Opinion ID: 2224110
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: First: The Grandfather Clause and the Administrative Findings Pertaining Thereto.

Text: Quoted in Justice O'HARA'S opinion are such of the administrative findings and conclusions as to the defendant board were determinative that plaintiff's insistence upon grandfather rights, under the Act of 1927, should be denied. The facts found in such regard are amply sustained by proof which the board, only the board, was entitled to weigh, evaluate, and record as factually determinative. Such findings legally support the board's denial of plaintiff's said application provided the final question, now here for the first time, [2] is due for an affirmative answer. To this point of administrative law see Unemployment Compensation Commission of Alaska v. Aragon, 329 US 143, 153, 154 (67 S Ct 245, 91 L ed 136): Here, as in National Labor Relations Board v. Hearst Publications, Inc. (1944), 322 US 111, 131 (64 S Ct 851, 88 L ed 1170, 1184), the question presented `is one of specific application of a broad statutory term in a proceeding in which the agency administering the statute must determine it initially.' To sustain the commission's application of this statutory term, we need not find that its construction is the only reasonable one, or even that it is the result we would have reached had the question arisen in the first instance in judicial proceedings. The `reviewing court's function is limited.' All that is needed to support the commission's interpretation is that it has `warrant in the record' and a `reasonable basis in law.' National Labor Relations Board v. Hearst Publications, Inc., supra ; Rochester Telephone Corporation v. United States (1939), 307 US 125 (59 S Ct 754, 83 L ed 1147). Second: The Constitutional Question. Justice ADAMS has considered this question at length. I agree with his view that the act of 1927 is unconstitutional, yet prefer to declare my concurrence in more limited terms; terms confined strictly to the intent of this pharmacy ownership statute the better to ascertain whether it alone, tested for Federal due process, bears a real and substantial relation to the public health. From an unnumbered multitude of reasonable relation cases, wherein legislative purpose has been tested for evidence of protection of the public health, a judge may bolster his own adjudicatory purpose by selecting with care specific quotations of judicial discovery that this or that law does or does not disclose the constitutionally essential reasonable relationship. But when that judge is seated on the bench of a subordinate court, he is not free to thus pick and choose when a court to which he owes obedience has definitely determined the question he must decide, in the exact substance of fact which confronts him, and has not overruled that determination. Then the judge is constitutionally disabled from predicting, and from proceeding upon strength of such a prediction, that his superior will overrule or ignore what was supremely determined. Obedience, not forecast, is the order of the day. The possibility of reversal by overrulement is no factor of persuasion in favor of prophecy. Things are just the other way around. Reversal in such instance spells honor rather than dishonor of the judge who stands upon law as it is written rather than his estimate of what the law might become on review. See the concluding paragraphs of Bricker v. Green, 313 Mich 218 at 236 (163 ALR 697). The act of 1927 discloses no indicia of any legislative purpose except that of regulation of the ownership of pharmacies, drug stores and apothecary shops. The other and more mature act (of 1885), and now the successor thereof (of 1962), were designed alike to and have comprehensively regulated the practice of pharmacy. Hence from the beginning the acts of 1885 and 1962 have provided all  and much more  safeguards of the public health than any that might be claimed for the act of 1927. Here the controlling decision of Liggett Co. v. Baldridge, 278 US 105 (49 S Ct 57, 73 L ed 204) comes into play. The parallelism of the 1927 Pennsylvania statute held null by Liggett, with the 1927 Michigan statute examined here, is something more than striking. So is the parallelism of the earlier statutes of Pennsylvania (analyzed in Liggett at 112, 113) with the earlier (1885 as amended) statute of Michigan. These compared earlier statutes dictate our saying, of the circumstances subsisting when the legislature considered the act of 1927, [3] the same as was said by the Supreme Court of the corresponding circumstances in Pennsylvania when that State's assembly considered her said act of 1927 ( Liggett at 113): Thus, it would seem, every point at which the public health is likely to be injuriously affected by the act of the owner in buying, compounding, or selling drugs and medicines is amply safeguarded. This was the first point made by the Court in Liggett in support of its conclusion that the act of Pennsylvania bore no real and substantial relation to the public health. The next and final point made by the Court is disclosed best by quotation which requires no comment or discussion ( Liggett at 113, 114): The act under review does not deal with any of the things covered by the prior statutes above enumerated. It deals in terms only with ownership. It plainly forbids the exercise of an ordinary property right and, on its face, denies what the Constitution guarantees. A State cannot `under the guise of protecting the public, arbitrarily interfere with private business or prohibit lawful occupations or impose unreasonable and unnecessary restrictions upon them.' (Citing cases.)    We take judicial notice of the fact that the stock in these corporations is bought and sold upon the various stock exchanges of the country and, in the nature of things, must be held and owned to a large extent by persons who are not registered pharmacists. If detriment to the public health thereby has resulted or is threatened, some evidence of it ought to be forthcoming. None has been produced, and, so far as we are informed, either by the record or outside of it, none exists. The claim, that mere ownership of a drug store by one not a pharmacist bears a reasonable relation to the public health, finally rests upon conjecture, unsupported by anything of substance. This is not enough; and it becomes our duty to declare the act assailed to be unconstitutional as in contravention of the due process clause of the 14th Amendment. Pennsylvania's act of 1927 appears in full at the margin of Liggett's report, commencing with the initial paragraph of the Court's opinion. It was approved May 13, 1927. Our Act of 1927 was approved 20 days later, June 2, 1927. Excepting for inconsequential variations of wording designed principally to fit one act to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the other to the State of Michigan, and excepting a requisite of 25% stock ownership by pharmacists in one instance and a requisite of 100% such ownership in the other, the two statutes as enacted were identical of purport, purpose, and designed intent. Too, the consistently duplicative phrasing of both acts leaves something more than an inference of coincidence. Another kind of grandfather  the hired kind  must have been at work in 1927, among the legislators of both States, selling a plan to regulate the ownership of drugstores. The attorney general insists that Liggett should be discarded in favor of other more recent Supreme Court decisions cited by him. He alleges since Liggett was handed down that there has been an obvious change in position of the United States Supreme Court. Whether such change has taken place is a matter of controversial speculation drawn either from left or right reading of such recent decisions, no one of which is factually parallel to Liggett or to this case of Superx. Whatever the right of that speculation, the allegation thus made confronts this Court with still another demand that it predict a new interpretation and application of the Federal Constitution by the Supreme Court. I answer with the patience of impatience. When called upon justiciably to do so, an authoritative authority like Liggett should be followed and applied by every court of a State until the decision and its reasoning is overruled or modified by the only Court that is authorized to overrule or modify it. That Court is not this Court. The Liggett Case governs today's constitutional question. It is, perforce, something more than a precedent; a precedent which this Court might otherwise be free to accept or reject. Not having been overruled by the Supreme Court, and that Court having expressly distinguished the statute involved in Liggett from the one tested by the Court in Daniel v. Family Security Life Insurance Company, 336 US 220 (69 S Ct 550, 93 L ed 632, 10 ALR2d 945), [4] this Court upon oath is constrained to apply Liggett to the aforesaid act of June 2, 1927. To summarize: No part of the title or body of our said Act of 1927 hints at thought for the public health or anything except a legislative determination to regulate the ownership of pharmacies, drugstores, et cetera. The one object title to the act tells tersely what the exact legislative purpose was; An act to regulate the ownership of pharmacies, drug stores and apothecary shops, and to provide a penalty for the violation of the provisions of this act. The act discloses no constitutional relationship to the public health, substantial or otherwise; a subject of police power which, when the act was legislatively considered, had already been covered by a comprehensive statute regulating the practice of pharmacy. The act was and now is unconstitutional for the same reason as was given by the Supreme Court in Liggett. I therefore vote to reverse and remand for administrative reconsideration of plaintiff's pending application for pharmacy license.