of Beloit, 250 Wis. 613, 27 N.W.2d 733 (1947), 333 U.S. 825, 68 S.Ct. 450, 92 L.Ed. 1111 (1948), 252 Wis. 249, 32 N.W.2d 333 (1948), the Wisconsin Supreme Court ......
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