Reynolds v. Milk Comm'n Of Va.

• Decision Date: 15 November 1934
• Citation: 177 S.E. 44
• Parties: REYNOLDS et al. v. MILK COMMISSION OF VIRGINIA.
• Court: Virginia Supreme Court

177 S.E. 44

REYNOLDS et al.

v.MILK COMMISSION OF VIRGINIA.

Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia.

Nov. 15, 1934.

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Appeal from Law and Equity Court of City of Richmond, Part 2.

Suit by the Milk Commission of Virginia against R. J. Reynolds and others. From an adverse decree defendants appeal.

Reversed.

Argued before CAMPBELL, C. J., and HOLT, EPES, HUDGINS, GREGORY, and CHINN, JJ.

S. D. Timberlake, Jr., of Staunton, for appellant.

The Attorney General, for appellee.

HOLT, Justice.

The Milk Commission of Virginia is declared to be an instrumentality of the commonwealth by an act of the General Assembly, approved March 29, 1934, Acts 1934, c. 357, p. 558. That act authorized it to divide the state into "markets" or "milk sheds, " and to fix a maximum and minimum price for milk within these designated areas. It further provided that it shall have control over the production of milk and may require that distributors be licensed by it. A "distributor" is defined as one who sells milk to consumers. A "consumer" is one, other than a milk distributor, who purchases milk for human consumption and a producer-distributor is one who sells milk produced by himself. When a market has once been defined, producers can sell only within that market subject to this exception only: If at the time of its establishment they are shipping milk to any other market, they may continue to do so until that custom is voluntarily abandoned.

Acting under powers conferred it has set apart Augusta county and designated it as "Staunton-Waynesboro Production Area, " and that area is divided into the Waynesboro Market and the Staunton Market.

The defendants in the court below, called defendants here, are farmers of Augusta county who live upon their farms, keep cows for dairy purposes, and sell their milk to customers in Staunton under permits from health authorities. In other words, they are ordinary farmers who conduct ordinary dairies and who comply with all sanitary regulations designed to make their milk wholesome. Their business has been conducted in a manner satisfactory to themselves and to their customers for a number of years. Now they are ordered to advance prices to Staunton customers, many of whom have notified them that they are unable to pay these advances and must discontinue their purchases. For these and other reasons they have refused to adopt the scale of prices fixed by the commission and have refused to apply for any license from it to do business.

In this state of affairs the commission has sought an injunction in which it asks that the defendants "may each be enjoined andrestrained from distributing milk in the city of Staunton until they, or each of them, shall have applied for and received a license from the Commission, and, further, from selling milk in said markets at any other price than that fixed by the Commission, or violating any other rule or regulation of the Commission * * *."

They, by way of answer, challenged the constitutionality of the act. This cause came on to be heard; the trial court was of the opinion that an injunction should issue in accordance with the prayer of the bill and decreed accordingly. That order is now before us on appeal. The commonwealth contends that it is a proper exercise of police power.

That power is an attribute of sovereignty and is inherent in government. We have unnumbered definitions. Our court, speaking through Judge Keith, in Chesapeake & O. R. Co. v. Commonwealth, 105 Va. 297, 54 S. E. 331, 333, cited with approval this definition by Mr. Justice Harlan in Chicago, B. & Q. Ry. Co. v. Illinois, 200 U. S. 561, 26 S. Ct. 341, 50 L. Ed. 596, 4 Ann. Cas. 1175: "The police power of a state embraces regulations designed to promote the public convenience or the general prosperity, as well as regulations designed to promote the public health, the public morals, or the public safety, " subject of course to constitutional limitations and to the inalienable rights of citizens.

The underlying governing principles are not particularly obscure, but it is their application to changing conditions which troubles us.

This definition by Judge Cooley has met with wide approval: He says that the police power of a state "embraces its whole system of internal regulation, by which the State seeks not only to preserve the public order and to prevent offenses against the State, but also to establish for the intercourse of citizens with citizens those rules of good manners and good neighborhood which are calculated to prevent a conflict of rights, and to insure to each the uninterrupted enjoyment of his own so far as is reasonably consistent with a like enjoyment of rights by others."

It is not contended that the health or morals of the community are here involved. Ample sanitary regulations appear in chapter 51 of our Code. The defendants say that they have complied with them and this statement is not denied. The commission, in its bill, tells us what the trouble is. It "alleges that R. J. Reynolds,, C. H. Miller and J. C. Montgomery are now selling fluid milk in the city of Staunton without having obtained a license as provided by the act of 1934 and that they are selling contrary to and below the prices established in the rules and regulations of the Commission established for the Staunton-Waynesboro market and have been doing so since the effective date of such regulations as of July 22, 1934; and have declared their intention to refuse to pay assessments as printed in regulation number six."

Courts should not travel beyond the record, but they should not affect to be ignorant where the matter is one of common knowledge. We know that producers have participated in organized blockades of centers of consumption, and in the prosecution of their purpose milk trucks have been overturned and their contents wasted. It has not been suggested that this was done to protect the health or morals of the city. Plainly it was an economic struggle. This struggle, happily divested of lawlessness in Virginia, is voiced in the act in judgment. What the Legislature undertook was to make the dairy business profitable, and this it sought to accomplish by fixing the price of its products.

The commission may order milk to be sold at one price in Staunton, at another in Harrisonburg, and may leave Woodstock to shift for itself. The state is interested in the health of all its people and not in that only of those who may chance to live in some undesignated milk shed. Each citizen is entitled alike to its solicitous care. Not that the same measures must everywhere be adopted, but that such precautions shall everywhere be taken as appear necessary. It is not enough that sanitation is merely incidental; it must have been intended to be effected. It is perfectly clear that there was no intention to mark out milk sheds where milk is not produced as a commercial commodity. The statement in the bill that it is designed to promote public health and public peace is but a makeweight. But if it were not it still could not be coupled with a price-fixing provision unless the industry was affected with a public interest. While courts uphold statutes where it is possible, they should give valid reasons for their judgments and not excuses.

The dairy business is a major industry and all would like to see it prosper, but the means adopted, defendants say, so far as they are concerned, are producing an opposite result. Customers who bought at profitable prices no longer buy at all.

Section 1 of our Bill of Rights declares: "That all men are by nature equally free andindependent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety."

The same idea appears in the Declaration of Independence where it is said:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Bryce, The American Commonwealth, vol. 1, p. 438, in commenting, said:

"The Bill of Rights is historically the most interesting part of these Constitutions, for it is the legitimate child and representative of Magna Charta, and of those other declarations and enactments, down to the Bill of Rights of the Act of 1 William and Mary, session 2, by which the liberties of Englishmen have been secured, " and adds:

"Thirty-one States declare that 'all men have a natural, inherent, and inalienable right to enjoy and defend life and liberty'; and all of these, except the melancholy Missouri, add the 'natural right to pursue happiness.' "

Some contend that these articles are but declarations of general principles rather than positive grants of power and for this reason are to be more liberally construed. This is not the law in Virginia, and our Bill of Rights is as much a part of our Constitution as the first ten amendments to the Federal Constitution are a part of it. Brooks v. Town of Potomac, 149 Va. 427, 141 S. E. 249. We might cite many other Virginia cases to the same effect. Indeed, these enumerated inherent and inalienable rights would still be protected had they never been named.

"The bill of rights though incorporated into and made a part of the present constitution, has the same force and authority which it has always had, neither more nor less, as containing the recognized and fundamental principles of a well regulated government. It is an authoritative affirmation of certain general principles, and a declaration of the political rights and privileges which it is the duty of the government to secure to the people." Ruffin's Case, 21 Grat (62 Va.) 790.

In Richmond, F. & P. R. Co. v. City of Richmond, 145 Va. 225, 133 S. E. 800, 803, this court, speaking through Judge Burks, said "Man as an...