Court Opinion

ID: 6662232
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-07-20 21:03:02.302085+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:00:12.706524
License: Public Domain

Hamer, J.,
dissenting;
The act under consideration in this case should be entitled an act to license usurers and their assistants to live off the poor. This act is claimed to have been provided especially for the benefit of the unfortunate. The first section contains a proviso that the person who contemplates the loaning of money at the illegal rate specified and under the conditions provided shall be entitled to a license from the secretary of state to engage in his peculiar business. He is guaranteed a protection that other money-lenders do not enjoy. He is exempt from the operation of the usury law if he has a license. To gét a license he has to pay the secretary of state $60 per annum. He must also give a bond in the sum of $2,000 conditioned for the faithful performance of his duties as licensee, and the prompt payment of any judgment which may be recovered against him. Deputy inspectors shall be appointed in each county in the state and they are to inspect the books and records of these licensed money-lenders. The inspectors shall receive for their services $5 a day to be paid by the person or corporation that borrows the money. While this act purports to have been passed for the benefit- of the unfortunate who are poor, it enables the collection of oppressive rates from those who are probably distressed. I do not question the good intent of the legislators who passed the act upon the theory that they were helping somebody, but I doubt its efficiency, and I think it is *469clearly unconstitutional. It discriminates between borrowers, and compels those who are least able to pay, to pay the highest rates. It also places the licensee beyond attach. The opinion of the majority should declare the act unconstitutional and void. That would give an opportunity for a new act to be passed in which the poor become actual beneficiaries.