Court Opinion

ID: 9418920
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:43:16.988614+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:06:51.869131
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Roberts,
dissenting.
The appellants petitioned the Superior Court of Fulton County, Georgia, for a mandamus directed to the appellee as Insurance Commissioner requiring him to issue a license to Francis, a salaried employe of the Hartford Company, as an insurance agent for the writing of casualty insurance in the State of Georgia pursuant to the Act of the General Assembly of March 28, 1935. The petition alleged that Francis possessed all the statutory qualifications for a license save only that he was a salaried employe of the insurance company and that the pro*464vision of the statute excluding salaried employes of insurance companies from licensure is unconstitutional.
Section 1 of the act of 19361 prohibits licensed fire or casualty insurance companies from writing or issuing any policy or indemnity contract on any risk in the state of Georgia except through a resident agent licensed by the Insurance Commissioner. The section requires the applicant for a license to be a bona fide resident of the state, of good character and competent to perform the duties of an agent. It further provides: “The words ‘resident agent’ as used in this section are deemed to mean resident agents engaged in the solicitation of such business from the public generally and shall not include any salaried employe of any insurance company doing business in this state; but shall include any agents of mutual insurance companies however compensated.”
The ground upon which the act is held invalid is that it unreasonably discriminates between salaried employes of mutual insurance companies and similar employes of stock companies.
The answer alleges that there is a well recognized difference between stock and mutual insurance companies in that, in the case of the former, the relationship between the company and its policy-holders is one of contract merely, they dealing at arm’s length, whereas in the latter the policy-holders are the owners of the company and constitute its membership. Other well known differences between mutual and stock insurance are detailed in the answer and will be referred to hereinafter.
The case was heard upon the petition and answer and the trial court, in the view that the act was unconstitutional, ordered that a mandamus issue. Upon appeal the Supreme Court of Georgia reversed the judgment. I *465am of the opinion that its decision was right and should be affirmed.
First. On its face the statute is a proper exercise of the state’s police power. The provision for licensing only bona fide residents of the state is valid.2 Regulation of the rates charged for insurance, of the relations of those engaged in the business and of the amount of agents’ compensation fall within the exercise of this power.3 The claim here is that the particular regulation is unreasonable and discriminatory. The presumption of constitutional validity must prevail unless the terms of the statute, or what we judicially know, or facts proved by the appellants, overthrow that presumption. As it is conceivable that conditions existed in Georgia which justified the difference in treatment of the agents of the two sorts of companies, and as no circumstances are alleged or proved or are of judicial knowledge which negative the existence of those conditions the attack upon the statute should fail.4
Second. The appellant Francis asserts he is denied equal protection because agents of mutual insurance companies may be licensed even though- their compensation consists of a salary rather than commissions. The answer sets up that mutual insurance companies are organized on a different basis from stock companies, do business in a wholly different way and sustain an altogether different relation to their policy-holders than do stock companies. This is matter of common knowledge. Section 56-1401 of the Georgia Code 1933 is: “The contract of insurance is sometimes upon the idea of mu*466tuality, by which each of the insured becomes one of the insurers, thereby becoming interested in the profits and liable for the losses; without a charter, such an organization would be governed by the general law of partnership; when incorporated, they are subject to the terms of their charters.” Sections 56-1401 to 56-1433 deal exclusively with the incorporation and government of mutual insurance companies setting up for them a system quite apart from that prescribed for the incorporation' and regulation of stock companies. The decision law of the state also recognizes the fundamental difference between the two kinds of company.5 The Supreme Court of Georgia quoted and relied upon its earlier decision as to the radical difference between stock and mutual companies and their methods of transacting business, and refused to hold the classification of the statute arbitrary or unreasonable.'
The literature on the subject shows that at its inception the fire insurance business in the United States was modelled upon the mutual companies of Great Britain.6 Stock companies, however, were soon organized and rapidly grew to such proportions that to-day they transact about seventy-five per cent of the nation’s fire insurance business. Local and state mutual insurance companies now write about ten per cent of the total of fire insurance and are strongest in agricultural districts and the smaller cities; another ten per cent of the total business is written by so-called factory mutuals; the balance is cared for by Lloyd’s associations.7
The principle of assessment upon which mutual companies proceed is practical only for carrying risks closely uniform in kind and degree, its chief advantage being *467low.operating cost due to simplicity of organization, and it is said that the sales staffs of such companies work either “on a salaried basis or on a lower scale of commissions than do the representatives of stock companies.” 8 There are approximately twenty-five hundred mutual fire and casualty institutions operating throughout the United States, the vast majority of which concentrate their operations locally within one or more counties or within a single state. “These companies rarely compete with agency represented stock companies and there has been no apparent inclination on their part to alter the scope of activity or plan of operation. Of the many mutual fire insurance companies probably no more than ten per cent extend their fields of operation beyond the boundaries of their home state.” 9
Reference to the report of the Insurance Commissioner of Georgia for 1934, the year preceding the adoption of the statute under review, furnishes interesting data on the relative business of stock and mutual insurance companies in the state of Georgia. For that year the total of risks carried by stock fire insurance companies in the state was $1,512,181,296. Foreign mutual fire insurance companies carried only $82,727,816. Two domestic mutual companies doing a state-wide business carried $73,370,-177, and fourteen small local mutuals carried $10,893,603. Thus, mutual companies carried about ten per cent of the total fire insurance business of the state and, of that ten per cent, over one-half was written by Georgia mutual companies.
While Georgia does not exclude foreign mutuals and requires them, like foreign stock companies, to register and comply with certain statutory rules in order to write business within the state, it is evident that the total mutual business written in Georgia is of minor importance *468when compared with the vast amount written by stock companies. This fact in itself may well be a persuasive reason for not extending to agents of mutual companies the requirement that they shall not work upon a salary.10 When to this is added the fact that ordinarily such agents work on salary because, in effect, they are the agents of the policy-holders rather than of independent owners of a stock corporation, it is plain that there is reason for classifying them differently from agents of stock companies. In the light of the facts the classification of the agents of the two sorts of company cannot be said to be arbitrary or unreasonable, and so to deny the agents of the stock companies the equal protection of the laws.
Me. Justice Brandéis, Mr. Justice Stone, and Mr. Justice Cardozo concur in this opinion.

 Act of March 28, 1935. Georgia Acts 1935, p. 140.

 La Tourette v. McMaster, 248 U. S. 465.

 O’Gorman & Young v. Hartford Insurance Co., 282 U. S. 251, 257.

 O’Gorman & Young v. Hartford Insurance Co., supra, 257-258; Borden’s Farm Products Co. v. Baldwin, 293 U. S. 194, 208, 209.

 Carlton v. Southern Mutual Insurance Co., 72 Ga. 371.

 Enc. of the Social Sciences, Vol. VI, 255; Yale Readings in Insurance, Property, Chapter IV.

 Enc. of the, Social Sciences, Vol. VI, 258.

 Enc. of the Social Sciences, Vol. VIII, p. 100.

 Best’s Insurance News, October 1935, p. 314.

 Compare Citizens’ Telephone Co. v. Fuller, 229 U. S. 322.