Case ID: misc_90/html/0277-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Shearn, J. Pendleton, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

The City of New York, Appellant, v. 503 Fifth Avenue Company, Respondent.
    (Supreme Court, Appellate Term, First Department,
    May, 1915.)
    Penalties — action to recover for violation of ordinance in relation to electric signs — city of New York.
    In an action to recover penalties for violating the ordinance which provides that “ no electric sign shall be maintained in the city of New York contrary to the provisions of this ordinance under a penalty of ten dollars a day for each day or part of a day the same shall be so maintained,” and wherein a plain and simple method of obtaining a license is provided, it is no defense that defendant’s diligent efforts to procure a license were delayed through the stupidity or laziness of employees ’ in the license bureau.
    Pendleton, J., dissents.
    Appeal by the plaintiff from a judgment of the Municipal Court of the city of New York, borough of Manhattan, fourth district, rendered in favor of the defendant.
    Frank L. Polk, corporation counsel (Herman Stiefel and A. Judson Hyatt, of counsel), for appellant.
    Louis Gans, for respondent.
   Shearn, J.

In an action to recover penalties for violating a city ordinance requiring a license before certain acts may be lawfully done, it is no defense to show that the defendant diligently endeavored to procure a license but was delayed through the stupidity or laziness of employees in the license bureau. If such a “ defense ” may prevail, the city ordinances are so much waste paper. With a' valid ordinance such as this, the only issue in a suit for a penalty is whether the ordinance was violated.

This electric sign ordinance is reasonable and perfectly plain. It provides that: “No electric sign shall be maintained in the City of New York contrary to the provisions of this ordinance under a penalty of ten dollars a day for each day or part of a day the same shall be so maintained. ’ ’ It provides a plain and simple method of obtaining a license. The ordinance was approved July 24,1912, the sign then existing, and defendant’s application for a license is dated September 26,1913, and was issued September 29, 1913. The comment of the Appellate Division in City of New York v. Hewitt, 91 App. Div. 446, is pertinent: “ If, then, this judgment can be sustained at all, it must be upon the ground that the court may, as matter of benignity, suspend the operation of the ordinance against an individual. The court has no power of dispensation.”

Judgment reversed and new trial ordered, with costs to appellant to abide the-event.

Guy, J., concurs.

Pendleton, J.

(dissenting). I dissent on the ground that that part of an ordinance which imposes from the adoption of the ordinance a per diem penalty on the maintenance, without a license, of all existing signs, previously duly authorized, irrespective of whether good, bad, or indifferent, or dangerous or not, before reasonable opportunity to acquire a license is so unreasonable that it is invalid as an exercise of the police power. The unreasonableness is not to be determined by what has been, but what may be, done under it. City of Rochester v. West, 164 N. Y. 510, 514.

Judgment should be affirmed, with costs.

Judgment reversed and new trial ordered, with costs to appellant to abide event.