Court Opinion

ID: 3601608
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2016-07-05 23:47:55.940213+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:42:46.674636
License: Public Domain

The statute that appellant insists is in derogation of the limitation placed upon the legislative power by the People, through the Constitution of the state, reads as follows: "Section 1. The Penal Code is hereby amended by inserting therein a new section, to be known as section six *Page 119 
hundred and fifteen, to read as follows: § 615. Sale of passagetickets on vessels and railroads forbidden, except by agentsspecially authorized. No person shall issue or sell, or offer to sell, any passage ticket, or an instrument giving or purporting to give any right, either absolutely or upon any condition or contingency to a passage or conveyance upon any vessel or railway train, or a berth or stateroom in any vessel, unless he is an authorized agent of the owners or consignees of such vessel, or of the company running such train, except as allowed by sections six hundred and sixteen and six hundred and twenty-two; and no person is deemed an authorized agent of such owners, consignees or company, within the meaning of the chapter, unless he has received authority in writing therefor, specifying the name of the company, line, vessel or railway for which he is authorized to act as agent, and the city, town or village together with the street and street number, in which his office is kept, for the sale of tickets."
"Section 2. Section six hundred and sixteen of the Penal Code is hereby amended so as to read as follows: § 616. Sale byauthorized agents restricted. No person, except as allowed in section six hundred and twenty-two, shall ask, take or receive any money or valuable thing as a consideration for any passage or conveyance upon any vessel or railway train, or for the procurement of any ticket or instrument giving or purporting to give a right, either absolutely or upon a condition or contingency, to a passage or conveyance upon a vessel or railway train, or a berth or stateroom on a vessel, unless he is an authorized agent within the provisions of the last section; nor shall any person, as such agent, sell, or offer to sell, any such ticket, instrument, berth or stateroom, or ask, take or receive any consideration for any such passage, conveyance, berth or stateroom, except at the office designated in his appointment, nor until he has been authorized to act as such agent according to the provisions of the last section, nor for a sum exceeding the price charged at the time of such sale by the company, owners or consignees of the vessel or railway mentioned in the ticket. Nothing in this section or chapter contained shall prevent *Page 120 
the properly authorized agent of any transportation company from purchasing from the properly authorized agent of any other transportation company a ticket for a passenger to whom he may sell a ticket to travel over any part of the line for which he is the properly authorized agent, so as to enable such passenger to travel to the place or junction from which his ticket shall read."
The remaining portion of the section relates to the redemption of tickets purchased from an authorized agent of a railway company, under certain contingencies, and within certain periods of time, and is not in anywise involved in this appeal.
Having observed how the statute reads, it will be well next to analyze it and see if we can find out what was intended to be accomplished, and is in fact accomplished, by the phraseology of the statute, in order that we may ascertain whether the statute is in contravention of any of the rights secured by the Constitution to the citizen. It will be observed in the first place that it does not prohibit the sale of tickets absolutely, nor does it limit to the particular transportation company over whose route he desires to be conveyed, the right to sell tickets to the traveler. It may be said in passing, that the last assertion is in conflict with the position taken by the learned judge who wrote the opinion of the Appellate Division; for he assumes that as only persons appointed agents can sell, the effect of the provision is that a corporation "shall only sell through its agents, and is merely a declaration that the corporation itself was to sell its tickets."
The first section and the first part of the second section do restrict the sale of passage tickets to agents specially authorized by transportation companies, and if there was nothing else in the statute upon the subject, it would bear the construction put upon it, that its only effect is to confine the right to sell passage tickets of a corporation to that corporation itself, which can act only through agents; but between the opening and the closing sentences of the second section may be found the following: "Nothing in this section or chapter contained shall prevent the properly authorized agent of any transportation *Page 121 
company from purchasing from the properly authorized agent of any other transportation company a ticket for a passenger to whom he may sell a ticket to travel over any part of the line for which he is the properly authorized agent, so as to enable such passenger to travel to the place or junction from which his ticket shall read." Thus we see that the moment a man becomes the agent of a transportation company he is by that designation authorized to buy tickets of any other transportation company in the United States or the world, and may sell such tickets to any person who applies for them. In the sale of tickets of the various transportation companies, other than those of the company of which he is an agent, he necessarily acts as a broker. He can buy the tickets and sell them again, making a profit that may perhaps depend more or less on the degree of competition between railroads in various parts of the country. Clearly, the agent of a transportation company, in the purchase and sale of tickets of foreign corporations, is not engaged in selling the passage tickets of the transportation company appointing him. It is not the sale of the tickets of his principal alone that the agent is thus engaged in; but when a transportation company appoints an agent to sell its tickets, then the state, by this statute, steps in and attempts to clothe him with the power which it takes from all other citizens to deal in the tickets of as many other transportation companies as he may be able to make satisfactory arrangements with.
This leads us to note another interesting feature of this remarkable statute. The buying and selling of passage tickets is not abolished; it is only condemned where the seller has not authority from some one of the transportation companies to act as its agent. It has happened before that for the protection of the people the lawmaking power has provided for an examination for the purpose of ascertaining whether applicants possessed suitable qualifications as to character, intelligence and financial responsibility to fill certain positions of trust, or to engage in a business which might prove dangerous to the people in the hands of a person either incompetent or *Page 122 
of bad character; but in no instance has it conferred a general and unlimited power of appointment upon a class of persons or corporations wholly unconnected with the state government. It may possibly be that there was such a situation as would have justified an enactment placing some restrictions upon those engaged in the selling of passage tickets and prescribing penalties by way of fine or imprisonment for those who should break over such restraints. Our excise legislation affords an illustration. By its provisions all are permitted to sell liquor within certain limitations that apply to all citizens alike, and for the violation of the regulations of the traffic are provided certain penalties that are expected to assure to the public some measure of protection from non-law-abiding citizens engaged in the business. But this act simply turns over to the transportation companies the selection of those who are hereafter to be permitted to sell tickets. It imposes no restraints whatever upon the appointing power, nor upon the agents selected, other than that in the purchase of tickets he must confine himself to the properly authorized agents of the transportation companies. The business of buying and selling tickets, as to such agents, continues to be a legitimate business, but to all citizens other than those who may be selected by the transportation companies, the right to buy and sell tickets is denied and an actual sale by them constitutes a felony. The act itself is silent as to the motive of its enactment by the legislature, and it contains no suggestion as to the public interests which its purpose is to subserve.
Ticket brokerage as a business has been in existence for many years. It is a matter of common knowledge that at great agencies such as Cook's and Gaze's, tickets can be purchased over a great portion of the transportation routes of the world. Intending travelers in great numbers have gone to those agencies for advice as to choice of routes to be taken in contemplated journeys and to purchase the tickets for the trip, whether it should require days, or weeks, or months to make it. The traveling public in large numbers have come to make use of the facilities afforded by such agencies, of *Page 123 
which there are now very many. And Cook's and Gaze's are among the agencies that must go out of business in this state if this statute can live, unless some transportation company shall deem it wise to clothe them with the authority to act as its agents.
It is asserted by counsel that the traveling public and the transportation companies have been so defrauded by the acts of the brokers in the selling of unused or alleged to be unused passage tickets, as to call for legislation of a protective character, of which this statute is the outcome. The tendency of the times undoubtedly is to rush to the legislature for a cure for all the grievances of citizens, whether real or imaginary, and many novel experiments in legislation are the result. But usually in case of wrongs penalties have been provided. It is novel legislation indeed that attempts to take away from all the people the right to conduct a given business because there are wrongdoers in it, from whose conduct the people suffer. But where in the statute is to be found the evidence that its purpose is to prevent fraud? "In the title of the act," answers counsel, and with that answer he has to be content. For while the act is entitled "Frauds in the sale of passage tickets," the body of the statute does not contain any reference to forged, altered, used or stolen tickets. The sale of such tickets is made a punishable offense under other sections of the Penal Code. The provisions of the act, therefore, have reference to the selling of valid tickets, regularly issued by a transportation company. Can the legislature declare such sales to be fraudulent, or prohibit them on the ground that it tends to prevent fraud? If the act prohibited is fraudulent, there can be no doubt that the legislature, under its police power, may provide for its punishment; but whether it may, under such power, interdict the sale of a valid ticket by one person to another upon the pretext that fraud will thus be prevented, presents a very different question. I confess I am unable to see how such a sale defrauds a transportation company. If a transportation company sells a ticket from New York to San Francisco, it undertakes to carry the holder from one *Page 124 
place to the other. It costs the company no more to carry one person than it does the other. How then can it be defrauded or in any way prejudiced by the transfer of such a ticket by the purchaser to another person? It is said that the prohibition of such a sale tends to protect the traveler from being defrauded. If it is a sale of a valid ticket, no fraud can possibly result, and if it is not a sale of a valid ticket, then the sale is fraudulent and is prohibited by other provisions of the Penal Code.
Only one prop remains which it is pretended can support the weight of this statute, and that is, that the penal laws not having proved sufficiently efficacious to wholly prevent fraud, an emergency is presented which justifies the taking away from the general public the right to engage in the business of ticket selling.
It is not contended that the business of ticket brokerage is in itself of a fraudulent character. The business can be honestly conducted; it has been so conducted in the past by honest men engaged in it; and the most that is asserted is that there are some men engaged in the business who have imposed on the public. The same assertion can be made with equal truth of every business, trade and profession. Because some coal dealers and vendors in sugar cheat in weight, and dealers in paints and oil in measurements, and in tobacco in quality, it has not hitherto, we venture to say, been thought the proper remedy to make it a felony for persons to hereafter engage in such business, unless they shall have been duly appointed as agents by the corporations manufacturing or producing the product.
Still another motive for this enactment is suggested, and that is that its real purpose is to enable transportation companies to compel others with which they may enter into pooling arrangements to preserve their agreement from secret violation, which is frequently the outcome under the present ticket brokerage system, which offers an avenue by which the weaker corporation to such an agreement can dispose of its tickets at a price lower than that agreed upon. This subject received *Page 125 
judicial attention in Nashville, C.  St. L. Ry. Co. v.McConnell (82 Fed. Rep. 65) and Minnesota v. Corbett
(57 Minn. 345), where statutes, having apparently the same object in view as this one, were under consideration, as will appear from the following extract from the opinion: "It was also commonly believed that, in order to evade statutes designed to secure uniformity of rates and to prevent discriminations, some carriers of passengers were in the habit of placing large blocks of their tickets with `scalpers,' ostensibly not their agents, for sale at cut rates. To remedy these and similar abuses, real or supposed, this statute was passed. That all its provisions have some relation to, and tendency to accomplish, this end, is quite clear."
Counsel argue that the helpfulness of the ticket broker in securing to the traveling public the benefits of such competition was of such a fraudulent character as to wholly justify the legislation, and appeal to the decisions quoted from in support of such contention. But we pass for the present the subject of motive, to be again referred to when we come to consider whether, under the police power, the legislation can be justified. Whatever the legislature's motive, the fact is, that it has passed an act which does not declare ticket brokerage unlawful, for it allows any person who may be fortunate enough to secure an appointment as agent for a transportation company to engage in ticket brokerage; but the act does declare that if any person, other than an agent of a transportation company, undertakes to engage in the passenger ticket brokerage business he shall be guilty of a felony; in other words, that it is unlawful for all citizens of New York to engage in the buying and selling of passage tickets unless empowered to do so by the written appointment of a transportation company.
Much has been said in argument with reference to this statute in a more agreeable vein, placing the statute in a somewhat more attractive form, but it is as well to go beneath the surface and get at the truth, which is that the statute was intended to and does in fact vest the control of the sale of *Page 126 
passage tickets within this state, not only of transportation companies doing business in this state, but throughout the world, exclusively in the hands of such companies.
The business of selling passage tickets continues, therefore, to be regarded as a lawful and legitimate business. Public policy is still declared to favor a business which recognizes the propriety of the middleman between the passenger and the transportation company, but the right to engage in it is denied to the general public.
The question then is whether the organic law prohibits legislation of this character.
Before referring to the provisions of the Constitution that it is confidently asserted condemn such legislation, it may not be out of place to note that the granting of monopolies or exclusive privileges to corporations or persons has been regarded as an invasion of the rights of others to follow a lawful calling and an infringement of personal liberty, from the times of the reigns of Elizabeth and James. The statute of 21 Jac., abolishing monopolies, has been from the time of its enactment regarded as a statutory landmark of English liberty, and that nation has jealously preserved it. It was a part of that inheritance which our fathers brought with them and incorporated into the organic law, to the end that the lawmaking power should be restrained from interference with it.
In this connection the language employed by Mr. Justice FIELD in Butchers' Union Co. v. Crescent City Co. (111 U.S. 746,756, 757) is most instructive. "As in our intercourse with our fellowmen certain principles of morality are assumed to exist, without which society would be impossible, so certain inherent rights lie at the foundation of all action, and upon a recognition of them alone can free institutions be maintained. These inherent rights have never been more happily expressed than in the Declaration of Independence, that new evangel of liberty to the people: `We hold these truths to be self-evident' — that is so plain that their truth is recognized upon their mere statement — `that all men are endowed' — not by *Page 127 
edicts of emperors, or decrees of Parliament, or acts of Congress, but `by their Creator, with certain inalienable rights' — that is, rights which cannot be bartered away, or given away, or taken away except in punishment of crime — `and that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and to secure these' — not grant them but secure them — `governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.' Among these inalienable rights, as proclaimed in that great document, is the right of men to pursue their happiness, by which is meant the right to pursue any lawful business or vocation, in any manner not inconsistent with the equal rights of others, which may increase their prosperity or develop their faculties, so as to give to them their highest enjoyment. The common business and callings of life, the ordinary trades and pursuits, which are innocuous in themselves, and have been followed in all communities from time immemorial, must, therefore, be free in this country to all alike upon the same conditions. The right to pursue them, without let or hindrance, except that which is applied to all persons of the same age, sex, and condition, is a distinguishing privilege of citizens of the United States, and an essential element of that freedom which they claim as their birthright. * * * In this country it has seldom been held, and never in so odious a form as is here claimed, that an entire trade and business could be taken from citizens and vested in a single corporation. Such legislation has been regarded everywhere else as inconsistent with civil liberty. That exists only where every individual has the power to pursue his own happiness according to his own views, unrestrained, except by equal, just, and impartial laws."
From the opinion of Mr. Justice MATTHEWS in Yick Wo v.Hopkins (118 U.S. 356, 370) the following is taken: "But the fundamental rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, considered as individual possessions, are secured by those maxims of constitutional law which are the monuments showing the victorious progress of the race in securing to men *Page 128 
the blessings of civilization under the reign of just and equal laws, so that, in the famous language of the Massachusetts Bill of Rights, the government of the commonwealth `may be a government of laws and not of men.' For, the very idea that one man may be compelled to hold his life, or the means of living, or any material right essential to the enjoyment of life, at the mere will of another, seems to be intolerable in any country where freedom prevails, as being the essence of slavery itself."
These principles have also been incorporated into the organic law of this state. Article 1, section 1 of the State Constitution reads as follows: "No member of this state shall be disfranchised, or deprived of any of the rights or privileges secured to any citizen thereof, unless by the law of the land, or the judgment of his peers."
Article 1, section 6 of the State Constitution provides that "no person shall * * * be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law." The word "liberty," as employed in the provision of the Constitution quoted, was considered by this court in In re Jacobs (98 N.Y. 98) in a masterful opinion by Judge EARL. He said (pp. 106, 107): "So, too, one may be deprived of his liberty and his constitutional rights thereto violated without the actual imprisonment or restraint of his person. Liberty, in its broad sense as understood in this country, means the right, not only of freedom from actual servitude, imprisonment or restraint, but the right of one to use his faculties in all lawful ways, to live and work where he will, to earn his livelihood in any lawful calling, and to pursue any lawful trade or avocation. All laws, therefore, which impair or trammel these rights, which limit one in his choice of a trade or profession, or confine him to work or live in a specified locality, or exclude him from his own house, or restrain his otherwise lawful movements (except as such laws may be passed in the exercise by the legislature of the police power, which will be noticed later), are infringements upon his fundamental rights of liberty, which are under constitutional protection." *Page 129 
In People v. Marx (99 N.Y. 377) this court declared unconstitutional a statute that prohibited the manufacture and sale of any substitute for butter or cheese produced from pure unadulterated milk or cream. Judge RAPALLO, speaking for the court, said: "Among these no proposition is now more firmly settled than that it is one of the fundamental rights and privileges of every American citizen to adopt and follow such lawful industrial pursuits, not injurious to the community, as he may see fit. The term `liberty,' as protected by the Constitution, is not cramped into a mere freedom from physical restraint of the person of the citizen, as by incarceration, but is deemed to embrace the right of man to be free in the enjoyment of the faculties with which he has been endowed by his Creator, subject only to such restraints as are necessary for the common welfare."
In People v. Gillson (109 N.Y. 389) a statute was declared to be unconstitutional which prohibited the sale of any article of food, or offering or attempting to do so, upon any representation or inducement that anything else would be delivered as a prize, premium or reward to the purchaser. Judge PECKHAM, in delivering the opinion of the court, after considering the statute, said (p. 399): "A liberty to adopt or follow for a livelihood a lawful industrial pursuit, and in a manner not injurious to the community, is certainly infringed upon, limited, perhaps weakened or destroyed by such legislation."
Argument certainly is not needed in the light of these decisions to support the assertion that the "liberty" of this relator and other citizens of this state to engage in the business of brokerage in passage tickets is sought to be interfered with by the statute under consideration, for brokerage in such tickets has been a lawful business in this state for many years, and many persons have pursued it. It is still a lawful business, although the right to engage in it is limited to such persons as may be appointed by the transportation companies. The statute is, therefore, in contravention of the State Constitution, and is void unless its enactment by the legislature constituted *Page 130 
a valid exercise of the police power. That power is very broad and comprehensive, and has not as yet been fully described or its extent plainly limited, but it is exercised to promote the health, comfort, safety and welfare of society. In each of the last three cases cited it was invoked by counsel to sustain a statute, and it received very careful consideration at the hands of this court. It was held that the power, however broad and extensive, is not above the Constitution, in obedience to the commands of which the courts will protect the rights of individuals from invasion under the guise of police regulations, when it is manifest that such is not the object and purpose of the regulation; and while it is the general province of the legislature to determine what laws and regulations are needed to protect the public health, comfort and safety, courts must be able to say, upon a perusal of the enactment, that there is some fair and reasonable connection between it and the ends above mentioned. Unless such relation exists, an enactment cannot be upheld as an exercise of the police power.
The doctrine of these cases was very recently considered and reasserted by this court in Colon v. Lisk (153 N.Y. 188), and its further discussion at this time would be a work of supererogation. Under the law of this state, therefore, it is the duty of the courts to examine legislation complained of as in violation of the rights secured to the citizens by the Constitution, for the purpose of ascertaining whether the health, morals, safety or welfare of the public justifies its enactment. In passing, it may be observed that while it is undoubtedly the rule that railroads, steamboats, warehouses and other associations of that nature, impressed with a public duty and intended to perform certain quasi public functions, may be the subject of legislative control and regulation so long as the legislature does not transcend the limit of State or Federal Constitution, still that rule is without application to the features of the statute before the court on this review. This inquiry involves such portion of the statute only as undertakes to prohibit citizens of the state from engaging in the brokerage *Page 131 
business in passage tickets. That portion of the statute certainly places no burden upon transportation companies, nor does it in any way regulate the manner in which transportation companies shall conduct their business or any part of it. The legislature has no jurisdiction to regulate the methods of business of foreign transportation companies, nor can it prevent them from selling their passage tickets in this state, but by this act it does undertake to prevent any citizen of this state from purchasing the passage tickets of foreign companies for sale to others, unless such citizen shall have been regularly appointed an agent by some transportation company. The right hitherto exercised by citizens to deal in passage tickets over transportation routes without, as well as within, this state, is sought to be cut off.
Again, it may be conceded that it is within the power of the legislature to regulate the manner in which certain kinds of business may be conducted; that it may require one seeking to engage in a given pursuit to secure from the state, or one of its agents, a license; that it may require one pursuing any particular occupation to pay a tax for the privilege of conducting his business; and that, as a condition to the right of carrying on a business that, in the hands of incompetent persons, may be productive of injury to others, the legislature may require that before engaging therein, one must satisfy the public authorities that he is competent and morally qualified to conduct it. But none of these methods was adopted. No attempt is made to exclude persons of bad character from engaging in the business, nor are the public authorities given the right to determine, by examination or otherwise, the character of the person to be engaged in it; but the transportation companies alone are invested with the power to allow whomsoever they will to engage in the business.
Nor can the contention be tolerated that because there have been, in times past, dishonest persons engaged in the ticket brokerage business, with the result that frauds have been perpetrated on both travelers and transportation companies, therefore the legislature can deprive every citizen *Page 132 
engaged therein of the "liberty" to further conduct such business. Stringent rules undoubtedly may be enacted to punish those who are guilty of dishonest practices in the conduct of such a business and the machinery of the law put in motion for its rigorous enforcement; but to cut up, root and branch, a business that may be honestly conducted to the convenience of the public and the profit of the persons engaged in it, is beyond legislative power.
If the law were otherwise no trade, business or profession could escape destruction at the hands of the legislature if a situation should arise that would stimulate it to exercise its power, for in every field of endeavor can be found men that seek profit by fraudulent processes. Transportation tickets have been forged it is said; so have notes, checks and bank bills. Railroad companies are no more bound to honor forged tickets than the alleged maker of a forged note is bound to pay it. An innocent person who suffers by parting with his money on a forged ticket has his remedy against the vendor just the same as has the bank that discounts a forged note. Such instances might be multiplied, but it would serve no good purpose, for it is well known that no business can be suggested through which innocent parties may not be occasionally victimized. But, because of that fact, honest men cannot be prevented from engaging in their chosen occupations.
Again, it is said that ticket brokers enable the railroads to engage in unfair competition. This is accomplished by the sale to the broker by a competing railroad, at much less than the regular rates, of a block of tickets that the broker is enabled to sell to his customers, and this to a certain extent takes travel from its competitors. An opinion is cited in which the court in another jurisdiction denounces the ticket scalper for engaging in a business of this character and pronounces such business fraudulent alike in its conception and operation; but we pass this opinion without other comment than to say that whatever may be regarded as the law in other jurisdictions, in this one it is well established that the public *Page 133 
welfare is best subserved by the encouragement of competition (People v. Sheldon, 139 N.Y. 263; Judd v. Harrington, Id. 105), and hence this so called reason furnishes no support to the claim that this legislation was for the public good.
I have now called attention to all the arguments that have been advanced in support of the claim that the provisions of the statute under consideration are so evidently intended for the public good as to constitute a valid exercise of the police power by the legislature, and those arguments seem so wholly without merit as to suggest that they constitute a mere pretext put forward to uphold legislation hostile to the liberty of the citizen, as that word is used in the Constitution. If the views expressed be well founded, it follows that it is the duty of the court to declare that portion of the statute we have considered to be in contravention of the Constitution and void.
The order should be reversed and the prisoner discharged.