Court Opinion

ID: 9865040
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 16:21:24.941349+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:36:58.166696
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Butler,
concurring.
I concur in the decision, but wish to add to the reasons assigned for a reversal of the judgment one that seems to me to be too important toi be overlooked.
The right to revoke the license of a physician exists only by virtue of legislation enacted under the police power. To be valid, such legislation must bear a fair relation to the public health, safety, morals or welfare and tend to promote or protect the same. The legislature has no power, under the guise of police regulation, to arbitrarily invade the personal rights of an individual. It cannot provide for the revocation of a physician’s license for a mere breach of ethics not involving’ moral turpitude or dishonorable conduct. The advertisements published by Sapero were entirely harmless, and could not injuriously affect the public health, safety, morals or welfare. Their publication, therefore, did not justify the revocation of his license. While such publication may be considered unethical by some, or even many, physicians, and may even constitute ground for exclusion from a medical society, it no more justifies the revocation of a physician’s license to practice than would a mere breach *581of etiquette, or the exhibition of table manners that do not conform to the usage of polite society.
Such advertising does not come within the prohibition of the statute. If the statute attempted—and it does not —to make it a ground for the revocation of a physician’s license, it would be unconstitutional and void. It is needless to cite more than one of the cases that support this proposition. Chenoweth v. State Board of Medical Examiners, 57 Colo. 74, 141 Pac. 132. The revocation of Sapero’s license was an abuse of the board’s discretion.
For the reasons stated in the principal opinion and in this, the reversal of the judgment is proper.