Hulme v. Bd. of Com'rs of Trenton

• Decision Date: 19 October 1920
• Parties: HULME v. BOARD OF COM'RS OF TRENTON.
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

111 A. 541

HULME

v. BOARD OF COM'RS OF TRENTON.

Supreme Court of New Jersey.

Oct. 19, 1920.

(Syllabus by the Court.)

Certiorari by Frederic L. Hulme against Board of Commissioners of Trenton to determine the constitutionality of a statute relating to pensions for firemen and policemen in which the State Firemen's Association intervened for the purpose of filing a brief. Certiorari dismissed.

Argued June term, 1920, before SWAYZE and BLACK, JJ.

Charles E. Bird, of Trenton, and Aaron V. Dawes, of Hightstown, for prosecutor.

Henry M. Hartmann, of Trenton, for defendant.

Pierre P. Garven, of Bayonne, and John F. Drewen, Jr., of Jersey City, for State Firemen's Ass'n.

SWAYZE, J. The question is the constitutionality of the act of 1920 for the pensioning of policemen and firemen. Chapter 160, P. L. 324.

The act is assailed on the ground that its, object is not expressed in the title, because incongruous subjects are Included, and because it is special. The title in so many words indicates that the object of the act is to provide for the retirement of policemen and firemen in municipalities, including police officers having supervision or regulation of traffic on county roads, and to provide a pension for such retired policemen and firemen and members of the police and fire department and widows and dependents of deceased members of said departments. As nearly as we can understand, the objection is that the act was really meant to apply only to certain cities and to compel in those cities retirement at 05 years of age. We fail to see any reason why the Legislature might not include all municipalities within the scope of the act and embrace all in the title.

Prior to the decision in Herman & Grace v. Freeholders of Essex, 71 N. J. Eq. 541, 64 Atl. 742, affirmed on opinion 73 N. J. Eq. 415, 75 Atl. 1101, it might perhaps have been said that traffic policemen on county roads were not embraced in a title which purports to provide for the retirement and pensioning of policemen and firemen in municipalities. We see no reason why the definition of the word "municipality" should not have the same scope in the present statute as in the statute then under review. The same definition was adopted in Union Stone Co. v. Freeholders of Hudson, 71 N. J. Eq. 657, 65 Atl. 466; in Burtis v. Haines, 91 N. J. Law, 4, 102 Atl. 355; in Murphy v. Freeholders of Hudson, 91 N. J. Law, 46, 102 Atl. 896.

There is nothing in the title to limit the application of the act and the object is plainly pointed out. Possibly it is arguable that the retirement and pensioning of policemen has no proper relation to the retirement and pensioning of firemen, but we are not to set aside acts of the Legislature on nice distinctions of rhetoric and logic. The constitutional provision was meant to prevent the concealment of the real object of the act and what is commonly called logrolling. The incongruity of the object of a statute in its application to the facts must depend on the existing state of the law, just as the Court of Errors and Appeals has held that the object expressed in the title must give notice of the effect of the legislation to one conversant with the existing state of the law (Sawter v. Shoenthal, 83 N. J. Law, 499, 501, 502, 83 Atl. 1004), and, we may add, existing customs of the people, and habits, so to speak, of the language. In this view, it cannot be denied that policemen and firemen have long been coupled as public servants sufficiently alike to justify legislation for both together. The practice goes back certainly as far as the Civil Service Act of 1885 (C. S. p. 2341), and we do not know that its propriety has ever been questioned. The reason is that policemen and firemen alike have to do with the protection of the public, and are engaged in...