Page:City of Little Rock v. Reinman-Wolfort Automobile Livery Co.pdf/6

Rh deemed guilty of misdemeanor and shall be fined in any sum not less than fifty ($50.00) dollars, nor more than one hundred ($100.00) dollars for each violation and each day any person, firm or corporation shall conduct or carry ori a livery stable business within said limits shall be deemed a separate offense.

"Section 3. This ordinance shall take effect and be in force sixty (60) days after its passage."

From the decree declaring it invalid, an appeal was duly prosecuted.

It is contended that the ordinance is invalid, because, first, it prohibits the operation of a livery stable business, which is not per se a public nuisance within the area defined therein in which appellee's business is, and has long been conducted and deprives them of their property without due process of law.

Second. It deprives them of the equal protection of the law and is an unjust discrimination against them.

Third. It fixes greater penalties for its violation than the city has power to impose.

The city derives its power from the State, and section 5454, Kirby's Digest of the Statutes, provides: "They shall have the power to regulate or prohibit the sale of all horses or other domestic animals, at auction in the streets, alleys, or highways, to regulate all carts, wagons, drays  and every description of carriages which may be kept for hire and all livery stables."

The State has the right under its police power to make regulations relative to the carrying on of certain lawful pursuits, trades and business, and as said by the United States Supreme Court in Williams v. Arkansas, 217 U.S. 79, quoting from a former decision in Gunning v. Chicago, 177 U.S. 183, "Regulations respecting the pursuit of a lawful trade or business are of very frequent occurrence in the various cities of the country and what such regulations shall be and to what particular trade, business or occupation they shall apply, are questions for the State to determine, and their