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The Green Bag

Cigar Stores Company be sold and dis tributed to parties other than the twenty nine individual defendants or others of the common stockholders of the Ameri can Tobacco Company, to the end that the corporation be entirely separated from any connection with the corpora

tions to which the properties and busi nesses now in the combination are to be distributed.

"We have no power to grant any such request. The Anti-Trust act carefully enumerates the penalties for a violation of its provisions -— ﬁnes, imprisonment, injunction against continuing to transact interstate business, treble damages to all

persons injured by an unlawful combi nation, seizure and forfeiture of property in course of interstate transportation. These are certainly ample to enforce obedience.

By conﬁscation of property

in transit and injunction against continu ance in interstate business an offender may be put out of active existence into a state of paralysis as helpless as disso lution.

It might be said that to these

penalties the Supreme Court has added

to this court, or until some obscure language in its grant of power shall be

construed by the Supreme Court as in effect conveying such power, this court is not prepared to assume that it pos sesses any such authority. The request

is denied."

N. Y. L. Jour., Nov. 16.

Workmen's Compensation. Lia bility without Fault—Limils of Police Power.

Wash.

The constitutionality of the Wash ington Workmen's Compensation act was sustained in a decision rendered in September by the Supreme Court of Washington, in Davis-Smith v. Clause”. 117 Pac. 1101. The statute undertakes. by requiring contributions from employ

ers to an accident or insurance fund, t0 provide ﬁxed

and

certain relief for

workmen injured in extra hazardous work and their families and dependents. gence, regardless andofto questions the exclusion of faultofor every negli' other remedy or compensation. We quote from the syllabus: —

"The test of the validity of a law

of

which creates liability without fault and

property not in transit by receivership and forced sale.

under which the property of one is taken. without compensation, to pay the obli gations of another, is not whether it does objectionable things, but whether there is any reasonable ground to believe that the fare public is promoted safety, health thereby, or general the ‘police we].

another,

a

qualiﬁed

conﬁscation

“Nowhere, however, is there any au

thority for the proposition that this court may seize the property of private persons who may have offended against the statute and sell it under conditions which would preclude the holder of the

power’

under which such

reasonable

purchaser to pay a reasonable price for it, or from buying it himself if no one

regulations may be made being a power inherent in every sovereignty, the power to govern men and things, the power to which the possession and enjoyment of

else will pay full value for it.

all rights are subject, and under which

title or the owner of the equity from

bidding at the sale so as to compel the

That is

conﬁscation; none the less so because

the legislature exercises a supervision

the proceeds of such a sale, after paying outstanding debts and expenses, are to

over matters affecting the common weal and enforces the observance by each

be turned over to the owner.

member of society of his duties to others and the community at large."

Until

Congress shall expressly give such power