Source: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/238/41.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 17:06:37+00:00

Document:
[238 U.S. 41, 43] Messrs. Shepard Barclay, S. Mayner Wallace, and William R. Orthwein for plaintiff in error. [238 U.S. 41, 44] Messrs. Lee B. Ewing, John T. Barker, Attorney General of Missouri, William M. Fitch, and Shrader P. Howell for defendant in error.
This was an action brought by the state of Missouri, at the relation of the circuit attorney of the city of St. Louis, against the Mallinckrodt Chemical Works (a Missouri corporation), to forfeit its charter for failure of its officers to file with the secretary of state in the year 1910 the affidavit prescribed by 10,322, Missouri Rev. Stat. 1909, setting forth the nonparticipation of defendant in any pool, trust, agreement, combination, etc. The supreme court of the state affirmed a judgment of forfeiture (249 Mo. 702, 156 S. W. 967), and the case is brought here [238 U.S. 41, 49] upon the contention that the statute as thus enforced is repugnant to the 14th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States in that it denies to defendant and its managing officers the equal protection of the laws and deprives them of property without due process of law.
There is a motion to dismiss, based upon the ground that the Federal questions here set up were not raised in the trial court, or in the supreme court of the state, with sufficient definiteness to comply with 237, Judicial Code (act of March 3, 1911, 36 Stat. at L. 1087, 1156, chap. 231, Comp. Stat. 1913, 968, 1214). It appears, however, from the opinion of the supreme court (249 Mo. 704 (8), 733), that the question of equal protection under the 14th Amendment was treated as being sufficiently raised, and was specifically dealt with and ruled against plaintiff in error. This is sufficient to confer jurisdiction upon this court, and the motion to dismiss must be denied. North Carolina R. Co. v. Zachary, 232 U.S. 248, 257 , 58 S. L. ed. 591, 595, 34 Sup. Ct. Rep. 305, Ann. Cas. 1914C, 159.
___ the terms of which it is proposed, stipulated, provided, agreed or understood that any particular or specified article, product or commodity shall be dealt in, sold or offered for sale in this state to the exclusion, in whole or in part, of any competing article, product or commodity.
It appears that on or about July 1, 1910, the secretary of state, in obedience to the requirements of 10,322, addressed to the president of plaintiff in error a proper letter of inquiry, requiring an answer under oath, and inclosing the form of affidavit prescribed by that section, and that the corporation wilfully failed and refused to make answer by filing or causing to be filed the affidavit. Proof of these facts was held sufficient to sustain the judgment of forfeiture.
Assuming, without deciding, that all of the grounds upon which the validity of 10,322 is here attacked were properly saved in the state courts, we will discuss them in their order.
The evident purpose of that part of the affidavit to which the present criticism relates is to require an assurance under the oath of a responsible officer of the corporation that the provisions of 10,306 have not been violated.
We need not adopt this or any other precise definition of the disputed term, for if the legislative meaning be doubtful in this respect there is nothing in the record to show that this is of the least consequence to plaintiff in error. From the undisputed evidence it appears that the refusal to file the affidavit was based upon the general theory that the corporation was not obliged to make any such disclosure as is required by 10,322, and not upon the ground of any ambiguity respecting the term 'trust certificate.' [238 U.S. 41, 54] As has been often pointed out, one who seeks to set aside a state statute as repugnant to the Federal Constitution must show that he is within the class with respect to whom the act is unconstitutional, and that the alleged unconstitutional feature injures him. Plymouth Coal Co. v. Pennsylvania, 232 U.S. 531, 544 , 58 S. L. ed. 713, 719, 34 Sup. Ct. Rep. 359, and cases cited.
And it is to be assumed, in the absence of any construction of the statute by the courts of the state, that those courts will adopt such a construction as will render the enactment consistent with constitutional limitations. Bachtel v. Wilson, 204 U.S. 36, 40 , 51 S. L. ed. 357, 359, 27 Sup. Ct. Rep. 243.
The present case is altogether different from International Harvester Co. v. Kentucky, 234 U.S. 216 , 58 L. ed. 1284, 34 Sup. Ct. Rep. 853, and Collins v. Kentucky, 234 U.S. 634 , 58 L. ed. 1510, 34 Sup. Ct. Rep. 924, for there the local statutes had already been construed by the highest court of the state, and, as so construed, were held by this court to prescribe no standard of conduct that it was possible to know, and to violate the fundamental principles of justice embraced in the conception of due process of law in compelling men on peril of indictment to guess what their goods would have brought under other conditions not ascertainable.
(2) It is said that 10,322, as applied to plaintiff in error, is inconsistent with due process of law because it prescribes 'an inflexible and immutable form of affidavit,' and that the form transmitted to plaintiff in error was accompanied with official instructions that it 'will not be accepted if any changes or erasures are made in the form;' and that the statutory form includes in the jurat the year '19--,' and hence is not applicable to corporations organized, as plaintiff in error was, prior to the year 1900. The objection hardly merits serious treatment. It might as well be said that the blanks in the affidavit could not be filled up without departing from the form prescribed by the legislature. Of course, neither the statute [238 U.S. 41, 55] nor the official caution reasonably admits of any such construction.
(4) It is insisted that to require an affidavit of innocence by the managing officers of corporations is an unjust discrimination against them, and hence repugnant to the 'equal protection' provision, because individuals, partnerships, and associations of individuals, although equally within the law against monopolies ( 10,299, 10,303), are not required to make similar exculpatory affidavits. The question is whether, for the purpose of such a disclosure as is required by 10,322, corporations may be placed in one class and individuals in another. The answer is not at all difficult. Of course, corporations may not arbitrarily be selected in order to be subjected to a burden to which individuals would as appropriately be subject. Classification must be reasonable; that is to say, it must be based upon some real and substantial distinction having a just relation to the legislative object in view. But here, as in other questions of alleged conflict with constitutional requirements, every reasonable intendment is in favor of the validity of the legislation [238 U.S. 41, 56] under attack. Corporations, unlike individuals, derive their very right to exist from the laws of the state; they have perpetual succession; and they act only by agents, and often under circumstances where the agency is not manifest. The legislature may reasonably have concluded that, for these and other reasons, corporations are peculiarly apt instruments for establishing and effectuating those trusts and combinations against which the prohibition of the statute is directed, that their business affiliations are not so easily discovered and traced as those of individuals, and that there was therefore a peculiar necessity and fitness in annually requiring from each corporation a solemn assurance of its nonparticipation in the prohibited practices. The act is, in this respect, fairly within the wide range of discretion that the states enjoy in the matter of classification. Missouri, K. & T. R. Co. v. Cade, 233 U.S. 642, 650 , 58 S. L. ed. 1135, 1138, 34 Sup. Ct. Rep. 678, and cases cited.

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