State v. Crawford

• Decision Date: 08 July 1913
• Citation: 74 Wash. 248,133 P. 590
• Parties: STATE v. CRAWFORD et al.
• Court: Washington Supreme Court

133 P. 590

74 Wash. 248

STATE v. CRAWFORD et al.

Supreme Court of Washington

July 8, 1913

Department 1. Appeal from Superior Court, King County; J. T. Ronald and John F. Main, Judges.

W. R Crawford and another were convicted of a violation of the public service commission law in the county court, and upon an appeal to the superior court, a demurrer to the complaint was sustained. From the judgment of the superior court, the State appeals. Affirmed.

W. V Tanner and Stephen V. Carey, both of Olympia, and John F Murphy and S. H. Steele, both of Seattle, for the State.

Scott Calhoun, of Seattle, for respondents.

GOSE J.

Section 25 of the public service commission law (Laws 1911, p. 558) provides: 'No street railroad company shall charge, demand, or collect more than five cents for one continuous ride within the corporate limits of any city or town. * * * Section 95 of the act is as follows: 'Every officer, agent or employé of any public service company, who shall violate or fail to comply with, or who procures, aids or abets any violation by any public service company of any provision of this act, or who shall fail to obey, observe or comply with any order of the commission, or any provision of any order of the commission, or who procures, aids, or abets any such public service company in its failure to obey, observe and comply with any such order or provision, shall be guilty of a gross misdemeanor.' The Code (Rem. & Bal. § 2267) provides: 'Every person convicted of a gross misdemeanor for which no punishment is prescribed in any statute in force at the time of conviction and sentence, shall be punished by imprisonment in the county jail for not more than one year, or by a fine of not more than one thousand dollars, or by both.' The defendants were prosecuted, convicted and sentenced in the justice court of Seattle precinct, King county, for an alleged violation of the provisions of section 25 of the public service commission law. The charge is that the defendants, being the officers, employés, agents, and servants of the Seattle, Renton & Southern Railway Company, a railway corporation operating a street railway within the corporate limits of the city of Seattle, unlawfully charged and collected from the complaining witness a 10-cent fare for one continuous ride within the corporate limits of the city. Upon appeal to the superior court a demurrer to the complaint was sustained. The state prosecutes an appeal.

The point urged by the respondents in support of the judgment is that the railway company is, by the terms of the statute, denied the equal protection of the law, and that its property is liable to be taken without due process of law, because it may only have a hearing upon a claim of the unconstitutionality of the statute, at the risk, if mistaken, of being subjected to such heavy and successive penalties as to practically foreclose it of the right to litigate that question. This view has received the sanction of the Supreme Court of the United States. Ex parte Young, 209 U.S. 123, 28 S.Ct. 441, 52 L.Ed. 714, 13 L. R. A. (N. S.) 932, 14 Ann. Cas. 764. A like principle was announced in Ex parte Wood (C. C.) 155 F. 190.

In the Young Case certain stockholders of the Northern Pacific Railway Company brought suit in the federal court against the company, the members of the State Railroad and Warehouse Commission, and the Attorney General of the state of Minnesota. The object of the suit was to prevent compliance with the provisions of certain acts of the Legislature of the state of Minnesota and certain orders of the State Railroad and Warehouse Commission, prescribing the rates which should be charged for transportation of passengers and commodities upon railroads within the state. The bill, among other things, prayed that the Attorney General and the members of the commission be enjoined from enforcing the provisions of the several acts. The court gave a temporary restraining order as prayed for. On the next day the state, on the relation of its Attorney General, commenced an action in the state court against the railway company, the object of which was to compel the company to put into effect the rates and charges fixed by the laws of the state. Thereupon, and in response to a rule to show cause why he should not be punished as for contempt, the Attorney General after a hearing, was held to be in contempt of the federal court, out of which the temporary restraining order had issued. He thereupon sued out a writ of habeas corpus in the federal Supreme Court. In discussing the effect of extreme and cumulative penalties in the several legislative acts, the court said: 'It may therefore be said that when the penalties for disobedience are by fines so enormous and imprisonment so severe as to intimidate the company and its officers from resorting to the courts to test the...