State ex rel. Larson v. City of Minneapolis

• Decision Date: 17 November 1933
• Docket Number: No. 29498.,29498.
• Citation: State ex rel. Larson v. City of Minneapolis, 190 Minn. 138, 251 N.W. 121 (Minn. 1933)
• Parties: STATE ex rel. LARSON v. CITY OF MINNEAPOLIS et al.
• Court: Minnesota Supreme Court

190 Minn. 138

251 N.W. 121

STATE ex rel. LARSON

v.CITY OF MINNEAPOLIS et al.

No. 29498.

Supreme Court of Minnesota.

Nov. 17, 1933.

Appeal from District Court, Hennepin County; E. F. Waite, Judge.

Mandamus proceeding by the State, on the relation of J. E. Larson, doing business as the Larson Creamery Company, against the City of Minneapolis and others. The relief prayed for was denied, and an alternative writ dissolved. From an order denying a new trial, the relator appeals.

Reversed.

Syllabus by the Court.

For reasons stated in the opinion, an ordinance of the city of Minneapolis requiring that all pasteurized milk sold within that city must be pasteurized within the city limits is held to be unconstitutional.

Herbert T. Park and G. A. Youngquist, both of Minneapolis, for appellant.

Neil M. Cronin and Thos. B. Kilbride, both of Minneapolis, for respondents.

Fowler, Carlson, Furber & Johnson, of Minneapolis, amici curiae, on behalf of L. A. Engell & Sons.

Paul C. Thomas, of St. Paul, amicus curiae, on behalf of Northline Corporation and Oak Grove Sanitary Dairy Farm, Inc.

HILTON, Justice.

Mandamus to compel the respondents to issue to relator a license to sell pasteurized milk and its products within the city of Minneapolis. The question presented involved the constitutionality of a city ordinance. The court upheld the ordinance, denied the relief prayed for, and ordered judgment dissolving the alternative writ. From an order denying a new trial, relator appeals.

On March 11, 1932, the council of the city of Minneapolis passed a new milk ordinance to take effect on May 2, 1932. Section III thereof, in so far as here material, is: ‘It shall be unlawful for any person to sell within the limits of the city of Minneapolis any pasteurized milk or its products as herein defined, unless the same shall have been (1) pasteurized in a pasteurization plant located within the limits of the City of Minneapolis; (2) pasteurized by the process described by this ordinance; (3) until a license therefor, to be known as the ‘Minneapolis Pasteurized Milk License,’ shall have been issued to such person. * * *'

The ordinance further provides, by section XII: ‘Pasteurizing plants operating under a Minneapolis milk license at the time of the passage of this ordinance, and located beyond the limits of the city of Minneapolis, may upon application and approval be issued a pasteurizing milk license from the first Monday in May, 1932, until December 31, 1932.'

Under the last-quoted provision relator was licensed to sell pasteurized milk in Minneapolis until the date therein specified. Since then he has not been permitted so to do.

If the ordinance is unconstitutional, it must be because it violates the due process clause of article 1, § 7 of our State Constitution and the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Federal Constitution.

Under its police power a state or its municipalities may enact statutes and ordinances for the welfare and health of its citizens. Such a statute or ordinance, however, must be reasonable and not arbitrary, must not invade the fundamental liberties of the citizen, must, on the one hand, tend to accomplish the purpose of its adoption, and, on the other, must not go beyond the reasonable demands of the occasion. The burden of showing that an act is arbitrary and unreasonable is on the complaining party. 1 Dunnell, Minn. Dig. (2d Ed.) § 1604, and cases cited; Cooley's Constitutional Limitations (8th Ed.) vol. 2, p. 1229 et seq. If, as claimed by respondents and found by the court, this ordinance was enacted by the city of Minneapolis for the protection of the health of its citizens, was the prohibition therein contained a reasonable regulation toward that end? We think not.

There is no material controversy as to the facts appearing in the evidence and referred to in the findings of fact and in the court's memorandum made a part thereof. We summarize such facts.

Relator is the owner of a milk-pasteurizing plant located at Cologne, Minn., about 30 miles from Minneapolis, and has an investment therein of about $70,000. He has operated such a plant for more than twenty years. In addition to the pasteurizing plant, he also has a creamery which he has operated for more than thirty-five years. For fourteen months prior to December 31, 1932, he had distributed within Minneapolis, under a license issued by its city council, about 4,000 quarts of pasteurized milk and 400 to 500 pints of pasteurized cream daily, amounting to about 80 per cent. of his total output. In the pasteurization process in relator's plant, in full compliance with the requirements of the ordinance, the milk is brought up to 145 degrees and then cooled down to below 40 degrees Fahrenheit, when it is put into bottles, which are automatically capped without coming in contact with human hands, placed in cases which, in the summertime, are iced and put into insulated trucks, iced again, and in 60 to...