Wynne v. Seaboard Air Line Ry.

• Decision Date: 06 October 1913
• Citation: 79 S.E. 521,96 S.C. 1
• Parties: WYNNE v. SEABOARD AIR LINE RY.
• Court: South Carolina Supreme Court

79 S.E. 521

96 S.C. 1

WYNNE v. SEABOARD AIR LINE RY.

Supreme Court of South Carolina

October 6, 1913

Appeal from Common Pleas Circuit Court of Richland County; T. S Sease, Judge.

"To be officially reported."

Action by A. W. Wynne against the Seaboard Air Line Railway Company. Judgment for plaintiff, and defendant appeals. Affirmed.

Lyles & Lyles, of Columbia, for appellant. Rembert & Monteith, of Columbia, for respondent.

HYDRICK J.

Plaintiff recovered judgment against defendant in the court of a magistrate for $1.93 wages due him by defendant at the time he was discharged from the service of defendant, and $95 the accumulated daily penalty of $5 per day for every day's delay in payment of his said wages, after demand therefor, as allowed by section 3812 of the Civil Code of 1912, which reads as follows: "When any corporation carrying on any business in this state in which laborers are employed, whose wages, under the business rule or custom of such corporation are paid monthly or weekly on a fixed day beyond the end of the month or week in which the labor is performed, shall discharge any such laborer, the wages which have been earned by such discharged laborer shall become immediately due and payable. And if not so paid, then such laborer shall recover in addition thereto, a penalty of five dollars per day for every day after twenty-four hours until such wages are paid, to be recovered in any court of competent jurisdiction, in the same action with the wages, or in a separate action: Provided, such demand has been made upon the paymaster or other paying officer." From the judgment of the circuit court, affirming the magistrate's judgment, the defendant appealed to this court, on the ground that the statute above quoted is unconstitutional and void, because it deprives defendant of its property without due process of law, and denies to it the equal protection of the laws and the liberty of contract.

These constitutional guarantees have been so frequently and so fully considered and discussed in this court and in the Supreme Court of the United States that we shall content ourselves in the present case with the citation of only a few of the cases upon the authority of which the validity of the statute must be affirmed.

In the case of St. Louis, etc., Ry. Co. v. Paul, 173 U.S 402, 19 S.Ct. 419, 43 L.Ed. 746, the decision of the Supreme Court of the state of Arkansas, sustaining a similar statute against the same grounds of attack as here invoked, was affirmed. Except in unimportant details, that case cannot be distinguished from this. The Supreme Court of Arkansas rested its decision principally upon the ground that the statute as applied to corporations was a valid exercise of the right "to alter, revoke, or annul any charter of incorporation," which had been reserved by the state Constitution. The validity of section 3812, supra, may be affirmed upon the same ground, because both in the Constitution of 1868 (article 12, § 1) and in that of 1895 (article 9, § 2) the right to alter or repeal all charters of...