Court Opinion

ID: 9615837
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:41:10.548761+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:03:52.566104
License: Public Domain

Duckworth, Chief Justice,
concurring specially. The demurrer challenges the provisions of the amended act authorizing the Board to fix prices of milk, upon the grounds that it offends the due-process clause of the Federal Constitution, and that it offends the due-process clause of the State Constitution. In so far as the Federal question is concerned, we are precluded by the decision in Nebbia v. New York, 291 U. S. 502, and would be required to sustain the act as against the attack based upon the Federal Constitution. However, I think that, in view of the irreconcilable conflict in numerous decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, considerable light upon the question before us will be gained by referring to a few of those decisions. In the first place, it should be noted that the Nebbia decision has the concurrence of only five Justices, and that the. strong dissenting opinion by Mr. Justice McReynolds is concurred in by Justices Van Devanter, Sutherland, and Butler. In Adkins v. Children’s Hospital, 261 U. S. 525, 545 (43 Sup. Ct. 394, 67 L. ed. 785, 24 A. L. R. 1238), it was said: “That the right to contract about one’s affairs is a part of the liberty of the individual protected by this clause [fifth amendment], is settled by the decisions of this Court and is no longer open to question.” Such a positive declaration by that court would appear to have put at rest the question there stated. Shortly thereafter, in Chas. Wolff Packing Co. v. Industrial Court, 262 U. S. 522, 537 (43 Sup. Ct. 630, 67 L. ed. 1103, 27 A. L. R. 1280), it was said: “It has never been supposed, since the adoption of the Constitution, that the business of the butcher, or the baker, the tailor, the wood chopper, the mining operator or the miner was clothed with such a public interest that the price of his product or his wages could be fixed by State regulation.” In the earlier case of Coppage v. Kansas, 236 U. S. 1, 14 (35 Sup. Ct. 240, 59 L. ed. 441, L. R. A. 1915 C, 960), that court said: “Included in the right of personal liberty and the right of private property— partaking of the nature of each—is the right to make contracts for the acquisition of property. . . If this right be struck down or arbitrarily interfered with, there is a substantial impair*567ment of liberty in the long-established constitutional sense.” Then again in New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann, 285 U. S. 262, 277 (52 Sup. Ct. 371, 76 L. ed. 747), an Oklahoma statute, controlling the manufacture, sale, and distribution of ice as a public business was held unconstitutional, and the court said: “It is a business as essentially private in its nature as the business of the grocer, the dairyman, the butcher, the baker, the shoemaker, or the tailor. . . And this court has definitely said that the production or sale of food or clothing cannot be subjected to legislative regulation on the basis of a public use.” It should be noted that the quoted language specifies the business of dairyman as one which may not be regulated as to the production and sale of its products. A Tennessee statute fixing the price of gasoline was held unconstitutional in Williams v. Standard Oil Co., 278 U. S. 235, 239 (supra); and in the opinion that court said, “It is settled by recent decisions of this Court that a State legislature is without constitutional power to fix prices at which commodities may be sold, services rendered, or property, used, unless the business or property involved is 'affected with a public interest’.” Unquestionably the legal principles announced in the foregoing excerpts are irreconcilable with the decision in the Nebbia case, supra. It would therefore have seemed appropriate for the dissenting Justices in the Nebbia case to have spoken as did Justice Frankfurter in his special concurrence in Alabama Public Service Commission v. Southern Railway Co. (May 21, 1951), where he said of. the majority: “I regret my inability to make clear to the majority of this Court that its decision and the principle underlying it/ are in flagrant contradiction with the unbroken course of .decisions in this Court for seventy-five years.” Perhaps the explanation of this conflict is found in Lincoln Union v. Northwestern Co., 335 U. S. 525, 536, in the opinion prepared by Mr. Justice Black, where it is said: “This Court beginning at least as early as 1934, when the Nebbia case was decided, has steadily rejected the due-process philosophy enunicated in the Adair-Coppage line of cases. . . Under this constitutional doctrine the due-process clause is no longer to be so broadly construed that the Congress and State legislatures are put in a straitjacket when they attempt to suppress business and industrial *568conditions which they regard as offensive to the public welfare.” Constitutional guarantees of individual liberty did not change in 1934 or any other year, and so long as they remain in the Constitution their meaning does not change to suit the political philosophy of anyone.
The ground of the demurrer invoking the due-process clause of the State Constitution requires a decision by this court upon that question unhampered by the decisions of the Federal court on the Federal question. This court has heretofore twice ruled upon the question presented, in Bohannon v. Duncan, 185 Ga. 840, and Holcombe v. Georgia Milk Confederation, 188 Ga. 358, both decisions sustaining the act but in each there were dissents. We may put aside as irrelevant here the decision in Bohannon v. Duncan, supra, as it was expressly based upon the legislative findings of the existence of an emergency, which was in nowise challenged by the complainant. The decision in Holcombe v. Georgia Milk Confederation, supra, was very largely based upon the decision in the Nebbia case, supra. The opinion states that, when legislation is based upon a finding of fact by the legislature, courts will do no more than determine whether or not the legislative means provided would likely accomplish the ends sought. The legislative finding in the Nebbia case was that there was an over-supply of milk, and the means provided by the act to remedy the evil thus found was to fix a minimum price below which milk could not be sold. To me it is perfectly obvious, as pointed out in the dissenting opinion in that case, that the means thus provided, instead of remedying the evil found, would necessarily aggravate and intensify that evil. The finding here of need for pure and wholesome milk is in no degree met by providing for price-fixing. Thus is demonstrated the unsoundness of the decision in Holcombe v. Georgia Milk Confederation, supra, since it was based upon the Nebbia case which, when tested by the rule as stated by this court, was an unwarranted exercise of the legislative power. Paragraph 7 of the petition quotes Code (Ann. Supp.) § 42-553, which empowers the Milk Board to fix prices at which milk must be sold. Paragraph (a) of the demurrer challenges the constitutionality of this provision of the law upon the ground that it offends the Constitution (Code, Ann. § 2-103). Thus is the constitutional attack directed to *569this specific portion of the act, hence presenting the question for decision without reference to other portions of the act. In Fleisher v. Duncan, 195 Ga. 309 (24 S. E. 2d, 15), paragraph 14 of the petition assailed, not this particular portion of the act, but the act in its entirety upon the grounds that this price-fixing portion was a denial of due process as provided in Code (Ann.) § 2-103. That the attack there was wholly insufficient, since it failed to specify grounds upon which other portions of the act were invalid, is settled beyond doubt by the decisions of this court. See Miller v. Head, 186 Ga. 694 (198 S. E. 680); Stegall v. Southwest Ga. Reg. Housing Authority, 197 Ga. 571 (30 S. E. 2d, 196); Krasner v. Rutledge, 204 Ga. 380 (49 S. E. 2d, 864); Franklin v. Harper, 205 Ga. 779 (2) (55 S. E. 2d, 221). In the case last cited, it was said at page 788, “In this case, an omnibus attack on the act will fail unless the statute is invalid in every part for some reason asserted.” Therefore, the constitutionality of the price-fixing provision was not presented for decision in Fleisher v. Duncan, supra. Furthermore, the opinion there expressly states that, in view of other rulings, it was unnecessary to rule on the constitutional question. That the decision there is wholly irrelevant and inapplicable here is thus plainly demonstrated.
While the petition here asserts that the defendant upon his application therefor had, by the Board, been denied a license to produce and sell milk, yet it further appears from the petition and the demurrer that the license was denied because of the violation of prices fixed pursuant to the act. Therefore, the above ruling means that, in the circumstances pleaded, no right is shown in the petitioner to complain because the defendant had no license. I would assert as my own opinion and for future guidance in the administration of the law that any arbitrary refusal to grant a license would constitute the denial of due process. The fundamental basis upon which my conclusion rests is that the constitutional guarantee of due process would forbid any action that curtails free competition or impairs the value of private property.
The Constitution of this State, by repeated declarations, leaves no room for doubt but that it intends to place around private property the same safeguards with which it shields life and liberty. The following paragraphs of this document in *570different terms so declare: Code (Ann. Supp.) § 2-102 (Constitution of 1945; Ga. L. 1945, p. 10) provides that the paramount and highest duty of government is the equal and complete protection of persons and property. The due-process clause (Code, Ann. Supp., § 2-103) declares that no person shall be deprived of “life, liberty, or property” except by due process of law. Code (Ann. Supp.) § 2-301 prohibits government itself from taking or damaging private property for public purposes without first paying therefor. To insure that these constitutional safeguards of life, liberty, and property may never be violated, the Constitution (Code, Ann. Supp., § 2-402; Ga. L. 1945, p. 14) declares all legislation that violates them void and lays upon the judiciary of this State the solemn duty to declare them void. As pointed out by Presiding Justice Atkinson in the dissenting opinion, in which the writer concurred, in Holcombe v. Georgia Milk Confederation, supra, the legislature 'has the unquestioned right to provide by law for any reasonable inspection, processing, and sanitary regulations in the production and distribution of milk as a safeguard of the public health, but this is far from an arbitrary legislative attempt to control by law the economic questions attending the ownership and sale of private property by fixing the price thereof. Indeed, to deprive a free citizen of the right to agree upon a price which he will accept for his private property, is to rob him of the most valuable element of that property and to render private ownership a farce.
While it is no legitimate function of the judiciary to advocate or establish any given systems of government, yet it is not inappropriate in this day and age—-when the American system of human liberty and free enterprise that has demonstrated its pre-eminent virtue in the growth of the most powerful nation on earth in a relatively short period of time is being assailed from within and from without by the advocates of principles that would render the individual a slave and the government a master ■—-to point to that glorious record as justification for our constitutional system. Courts should not hesitate to act with firmness in the performance of such a high duty. There is no place in this situation for judicial timidity or apology. If this court, in deference to the economic advantages which some may derive from this legislation, should shrink from the performance of its *571duty and fail to declare this assault upon individual liberty unconstitutional because the legislature has recited that milk is an important and essential food, a precedent would thereby b'e set requiring this court to sustain legislation fixing the price of all products vital to human life and health, yes, including medical services which most vitally affect the life and health of the people of the State. By such conduct the legislature, aided and abetted by the judiciary of this State, could ultimately convert Georgia into a socialistic State despite the plain provisions of the Constitution which forbid such. For these reasons as well as those stated in the opinion, I concur in the judgment of reversal.