Wallace v. Georgia, C. & N. Ry. Co.
| Decision Date | 18 June 1894 |
| Citation | 22 S.E. 579,94 Ga. 732 |
| Parties | WALLACE v. GEORGIA, C. & N. RY. CO. |
| Court | Georgia Supreme Court |
Syllabus by the Court.
1. The public, whether as many or one, whether as a multitude or a sovereignty, has no interest to be protected or promoted by a correspondence between discharged agents or employés and their late employers, designed, not for public, but for private, information as to the reasons for discharges, and as to the import and authorship of all complaints or communications which produced or suggested them. A statute which undertakes to make it the duty of incorporated railroad, express, and telegraph companies to engage in correspondence of this sort with their discharged agents and employés, and which subjects them in each case to a heavy forfeiture, under the name of damages, for failing or refusing to do so, is violative of the general private right of silence enjoyed in this state by all persons, natural or artificial, from time immemorial, and is utterly void, and of no effect. Liberty of speech and of writing is secured by the constitution, and incident thereto is the correlative liberty of silence, not less important nor less sacred. Statements or communications, oral or written, wanted for private information, cannot be coerced by mere legislative mandate at the will of one of the parties and against the will of the other. Compulsory private discovery, even from corporations, enforced, not by suit or action, but by statutory terror, is not allowable where rights are under the guardianship of due process of law.
2. It follows from the foregoing that the act of October 21, 1891, entitled "An act to require certain corporations to give to their discharged employés or agents the causes of their removal or discharge, when discharged or removed," is unconstitutional, and that an action founded thereon for the recovery of $5,000 as penalty or arbitrary damages fixed by the statute for noncompliance with its mandate cannot be supported.
Error from city court of Atlanta; Van Epps, Judge.
Action by one Wallace against the Georgia, Carolina & Northern Railway Company. From a judgment dismissing the action, plaintiff brings error. Affirmed.
John G. Walker and John C. Reed, for plaintiff.
Erwin & Cobb and Joseph B. Cumming, for defendant.
Judgment affirmed.
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