Ex Parte Faison

• Decision Date: 14 February 1923
• Docket Number: (No. 6895.)
• Citation: 248 S.W. 343
• Parties: Ex parte FAISON.
• Court: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

248 S.W. 343

Ex parte FAISON.

(No. 6895.)

Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas.

February 14, 1923.

Original habeas corpus proceeding by J. H. Faison. Relator discharged.

Love & Rutledge, of Dallas, for relator.

R. G. Storey, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.

LATTIMORE, J.

J. H. Faison, hereinafter styled relator, was arrested upon a warrant issued out of justice court of precinct No. 1 of Dallas county for a violation of the law relating to the operation of commercial motor vehicles on public highways, which is found in chapter 52, General Laws 1st Called Session of 37th Legislature. Relator in the usual form alleges his illegal arrest and detention, and attacks the constitutionality of said law by appropriate averments.

This court hesitates under any circumstances to strike down a law enacted by the legislative branch of our government, and has had much concern over this attack upon a law manifestly intended to protect the whole people in their use of the public highways of this state, as against what is becoming a serious matter both to highways and to citizens who pay for and use them for ordinary traffic. The progress of legislation since the enactment in 1917 of the law creating our highway commission in this state, in its successive efforts to adequately regulate the use of highways for commercial purposes by heavy vehicles, is interesting, and indicates a realization of the seriousness of the problem referred to. We have withheld announcing our conclusion upon this matter to such time as the representatives of the people are in session, so that there might be speedy action after this decision looking to the enactment of proper laws safeguarding the highways and defining the rights of the various users thereof.

The law in question is obnoxious to that provision of our Constitution prohibiting class legislation. Section 3, art. 1, Bill of Rights. Chapter 52 presents the enactment of an amendment to Section 16 of the original highway law of 1917 (Vernon's Ann. Civ. St. Supp. 1922, art. 7012½). We quote a part of said section:

"Vehicles not Subject to Registration.— Trucks or tractors used exclusively for agricultural purposes, fire engines, road rollers, steam shovels, and other road building and agricultural machinery shall not be required to be registered; provided that nothing in this section shall be construed to exempt from this act motor vehicles, trailers, semi-trailers, and tractors used for road building purposes and privately owned; provided that trucks used exclusively for agricultural purposes shall be registered by horsepower as is now provided for registration of automobiles and shall be subject to all the provisions of this act, except the payment of annual license fees."

This paragraph of the law in question places trucks and tractors used for agricultural purposes on a different footing before the law from similar trucks and tractors used for commercial and other purposes, and, while the Legislature may differentiate between citizens following different occupations without breach of the constitutional forbiddance, this is because it is to be supposed that such persons, in matters properly discriminated between, will be engaged in acts and business substantially different, and upon which difference may be based the right to receive at the hands of the lawmakers different treatment; but when classes of persons or occupations which are really and substantially the same are treated differently by a law upon the camouflage of a name only, the courts will not permit it. The act under discussion deals with roads and road-using vehicles, and the effect of their use upon the roads, and in our opinion it may not call trucks and tractors which are exactly similar in construction, character, and effect in usage upon highways, agricultural implements, and subject to one classification in one clause of the law, and call them commercial vehicles and subject to another classification in the next clause thereof. A farmer's tractor or a dairyman's truck may carry or pull a load of such weight as to grievously injure a highway upon payment of a small license fee under this statute, while the same weight, vehicle, or load, if used in a commercial transaction, would be prohibited entirely or made to pay a much heavier fee for license. That this is class legislation seems too plain to need further argument.

Attention is also called to other parts of said law. In said amended section 16 we find the following:

"No motor vehicle shall be licensed under this act whose net carrying capacity is greater than eight thousand pounds, provided that the officers or persons charged with the supervision and care of any certain highway may make written application to the state highway commission, asking that motor vehicles having a greater carrying capacity than named in this act be permitted to operate on and over the highway specifically named in the application; and the state highway commission shall after investigation and finding the highway named in the application of sufficient construction to carry without material injury a load greater than that named in this act, then the state highway commission shall have the authority to issue to owners of motor vehicles a license authorizing a greater load than named in this act. Said license shall state the amount of load that may be carried and also the section of highway over which said motor vehicle may carry such excess load."

The plain effect of this is to remove the maximum limit...