Luman v. Hitchens Bros. Co.

• Court: Maryland Supreme Court
• Writing for the Court: MCSHERRY, C.J.
• Citation: Luman v. Hitchens Bros. Co., 90 Md. 14, 44 A. 1051 (Md. 1899)
• Decision Date: 23 November 1899
• Parties: LUMAN, Clerk, v. HITCHENS BROS. CO.

44 A. 1051

90 Md. 14

LUMAN, Clerk, v. HITCHENS BROS. CO.

Court of Appeals of Maryland

November 23, 1899

Appeal from circuit court, Allegany county; David W. Sloan, Judge.

Petition by the Hitchens Bros. Company against Theodore Luman for a writ of mandamus. From a pro forma order of mandamus, the defendant appeals. Affirmed.

Argued before MCSHERRY, C.J., and BRISCOE, SCHMUCKER, PEARCE, PAGE BOYD, FOWLER, and BOND, JJ.

R. R Henderson and Ralph M. Luman, for appellant. Benj. A Richmond and William C. Devecmon, for appellee.

MCSHERRY C.J.

The proceedings in this case are designed to test the constitutionality of chapter 493 of the Acts of the General Assembly of this state passed at the January session of 1898. The title of the statute is in these words: "An act to prohibit railroad and mining corporations, their officers and agents, from selling or bartering goods, wares or merchandise in Allegany county to their employés." The first section enacts: "That it shall not be lawful for any railroad or mining corporation, doing business in Allegany county, nor for the president, vice-president, manager, superintendent, any director or other officer of such corporation, to own or have any interest in any general store or merchandise business in Allegany county, in which goods, wares and merchandise are sold, nor to conduct or carry on any such business, or have any interest in the profits of the same in Allegany county, nor to sell or barter any goods, wares or merchandise in such county." The remaining sections are set forth in the margin. The appellee is a trading corporation. One of its stockholders is a director in the Barton & George's Creek Coal Company, a mining corporation of Allegany county. By the general laws of the state, before a person or a corporation can lawfully conduct a merchandising business in any county, a trader's license must be procured from the clerk of the circuit court. In the latter part of April, 1899, application was made by the appellee to the appellant, who is the clerk of the circuit court for Allegany county, for a trader's license. The clerk refused to issue the license unless the oath prescribed by the second section of the act now under review was first taken by some officer of the appellee corporation, but the treasurer of the appellee refused to make the oath, because one of the stockholders of the Hitchens Bros. Company was a director in a mining corporation. Thereupon the clerk declined to issue the license applied for by the appellee, and the latter filed in the circuit court a petition praying that a mandamus might go out directing the clerk to issue the license. Ultimately a pro forma order was passed requiring the clerk to deliver the license, and from that order this appeal has been taken.

The validity of the statute has been assailed upon a number of grounds, some of which will now be considered. The title declares that the act is an act to prohibit railroad and mining corporations, their officers and agents, from selling goods, wares, and merchandise to their employés; whereas the body of the act makes it unlawful not only for a railroad and mining corporation to sell or barter any goods, wares, or merchandise, but for any president, vice president, manager superintendent, director, or other officer of such corporations to own or have any interest whatever in any store or merchandise business in Allegany county, without the slightest reference to whether sales are made to the employés of railroad or mining corporations or not. There are two things prohibited in the body of the act under a title indicating a purpose to prohibit but one thing, and that one thing is a wholly different thing from the two which are prohibited. The title relates to sales to employés; the body of the act prohibits railroad and mining corporations from selling at all; and it also, without qualification, prohibits the designated officers from having any interest in any store, and from selling to any person any goods, wares, or merchandise in the county. The title indicates that the act is designed to provide a restricted prohibition while the body of the act declares an unrestricted prohibition. A provision forbidding a sale to employés is widely different from, because much narrower than, a provision forbidding a sale to any one. Though the title need not contain an abstract of the bill, nor give in detail the provisions of the act, it must not be misleading by apparently limiting the enactment to a much narrower scope than the body of the act is made to compass; nor must there be cloaked in the enactment any foreign, discordant, or irrelevant matter not disclosed in the title. No one reading a title which was confined to a prohibition against particular persons selling to their employés would ever infer that the thing actually prohibited in the act itself was a sale by those persons to any one. The wisdom of requiring the title to disclose the subject of the statute, and confining the act to that one subject, is illustrated by the legislation now before us. It may well be (assuming such legislation would be free from other infirmities) that there could be no objection to prohibiting officers of railroad and mining corporations from selling merchandise to their employés, while there would be very serious objections to prohibiting such officers from selling to other persons. The act goes far beyond the purpose declared in its title, and in this respect disregards the provisions of section 29, art. 3, of the constitution of Maryland, which declares "that every law enacted by the general assembly shall embrace but one subject, and that shall be described in its title." Scharf v. Tasker, 73 Md. 378, 21 A. 56. We have before us now the reverse of the situation which was presented in Drennen v. Banks, 80 Md. 318, 30 A. 654. In that case there were two component parts of one title. Both of these were comprehensive enough to include under either the whole of the enacted legislation, but it was insisted that the use of the two narrowed the scope of the title, and that, therefore, the body of the act was wider than the title, as thus narrowed, indicated. This contention was not adopted, and it was held that two universal propositions could never be equivalent to a particular proposition; that the two general titles, neither being the contrary of the other, continued to be general when used together, and did not become more restrictive, when conjoined, than either would have singly been. In the case at bar the title of the act relates to a particular prohibition, and the effort is to include under that a general, or at least a very much broader, prohibition, in the body of the act. But we need not pursue this discussion further, because there is another objection equally apparent and equally fatal to the act, and that objection is founded on the fourteenth amendment to the constitution of the United States. Section 1 of the amendment guaranties the equal protection of the laws to all persons alike. It applies to corporations as well as to individuals. Railroad Co. v. Ellis, 165 U.S. 150, 17 S.Ct. 255, 41 L.Ed. 666. A statute which denies to one person the protection that is accorded to others under the same conditions, and in the like situation, or which imposes on one a burden not similarly borne by others, is, because it so discriminates, in both instances invalid under the paramount organic law. Though it was perfectly competent to the legislature to prevent railroad and mining corporations from engaging in the business of bartering or selling goods, wares, and merchandise, either by...