State v. Byles

• Citation: 22 Wyo. 136,136 P. 114
• Decision Date: 10 November 1913
• Docket Number: 742
• Parties: STATE v. BYLES
• Court: Wyoming Supreme Court

136 P. 114

22 Wyo. 136

STATE v. BYLES

No. 742

Supreme Court of Wyoming

November 10, 1913

RESERVED QUESTIONS from the District Court, Sheridan County HON. CARROLL H. PARMELEE, Judge.

The case having been submitted to the District Court upon an agreed statement of facts, and a motion by the defendant for judgment and dismissal, upon the ground of the alleged unconstitutionality of the statute under which the case was brought and prosecuted, the constitutional questions thus raised were reserved for the decision of the Supreme Court. The material facts are stated in the opinion.

A. C Lyon and H. W. Nichols, for the defendant.

The earlier statute of 1907 contained a clause specifically declaring that the act should not apply to sales of goods in original packages as permitted by the laws of the United States applicable to interstate commerce. When the present law was enacted in 1909, the clause relating to the exemption of interstate commerce transactions of this character was omitted. The Legislature may have thereby intended that such transactions should thereafter be covered by the statute, or the beneficiaries of the statute may have found that many of their own sources of supply were being interfered with because agents selling to them did not always, or often, deal in original packages. At all events, the present statute discloses no intention to limit its application to intrastate transactions, and hence if the language of the statute is broad enough to cover strictly interstate commerce transactions the Legislative intent is apparent that the statute should extend to them. Whether the statute does, in effect, interfere with, or place a burden upon interstate commerce depends upon its effect and operation as applied to the present case. Upon the facts agreed to it is clear that the defendant was engaged in interstate commerce. A large part of his transactions constituted interstate commerce in its most strict sense. That the statute interferes with and lays a burden upon such business is also clear. (Robbins v. Taxing Dist., 120 U.S. 489; Asher v. Texas, 128 U.S. 129; Leisy v. Hardin, 135 U.S. 100; Brennan v. Titusville, 153 U.S. 287; Stockard v Morgan, 185 U.S. 27; Caldwell v. North Carolina, 187 U.S. 622; Rearick v. Pennsylvania, 203 U.S. 507; Dozier v. Alabama, 218 U.S. 124; Ex parte Stodard, (Nev.) 131 P. 133; State v. Willingham, 9 Wyo. 290, 62 P. 797). A transaction involving a sale to an individual consumer is as much interstate commerce as a similar sale to a dealer or storekeeper. It is immaterial whether the purchaser desires and expects to use and consume the article himself, or whether he hopes and expects to sell the article to someone else, who, in turn, becomes the user or consumer. The use to which the article is to be put by the purchaser has no bearing whatever upon the question whether the transaction is or is not interstate commerce. (Cases supra).

Does the statute lay an impost or duty upon imports into the State other than required by inspection laws? The act applies only by its terms to those who engage in a temporary or transient business in Wyoming. Those who have stores or fixed places of business in the State may send in their goods freely and sell them. Manufacturers, however, in other States who have no permanent place of business in this State cannot do so. Their goods are met at the border of the State, and their entrance or importation into the State is interfered with or entirely prevented except upon a condition which this State has no power to impose. There is no pretense that the act is an inspection law. In its effect and operation, therefore, it is virtually the laying of a duty or burden upon goods imported into the State from a sister State, and is levied because of the fact merely that the importer does not happen to have a permanent place of business in Wyoming.

Does the statute deny to non-residents the privileges and immunities which the residents and citizens of Wyoming enjoy, and is it, therefore, in violation of the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the Federal Constitution? It is obvious that the statute applies only to those who do not have fixed or permanent places of business within the State of Wyoming. That is the fundamental idea underlying the statute. All its terms carry out that purpose. The result is that one who has a fixed or permanent place of business in the State may himself go from place to place within the State or employ agents for that purpose, exactly as the defendant did, without incurring any of the penalties of the statute. The resident of the State, therefore, who has a store or fixed place of business, is permitted, without license and without annoyance to carry on precisely the same kind of business and in the same way for which a non-resident can be arrested and fined and imprisoned, for the sole reason that he has no store or fixed place of business within the State of Wyoming. That this effect of the statute renders it unconstitutional and void cannot admit of the slightest question. That it denies to non-residents the privileges and immunities which citizens and residents of Wyoming enjoy is too plain for argument.

The present statute was copied bodily from the Colorado law which was passed in 1905. That law was held in Colorado to be unconstitutional and void. (Smith v. Farr, 46 Colo. 364, 104 P. 401). That case was decided October 4, 1909, and subsequent to the enactment of the law in Wyoming. While the decision is not binding on this court, it is certainly entitled to great weight, for the case was given the most careful consideration, and was twice argued orally. Any statute, which by its express language or its necessary effect and operation, discriminates against non-residents or against goods raised or produced outside the State, or which discriminates in favor of residents or in favor of goods grown or produced within the State, or which makes it easy for residents of the State to comply with the law and makes it difficult, if not impossible, for non-residents to comply with the law, is plainly unconstitutional and invalid. Statutes of this sort have been common for more than a hundred years. The Colonies, before we had a government, frequently attempted to protect their own citizens and to burden the residents of other Colonies or the business of non-residents, and this fact was one of the controlling causes leading to the formation of the present government, and is the reason for the constituttional provisions prohibiting any such discrimination. Without attempting to cite all of the cases in which statutes of this kind have been held void, a few will be cited, involving statutes of the same general sort as the one now before the court, which have been declared unconstitutional on this ground of discrimination. (Bacon v. Locke, 42 Wash. 215, 83 P. 721; Ex parte Deeds, 75 Ark. 542, 87 S.W. 1030; In Re Jarvis, (Kans.) 71 P. 576; State v. Bornstein, (Me.) 78 A. 281; State v. Williams, (N. C.) 73 S.E. 1000; Rogers v. McCoy, 6 Dak. 238, 44 N.W. 990; Comm. v. Caldwell, 190 Mass. 355, 76 N.E. 955; Sayre v. Phillips, 148 Pa. St. 482, 24 A. 76; Ex parte Thomas, 71 Cal. 204, 12 P. 53; Marshalltown v. Blum, 58 Ia. 184, 12 N.W. 266; Ames v. People, 25 Colo. 508, 55 P. 725; State v. Bayer, 34 Utah 257, 97 P. 129. See also Clements v. Casper, 4 Wyo. 494, 35 P. 472). The decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States on statutes of this kind are binding upon this court. These decisions have been numerous and consistent in holding that such statutes are invalid. (Ward v. Maryland, 97 U.S. (12 Wall.) 418; Welton v. Missouri, 91 U.S. 275; Guy v. Baltimore, 100 U.S. 434; Webber v. Virginia, 103 U.S. 344). Although such statutes do not, in express terms, discriminate against non-residents or against products raised or produced in other states, they are held to be unconstitutional if they have such effect and operation. (Minn. v. Barber, 136 U.S. 313; Brimmer v. Rebman, 138 U.S. 78).

Does the statute deny to the defendant the equal protection of the laws within the prohibition of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution? Upon this question the whole matter of classification must be considered. The mere fact that the Legislature makes a classification by the statute is not sufficient to relieve it from the application of the Equality Clause of said Amendment, but to take the statute out of the prohibitory clause it must appear that the classification is based upon some reasonable ground, and not a mere arbitrary selection. (Ry. Co. v. Ellis, 165 U.S. 150; Cotting v. K. C. Stock Yards Co., 183 U.S. 79; Connolly v. Union Sewer Pipe Co., 184 U.S. 540). The statute contains a number of classifications having the effect of permitting one person or class of persons to perform acts without punishment for which another person or class of persons may be punished or imprisoned. 1. The statute is made not to apply to commercial agents or travelers selling to merchants in the usual course of business. The classification is not of itinerant vendors on the one hand and fixed merchants on the other, but it is a classification of itinerant vendors, some of them being subject to the law and others exempt. (Smith v. Farr, supra). 2. The statute applies only to manufactured goods. There seems to be no good reason for punishing itinerant vendors who sell manufactured goods and at the same time exempting those who sell goods not manufactured. 3. Persons selling books, papers, or school supplies are exempt from the operation of the statute. Hence the statute does not even apply to all who sell manufactured products.

Does the statute deprive defendant of his liberty or property without due process of law, in violation of said Fourteenth Amendment to the U. S....