State v. Bassett

• Decision Date: 01 March 1924
• Citation: 123 A. 842,100 Conn. 430
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE v. BASSETT.

123 A. 842

100 Conn. 430

STATE v. BASSETT.

Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut.

March 1, 1924

Case Reserved from Superior Court, Hartford County; John P Kellogg, Judge.

Information against Merton W. Bassett for willfully displaying on Main street, in Hartford, a clock set and running so as to indicate time other than the standard time as defined by statute, brought to the superior court in Hartford county where a demurrer to the information was filed, and the questions of law raised thereby reserved for the advice of this court because the decision of the same will end and dispose of the case. Superior court advised to overrule the demurrer.

Reinhart L. Gideon, Asst. State's Atty., and Hugh M Alcorn, State's Atty., both of Hartford, for the State.

Donald C. McCarthy, Benedict M. Holden, and Arthur E. Howard, Jr., all of Hartford, for defendant.

CURTIS, J.

The information is based on the following statute passed in 1923 (Pub. Acts 1923, c. 231):

" No person, firm or corporation, organization or association, shall willfully display in or on any public building or on any street, avenue or public highway any time-measuring instrument or device, which is calculated or intended to furnish time to the general public, set or running so as to indicate intentionally, or indicating intentionally, any time other than the standard of time as defined by chapter 37 of the Public Acts of 1921. Any person or any officer of any corporation or organization or association violating any provision of this act shall be fined not more than one hundred dollars."

The demurrer is in effect that the act is invalid under the Constitution of the United States and of Connecticut.

The state claims that it is a valid exercise of the police power of the state. The defendant admits that the state may enact appropriate legislation under its police powers in the interest of public health, public safety, or public morality, but claims that this legislation is not related to either of these purposes, and is not, therefore, justifiable under the police power. But legislation which is ordinarily spoken of as falling under the police power of the state is not confined to that in the interest of the three subjects above enumerated.

Legislation in the interest of public convenience and public welfare also comes under the police power. Escanaba Co. v. Chicago, 107 U.S. 683, 2 Sup.Ct. 185, 27 L.Ed. 442; Lake Shore Ry. v. Ohio, 173 U.S. 285, 19 Sup.Ct. 465, 43 L.Ed. 702; Windsor v. Whitney, 95 Conn. 369, 111 A. 354, 12 A.L.R. 669.

We held in McKeon v. Railway Co., 75 Conn. 347, 53 A. 657, 61 L.R.A. 730, that:

" The police powers of a state * * * ‘ are nothing more or less than the powers of government inherent in every sovereignty to the extent of its dominions.’ "

Also that they do not denote some peculiar and transcendent form of legislative authority.

If the police power is " exercised by legislation which violates any right guaranteed by the national or state Constitution, they are so far forth invalid." State v. Coleman, 96 Conn. 193, 113 A. 386.

No specific rights guaranteed by the national or state Constitution are claimed by the defendant to have been violated by this act, other than those relating to " due process" of law.

The defendant claims that the act restricts him in the use of his private property, namely, the clock in question, and is thereby repugnant to the due process provisions of the national and state Constitutions. The state may regulate any business or the use of any property in the interest of the public welfare or the public convenience, provided it is done reasonably. Conn. L. & P. Co. v. Southbury, 95 Conn. 242, 111 A. 363.

The defendant claims that this act is an unreasonable exercise of the police power, and that there is no such public inconvenience arising from so using a...