State v. Jones

• Decision Date: 10 February 1926
• Docket Number: 19638.
• Citation: 137 Wash. 556,243 P. 1
• Court: Washington Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE v. JONES et al.

243 P. 1

137 Wash. 556

STATE v. JONES et al.

No. 19638.

Supreme Court of Washington

February 10, 1926

Department 2.

Appeal from Superior Court, King County; Clifford, Judge.

Elgie Jones and Howard Jones were charged with violating a county commissioners' resolution, closing road to travel by certain classes of vehicles, from conviction of the former he appeals. Affirmed.

Wright Froude, Allen & Hilen, of Seattle, for appellant.

Ewing D. Colvin and Eugene Meacham, both of Seattle, for the State.

MACKINTOSH J.

It is provided by chapter 21, Session Laws of 1921, that, whenever the condition of any county road is such that its use by vehicles would greatly damage it, the board of county commissioners is authorized to close the road to travel by all or any class of vehicles for such period as the board may determine. The law also provides the method of giving notice of the closing of the road, and further provides that any interdicted person disregarding the closing and using the road after it has been closed by notice shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.

In pursuance of this statutory authority the board of county commissioners of King county passed a resolution which recites that the board, having heard testimony and being fully advised, determines that a highway in King county would be 'greatly damaged by the following class of vehicles and for the following described purposes, to wit: All lumber trucks, logging trucks, freight trucks, of any name or description, including all motor trucks for hauling logs lumber, freight, poles, piles, wood, or shingle bolts,' and resolved that the road described should be closed for a period of approximately two months to travel by the class of vehicles described and used for the purposes mentioned.

Appellant was charged in a criminal complaint with having violated the terms of this resolution, and upon his conviction has appealed, arguing, first, that the conviction should be set aside for the reason that the commissioners acted arbitrarily and on a fundamentally wrong basis in classifying the vehicles which should be prohibited from the use of the road.

In determining whether the classification is arbitrary and unwarranted, the rule by which a classification should be tested is nowhere better stated than by the Supreme Court of the United States in Lindsley v. Natural Carbonic Gas Co., 220 U.S. 61, 31 S.Ct. 337, 55 L.Ed 369, Ann. Cas. 1912C, 160, in this language:

'(1) The equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment does not take from the state the power to classify in the adoption of police laws, but admits of the exercise of a wide scope of discretion in that regard, and avoids what is done only when it is without any reasonable basis, and therefore is purely arbitrary. (2) A classification having some reasonable basis does not offend against that clause merely because it is not made with mathematical nicety or because in practice it results in some inequality. (3) When the classification in such a law is called in question, if any state of facts reasonably can be conceived that would sustain it, the existence of that state of facts at the time the law was enacted must be assumed. (4) One who assails the classification in such a law must carry the burden of showing that

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