State v. Brown

• Decision Date: 20 December 1920
• Parties: STATE v. BROWN.
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

111 A. 760

STATE

v. BROWN.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Dec. 20, 1920.

Agreed Statement from Supreme Judicial Court, Penobscot County, at Law.

Leo Brown was convicted of a violation of an ordinance of the city of Bangor regulating the purchase and sale of junk, and he appealed to the Supreme Judicial Court, from which court the case comes up on an agreed statement of facts. Respondent adjudged guilty.

Argued before CORNISH, C. J., and SPEAR, HANSON, PHILBROOK, MORRILL, and WILSON, JJ.

A. L. Blanchard, Co. Atty., of Bangor, for the State.

Terence B. Towle and James B. Mountalne, City Sol., both of Bangor, for respondent.

WILSON, J. Among the ordinances adopted by the city council of Bangor regulating the purchase and sale of junk and secondhand articles, is the following:

"Section 1. No person shall within the limits of this city keep or occupy any shop, storehouse, building or place of business for the purchase, possession, storage, sale or barter of or trade in any junk, old metal, old rags, or second hand articles of personal property or articles of any kind usually handled or dealt in by junk dealers, nor shall any person keep or store such articles in any building for any purpose or permit the same to remain in any building after notice to remove them, or be a dealer in such articles unless duly licensed to be a dealer therein or purchaser of junk and secondhand articles as hereinafter provided."

Section 2 provides for the licensing of keepers of such places of business and also of suitable persons to buy by the ordinary methods of collecting such articles from house to house.

The respondent was brought before the Bangor municipal court on a complaint charging him with the violation of this ordinance. He was found guilty, and appealed to the Supreme Judicial Court, from which court the case comes before this court on an agreed statement of facts and with the following stipulation: That if the law court is of the opinion that the abovementioned part of said ordinance (which is the part in italics, the italics being ours for convenience of reference) is valid, the respondent is to be adjudged guilty, and the case remanded for sentence; otherwise the complaint is to be quashed.

The contention of the respondent is that the part of the ordinance in italics is too general, and, literally construed, would be an unreasonable interference with the rights of the individual, and is therefore void.

The ordinance, however, should be viewed as...