State v. Mason
| Decision Date | 27 April 1938 |
| Docket Number | 5887 |
| Citation | 78 P.2d 920,94 Utah 501 |
| Court | Utah Supreme Court |
| Parties | STATE v. MASON |
Appeal from District Court, First District, Box Elder County; M. C Harris, Judge.
W. B Mason was convicted of acting as a dealer in farm products without a license, and he appeals.
AFFIRMED.
Thatcher & Young and J. A. Howell, all of Ogden, for appellant.
Joseph Chez, Atty. Gen., and Grover A. Giles, Deputy Atty. Gen., for the State.
The primary purpose of this appeal is to test the constitutionality of chapter 4, Laws of Utah 1935, in so far as it requires a license to be obtained by persons other than commission merchants, who for the purpose of resale obtain from farmers possession or control of farm products without paying cash for the same at the time of obtaining such control or possession. Section 5 of the act provides in part as follows:
"No person shall act as a commission merchant, dealer, broker, or agent without having obtained a license as provided in this act."
Section 2 defines a "dealer" as follows:
"The term 'dealer' means any person other than a commission merchant who for the purpose of resale obtains from the producer thereof possession or control of any farm products, except by payment to the producer at the time of obtaining such possession or control, of the full agreed purchase price of such commodity in lawful money of the United States; provided, however, that the term 'dealer' as herein defined shall not be construed to include those who are regularly licensed under the laws of this state to sell tangible personal property exclusively at retail."
With this law in effect the defendant on September 5, 1935, purchased and obtained from R. S. Rice, a producer of farm products as defined by the act, for the purpose of resale a thousand bushels of barley and paid for the same by his check drawn on the Commercial Security Bank of Ogden, Utah, for the agreed full purchase price. The check was duly presented for payment and paid. At the time of the transaction defendant did not have a dealer's license. The defendant at the time of the transaction was engaged in the business of buying farm produce and giving in payment therefor his check in the same manner as he had done in this case. All the above facts were stipulated at the trial of the case. It was further stipulated
The trial was founded on the following complaint filed before a justice of the peace:
The defendant demurred. It was overruled. On the facts stipulated substantially as above set out, he was found guilty. He appealed to the district court and was again adjudged guilty. He appeals to this court to test the constitutionality of the act. Defendant assigns as error the overruling of his demurrer to the complaint, his conviction of a violation of law, and the judgment sentencing him to pay a fine of $ 5.
The defendant relies entirely for a reversal on establishing the proposition that chapter 4, Laws of Utah 1935, is unconstitutional so far as it applies to so-called dealers because, he contends, it violates section 7, article 1, of the State Constitution, and section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. The specifications are that the act, in requiring a person to take out a license in order to buy farm products on credit or by payment with a check, exempting those who buy for lawful money of the United States or those who are regularly licensed under the laws of the State to sell tangible property exclusively at retail, denies the equal protection of law and is taking property without due process of law.
A denial of the law's equal protection presupposes an unreasonable discrimination between those included and those excluded from the act whether the act confers a privilege or a right or imposes a duty or an obligation. In this case it imposes a duty and obligation to make an application and obtain a license before farm products may be purchased by any other payment than United States money. It requires the payment of $ 35 for a license and implies the right of certain investigation of the applicant by the Department of Agriculture before license and certain investigation in case of complaint.
Of course, every legislative act is in one sense discriminatory. The Legislature cannot in one act legislate as to all persons or all subject matters. It is inclusive as to some class or group and as to some human relationships, transactions, or functions and exclusive as to the remainder. For that reason, to be unconstitutional the discrimination must be unreasonable or arbitrary. A classification is never unreasonable or arbitrary in its inclusion or exclusion features so long as there is some basis for the differentiation between classes or subject matters included as compared to those excluded from its operation, provided the differentiation bears a reasonable relation to the purposes to be accomplished by the act.
Defendant claims an unreasonable discrimination in three respects: (1) Including in the operation of the act those who obtained possession or control of farm products by other than contemporaneous payment of cash and excluding those who paid contemporaneously with cash; (2) excluding those regularly licensed under the laws of the State, to sell tangible personal property "exclusively at retail"; (3) a discrimination in the class or group enjoying the intended protection in that it pertained only to farmers and excluded manufacturers and other businessmen. No question was raised as to the constitutionality on the ground that it constituted an unlawful interference with interstate commerce, so we shall not treat it in its interstate commerce aspect.
We conclude that none of the above classifications are arbitrary or unreasonable. In order to see whether the excluded classes or transactions are on a different basis than those included, we must look at the purpose of the act. The objects and purposes of a law present the touchstone for determining proper and improper classifications. The purpose of this law was to protect the farmers. From whom? From those whose credit was not good and who might, therefore, deprive him of his season's labor by hauling away the products of it and never paying. It was unnecessary to protect him against those purchasing with lawful money of the United States, hence their exemption. That was not only a reasonable distinction measured in the light of the object to be accomplished, but including cash buyers would have been useless and wholly unnecessary.
Exempting those who are regularly licensed under the laws of this State to sell tangible personal property exclusively at retail is likewise based on a difference in situation which makes it relatively unnecessary to license them as dealers. They have places of business in the State, are established, and in all likelihood have a credit rating fairly well known. They are not transients with trucks picking up farm merchandise or fly-by-nights. Viewed in the light of the purposes of the act, the exclusion of such licensed retail merchants was not unreasonable or arbitrary but rather natural and appropriate.
As to the third classification--farmers protected but not manufacturers or other businessmen. Passing over the doubt as to whether it lies in the power of one not suffering from such discrimination to raise the constitutionality on this ground (the defendant is not a person extending credit who is claiming that the law discriminates in not protecting him), it is quite clear again that there is a reasonable basis for such classification. There are very definite reasons for including one and excluding the other class which may have seemed adequate to the Legislature. We as the judiciary cannot supplant their judgment with ours. The farmer is on an entirely different basis than the manufacturer or the merchant in his ability to protect himself from itinerant purchasers. The manufacturer knows generally to whom he can extend credit. The merchant sells for cash or knows the standing of his credit customers. That here and there some shrewd and businesslike farmer may have more business acumen and be more cautious than some manufacturers or merchants does not affect the general statement. If classification of such large groups so differently situated were not possible, practical and realistic legislation would be impossible In the case of State v. Packer Corporation, 78 Utah 177, 2 P.2d 114, Packer Corporation v. Utah, 285 U.S. 105, 52 S.Ct. 273, 76 L.Ed. 643, 79 A. L. R. 546, it was held that advertisers of cigarettes in newspapers, magazines and periodicals form a class for exclusion from an act making it unlawful for such cigarette manufacturers to advertise by billboard. It should not require much strain of the imagination when the classifications can be that refined to justify a classification between farmers on one side and manufacturers and merchants or others on...
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