Source: http://openjurist.org/306/us/79
Timestamp: 2015-04-25 00:25:51
Document Index: 123681084

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 3', '§ 8', '§ 204', '§ 1', '§ 2', '§ 3', '§ 3', '§ 4']

306 US 79 Welch Co v. State of New Hampshire | OpenJurist
306 U.S. 79 - Welch Co v. State of New Hampshire	Home306 us 79 welch co v. state of new hampshire
306 US 79 Welch Co v. State of New Hampshire 306 U.S. 79
59 S.Ct. 438
83 L.Ed. 500
H. P. WELCH CO.v.STATE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE.
Argued Jan. 3, 1939.
Mr. Richard F. Upton, of Concord, N.H., for appellant.
Messrs. Dudley W. Orr, of Concord, N.H., and John E. Benton, of Washington, D.C., for the State of New Hampshire.
A statute of New Hampshire1 declares unlawful the operation on its roads of motor vehicles for specified transportation by drivers who have been continuously on duty for more than 12 hours. By this appeal we are called on to decide whether, as applied in this case, §§ 3, 4, and 8 are repugnant to the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, U.S.C.A. Const. and whether §§ 8 and 11 were superseded by the federal Motor Carrier Act, 1935, § 204,2 and regulations prescribed under it by the Interstate Commerce Commission.
The New Hampshire Act declares that the number of motor vehicles operated by carriers for hire has made regulation necessary to the end that its highways may be safer for use by the general public. § 1. It requires common and contract carriers between points within the State to register their trucks with the public service commission. § 2. Contract carriers include those, other than common carriers, who haul for hire by motor vehicle on any road of the State. § 3. Exempted from the challenged regulation are those transporting products of their own manufacture or labor (§ 3), and motor vehicles not principally engaged in the transportation of property for hire or operating exclusively in a city or town or within 10 miles of its limits or beyond the 10-mile limit on not more than two trips in 30 days. § 4.
Section 8 declares that 'It shall be unlawful for any driver to operate, or for the owner thereof to require or permit any driver to operate, any motor vehicle for the transportation of property for hire on the highways of this state when the driver has been continuously on duty for more than twelve hours, and after a driver has been continuously on duty for twelve hours it shall be unlawful for him or for the owner of the vehicle to permit him to operate any such motor vehicle on the highways of this state until he shall have had at least eight consecutive hours off duty.' Section 11 provides that for violations of the Act the commission shall have authority after notice and hearing, to suspend or revoke any registration certificate.
Appellant is a Massachusetts corporation doing intrastate and interstate business as a common and contract carrier of freight for hire by motor vehicles over public highways in that State and in New Hampshire. Approximately 99 per cent of its business is interstate. It has terminals at Boston in Massachusetts, and at Manche