Page:City of Little Rock v. Reinman-Wolfort Automobile Livery Co.pdf/8

Rh a grant of police power to regulate, the right of municipal authority to determine where and within what limits a certain class of business may be conducted has been often sustained. For example, the place where markets may be had, butcher stalls or meat shops kept the limits within which certain kinds of animals shall not be kept, the distance from a church within which liquor shall not be sold, etc."

In City of St. Louis v. Russell, 22 S.W. 470, the Supreme Court of Missouri, passing upon the validity of an ordinance enacted by the city of St. Louis under its charter giving it the power to license, tax and regulate livery and sales stables, said: "The first question for our consideration is whether or not the power to regulate livery and sales stables includes the right to designate the places and in what part of the city they may be located, and to prohibit their erection at other places," and further after quoting from other cases, "We think that the city has the power under its charter and ordinances to regulate the place of building livery stables and confine them to certain localities within the corporate limits, as well as to regulate the manner of their keeping, as to cleanliness, that they may not be or become obnoxious and deleterious to the health of her citizens."

Although it is true as claimed by appellee that a livery stable is not per se a public nuisance and is recognized as a necessary and legitimate business, still the ordinance does not attempt to prohibit the operation of the business within the limits of the city but only within the small area defined therein and the city having express authority to regulate all livery stables could make the restrictions notwithstanding the business regulated is not a nuisance per se.

McQuillan says: "While a livery stable in a populous community is not per se a public nuisance, it may become such and hence it has long been recognized as a subject necessarily within reasonable police regulations. Power to regulate livery stables and sales stables