Court Opinion

ID: 9763391
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 02:43:55.822051+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:57:12.308758
License: Public Domain

Condon, C. J.,
dissenting. I dissent for the following reasons. On the view that I take of 'the questions propounded in paragraphs 1 and 2 it will not be necessary to consider paragraphs 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7. With reference to paragraph 1, respondent contends that the fair trade act is an unlawful delegation of legislative power to private persons ■in violation of art. Ill and art. IV, secs. 1 and 2, of the stat-e constitution. And as to the questions raised by paragraph 2, it contends that the act is an unreasonable exercise of the police power and therefore invalid.
*514There is in my opinion merit in each of those contentions insofar as they are restricted to that portion of the act, frequently referred to as the nonsigner provision, which makes liable to- a suit for damages any person whether a party to a fair trade -contract or not who wilfully and knowingly advertises, offers for sale or sells any commodity at less than the price stipulated in any such contract. G. L. 1956, §6-12-5. In the case at bar respondent is alleged to have violated that section and therefore the validity thereof is the only question of doubt and importance that may be properly certified for our determination. The question is stated more broadly in the decree of certification but in their briefs and oral arguments before us the parties have confined their respective contentions, as they should, only to the question of the constitutional validity of the non-signer provision of the act. I shall hereinafter likewise confine my discussion to that question.
In my opinion chap. 12 of title 6 although entitled a fair trade act is in reality a price-fixing statute. The fundamental objective of the act is to make lawful that which would otherwise be unlawful. Thus §6-12-5 purports to confer authority upon a private person to fix the price at which his product may be resold in the ordinary course of trade by one who has purchased it without any contractual arrangement with the producer as to such resale price. The legislative act does not itself fix the price. In that respect the act is incomplete. Until the producer fixes the price by contract with at least one purchaser there is no law which ■binds a purchaser of the product against reselling it at any price he chooses.
In other words there remains one more legislative step to be taken and this the legislature has delegated to the producer, namely, the plenary power to act or not act in any manner he sees fit. More than that, if and when he acts and fixes a price he may at any time thereafter alter or repeal such price without obtaining further legislative *515permission. Obviously the net effect of all this is to give the producer carte blanche to enact his own price law according to his arbitrary whim or caprice. The legislature thus makes the existence of its legislative enactment as a binding law dependent upon the will of another. This it cannot constitutionally do. “The General Assembly can not call to their aid any other body, and make the existence of a law depend, in whole or in part, upon the will of such other body.” State v. Copeland, 3 R. I. 33, 35.
In Copeland the statute authorized the legal voters to vote on the question of repealing a certain legislative act. The vote was against repeal. Copeland when prosecuted for violating the act contended that the reference to the voters rendered it invalid as an unlawful delegation of legislative power. But since the vote was against repeal it was held that the act remained in full force and effect as it was before the referendum. However, the court pointed out that had the vote gone the other way “a question might then have been raised whether the law were not still in force, whether an act which had been constitutionally passed and put in force by the General Assembly could be repealed by the acts, or at the will of any other body.”'
In those states where the nonsigner provision has been attacked on this particular ground there is a marked division of authority. In the earliest case which has come to my attention the New York Court of Appeals in an opinion by Chief Judge Crane •unanimously held such aprovisionwas an unconstitutional delegation of price-fixing power. Doubleday, Doran & Co. v. R. H. Macy & Co., 269 N. Y. 272. To fix arbitrarily the price of books by legislation and not by agreement, the court said, “comes within the condemnation of the decisions which have heretofore dealt with like legislation. What the Legislature cannot do directly it cannot do indirectly nor does it cease to be a price fixed by the Legislature because that body has clothed the publisher with the power or authority to establish it. For a pub*516lisher to agree with its subsidiary or agent to the price of a book which shall thereafter bind all other parties who purchase like books from the publisher is in reality a method whereby the Legislature fixes the price; it is a species of delegated authority.”
Doubleday was decided January 7, 1936. Subsequently on June 17, 1936 the Illinois supreme court came to a contrary conclusion and upheld a similar provision in its fair trade act. Seagram-Distillers Corp. v. Old Dearborn Distributing Co., 363 Ill. 610. On appeal to the United States Supreme Court that holding was affirmed on federal grounds and the court also took occasion to say that in its opinion the nonsigner provision was not an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power. Old Dearborn Distributing Co. v. Seagram-Distillers Corp., 299 U. S. 183 (October term 1936).
Thereafter the question again came before the New York Court of Appeals in Bourjois Sales Corp. v. Dorfman, 273 N. Y. 167. Out of deference to the United States Supreme Court and in accordance with a long-established policy of its own, the court of appeals speaking again through Chief Judge Crane overruled Doubleday, Doran & Co. v. R. H. Macy & Co. and sustained .the nonsigner provision. In doing so, however, it did not advance any reason contra to its holding in Doubleday that the provision was an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power.
Bourjois was decided on March 9, 1937. Since then that decision has been reaffirmed in a series of cases, the most recent being General Electric Co. v. Masters, Inc., 307 N. Y. 229, decided in June 1954. New York is therefore listed among the states in which its court of last resort has upheld the nonsigner provision as constitutional. But as I read the later opinions I am unable to find anything therein tending to refute the soundness of the reasoning in Doubleday that the nonsigner provision was an unconstitutional delegation of legislative price-fixing power. Only a fixed *517policy of deferring to the United States Supreme Court prompted the New York Court of Appeals to reverse its own well-reasoned position. This court has no such fixed policy. Where a federal question is not involved we accord the opinions of the United States Supreme Court the highest consideration but we do not deem them necessarily controlling.
However, after Old Dearborn was handed down, an increasing number of state courts of last resort following the example of the New York Court of Appeals accepted it as a persuasive precedent and for a time it appeared that the weight of authority favored the view that the nonsigner provision as well as the rest of the fair trade act was constitutional. This trend continued through the depressed thirties and war-ravaged forties. But thereafter beginning about 1950 a pronounced change to the contrary set it. More and more state courts upon examining the problem with greater care, and free from the pervasive influence of the winds of new economic and social doctrines that blew so strongly through the thirties, definitely declared the non-signer provision unconstitutional; some because it violated due process or was an unreasonable exercise of the police power, and some because it was an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power.
As of the present writing it would appear that the weight of authority now supports this later view. It would needlessly lengthen this opinion to enumerate the cases here since they are cited in full in Bulova Watch Co. v. Zale Jewelry Co., Wyo., 371 P.2d 409, 413, decided May 8, 1962. Of the cases cited as holding the nonsigner provision unconstitutional the following declared it an unlawful delegation of legislative power: Olin Mathieson Chemical Corp. v. White Cross Stores, Inc., No. 6, 414 Pa. 95; Bulova Watch Co. v. Robinson Wholesale Co., 252 Iowa 740; Remington Arms Co. v. G.E.M. of St. Louis, Inc., 257 Minn. 562: Union Carbide & Carbon Corp. v. Bargain Fair, Inc., 167 Ohio St. *518182; Bissell Carpet Sweeper Co. v. Shane Co., 237 Ind. 188; Olin Mathieson Chemical Corp. v. Francis, 134 Colo. 160; General Electric Co. v. Wahle, 207 Ore. 302.
In the last-cited case the Oregon supreme court, referring ■to the absence of an agreement by the nonsigners, said at page 328: “ 'This leaves wholly to persons outside of the legislature the power to determine whether there shall be a law at all and, if there is to be a law, what the terms of that law shall be. It is impossible to conceive of a more complete delegation of legislative power * * ” In a separate concurring opinion Lusk, J., declared at page 336: “The fact that the commodities are identified by a trade-mark, brand, or the name of the owner or distributor, is irrelevant to the present question. It is none the less price fixing, -determined not by the legislature itself, nor by a board or commission acting under legislative authority, but by private individuals.”
In Olin Mathieson Chemical Corp. v. Francis, supra, the Colorado supreme court said at page 172: “The General Assembly itself has no power to fix the prices of merchandise sold on the open market, it follows that it cannot lawfully delegate such authority to another, who may at his election, alter such resale price according to his personal whim or caprice and for his own benefit. Except under the police power in a proper case, no right reposes in the General Assembly to fix prices at which an owner of property shall sell that which he owns and offers to sell.”
Those declarations of the Oregon and' Colorado courts are quoted at some length because they are illustrative of the well-considered views of all the courts which have held the nonsigner provision to be an unlawful delegation of legislative power. Many more could be quoted which pursue the same line of reasoning but to avoid extending this opinion to unnecessary length I refrain from further quotation and refer the reader to the cases hereinabove cited. It is sufficient to' say that in my opinion they are in keeping with the *519general principle enunciated by this court in State v. Copeland, supra, and therefore they may with good warrant be cited as authorities. Hence, I would answer the question propounded in paragraph 1 as follows: That portion of §6-12-5 referred to as the nonsigner provision is invalid in that it is an unlawful delegation of legislative power in violation of art. Ill and art. IY, secs. 1 and 2, of the state constitution.
Since I have already stated that the fair trade act regardless of its title is in reality a price-fixing statute, it will not be necessary to prolong this opinion in answering the question propounded in paragraph 2. Insofar as the non-signer provision is concerned, the act is clearly an unreasonable exercise of the police power. Shakespeare Co. v. Lippman’s Tool Shop Sporting Goods Co., 334 Mich. 109; Skaggs Drug Center v. General Electric Co., 63 N.M. 215; Bissell Carpet Sweeper Co. v. Shane Co., 237 Ind. 188.
In the last cited case at page 199 the court said: “The General Assembly has no right to abdicate its legislative power to private persons, nor could it even delegate to a governmental agency the power to find what might be a reasonable price without proper safeguards and procedural due process.” And in a separate concurring opinion three other members of the court took occasion to emphasize that even then it must clearly appear that the business in which prices were -thus fixed was affected with a public interest.
It is too obvious for further discussion that in the case at bar there is not the slightest suggestion of such a public interest. As the Michigan court said in Shakespeare Co. v. Lippman’s Tool Shop Sporting Goods Co., supra, the non-signer provision was “outside the scope of the police power of the State inasmuch as it bore no reasonable relation to public morals, health, safety or the general welfare.” To the same effect are Skaggs Drug Center v. General Electric Co., supra, and Cox v. General Electric Co., 211 Ga. 286.
*520Factor, Chernick & Hillman, William C. Hillman; Need-ham, Silverstein & Shatkin, Thomas N. Needham; Seifert Rothwell & Mandell, Thomas A. Rothwell (New York), amici curiae, for complainant.
Abedon & Abedon, Herbert J. Abedon, Bernard B. Abe-don; Levy, Carroll, Jacobs & Kelly, Daniel Jacobs, amicus curiae, for respondent.
With such views I concur and hence I would answer the question propounded in paragraph 2 as follows: That portion of §6-12-5 known as the nonsigner provision is in-, valid in that it is an improper and unreasonable exercise of the police power in violation of art. I, sec. 2, of the state constitution.
Powers, J., concurs in the dissenting opinion of Condon, C.J.