MR. JUSTICE BREWER, after stating the case, delivered the opinion of the court.
The single question in this case is the constitutionality of the act allowing attorney's fees. The contention is that it operates to deprive the railroad companies of property without
We have not been favored with any argument or brief from the defendant in error. Doubtless he believed, and justly, that nothing could be added to the arguments so fully and strongly made in support of the constitutionality of this law in the respective opinions of the two highest courts of the State.
The Supreme Court of the State considered this statute as a whole and held it valid, and as such it is presented to us for consideration. Considered as such, it is simply a statute imposing a penalty upon railroad corporations for a failure to pay certain debts. No individuals are thus punished, and no other corporations. The act singles out a certain class of debtors and punishes them when for like delinquencies it punishes no others. They are not treated as other debtors, or equally with other debtors. They cannot appeal to the courts as other litigants under like conditions and with like protection. If litigation terminates adversely to them, they are mulcted in the attorney's fees of the successful plaintiff; if it terminates in their favor, they recover no attorney's fees. It is no sufficient answer to say that they are punished only when adjudged to be in the wrong. They do not enter the courts upon equal terms. They must pay attorney's fees if wrong; they do not recover any if right; while their adversaries recover if right and pay nothing if wrong. In the suits, therefore, to which they are parties they are discriminated against, and are not treated as others. They do not stand equal before the law. They do not receive its equal protection. All this is obvious from a mere inspection of the statute.
It is true the amount of the attorney's fee which may be charged is small, but if the State has the power to thus mulct them in a small amount it has equal power to do so in a larger sum. The matter of amount does not determine the question
While good faith and a knowledge of existing conditions on the part of a legislature is to be presumed, yet to carry that presumption to the extent of always holding that there must be some undisclosed and unknown reason for subjecting certain individuals or corporations to hostile and discriminating legislation is to make the protecting clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment a mere rope of sand, in no manner restraining state action.
It is well settled that corporations are persons within the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, 118 U.S. 394; Pembina Mining Co. v. Pennsylvania, 125 U.S. 181, 189; Missouri Pacific Railway v. Mackey, 127 U.S. 205; Minneapolis & St. Louis Railway v. Herrick, 127 U.S. 210; Minneapolis & St. Louis Railway v. Beckwith, 129 U.S. 26; Charlotte & Columbia Railroad v. Gibbes, 142 U.S. 386; Covington & Lexington Turnpike Company v. Sandford, 164 U.S. 578. The rights and securities guaranteed to persons by that instrument cannot be disregarded in respect to these artificial entities called corporations any more than they can be in respect to the individuals who are the equitable owners of the property belonging to such corporations. A State has no more power to deny to corporations the equal protection of the law than it has to individual citizens.
As well said by Black, J., in State v. Loomis, 115 Missouri, 307, 314, in which a statute making it a misdemeanor for any corporation engaged in manufacturing or mining to issue in payment of the wages of its employés any order, check, etc., payable otherwise than in lawful money of the United States, unless negotiable and redeemable at its face value in cash or in goods and supplies at the option of the holder at the store or other place of business of the corporation, was held class legislation and void: "Classification for legislative purposes must have some reasonable basis upon which to stand. It must be evident that differences which would serve for a classification for some purposes furnish no reason whatever for a classification for legislative purposes. The differences which will support class legislation must be such as in the nature of things furnish a reasonable basis for separate laws and regulations.
In Vanzant v. Waddel, 2 Yerger, 260, 270, Catron, J., (afterwards Mr. Justice Catron of this court,) speaking for the Supreme Court of Tennessee, declared: "Every partial or private law, which directly proposes to destroy or affect individual rights, or does the same thing by affording remedies leading to similar consequences, is unconstitutional and void. Were this otherwise, odious individuals and corporate bodies would be governed by one rule, and the mass of the community, who made the law, by another."
In Dibrell v. Morris' Heirs, Supreme Court of Tennessee, 15 S.W. Rep. 87, 95, Baxter, Special Judge, reviewing at some length cases of classification, closes the review with these words: "We conclude, upon a review of the cases referred to above, that, whether a statute be public or private, general or special, in form, if it attempts to create distinctions and classifications between the citizens of this State, the basis of such classification must be natural and not arbitrary."
In Bell's Gap Railroad v. Pennsylvania, 134 U.S. 232, the question was presented as to the power of the State to classify for purposes of taxation, and while it was conceded that a large discretion in these respects was vested in the various legislatures, the fact of a limit to such discretion was recognized, the court, by Mr. Justice Bradley, saying, on page 237: "All such regulations, and those of like character, so long as they proceed within reasonable limits and general usage, are within the discretion of the state legislature or the people of the State in framing their constitution. But clear and hostile discriminations against particular persons and classes, especially such as are of an unusual character, unknown to the practice of our governments, might be obnoxious to the constitutional prohibition."
It is, of course, proper that every debtor should pay his
If it be said that this penalty is cast only upon corporations, that to them special privileges are granted, and therefore upon them special burdens may be imposed, it is a sufficient answer to say that the penalty is not imposed upon all corporations. The burden does not go with the privilege. Only railroads of all corporations are selected to bear this penalty. The rule of equality is ignored.
It may be said that certain corporations are chartered for charitable, educational or religious purposes, and abundant reason for not visiting them with a penalty for the non-payment of debts is found in the fact that their chartered privileges are not given for pecuniary profit. But the penalty is not imposed upon all business corporations, all chartered for the purpose of private gain. The banking corporations, the manufacturing corporations and others like them are exempt. Further, the penalty is imposed not upon all corporations charged with the quasi public duty of transportation, but only upon those charged with a particular form of that duty. So the classification is not based on any idea of special privileges by way of incorporation, nor of special privileges given thereby for purposes of private gain, nor even of such privileges granted for the discharge of one general class of public duties.
But if the classification is not based upon the idea of special privileges, can it be sustained upon the basis of the business in which the corporations to be punished are engaged? That such corporations may be classified for some purposes is unquestioned. The business in which they are
While this action is for stock killed, the recovery of attorney's fees cannot be sustained upon the theory just suggested. There is no fence law in Texas. The legislature of the State has not deemed it necessary for the protection of life or property to require railroads to fence their tracks, and as no duty is imposed, there can be no penalty for non-performance. Indeed, the statute does not proceed upon any such theory; it is broader in its scope. Its object is to compel the payment of the several classes of debts named, and was so regarded by the Supreme Court of the State.
But a mere statute to compel the payment of indebtedness does not come within the scope of police regulations. The hazardous business of railroading carries with it no special necessity for the prompt payment of debts. That is a duty resting upon all debtors, and while in certain cases there may be a peculiar obligation which may be enforced by penalties, yet nothing of that kind springs from the mere work of
Neither can it be sustained as a proper means of enforcing the payment of small debts and preventing any unnecessary litigation in respect to them, because it does not impose the penalty in all cases where the amount in controversy is within the limit named in the statute. Indeed, the statute arbitrarily singles out one class of debtors and punishes it for a failure to perform certain duties — duties which are equally obligatory upon all debtors; a punishment not visited by reason of the failure to comply with any proper police regulations, or for the protection of the laboring classes or to prevent litigation about trifling matters, or in consequence of any special corporate privileges bestowed by the State. Unless the legislature may arbitrarily select one corporation or one class of corporations, one individual or one class of individuals, and visit a penalty upon them which is not imposed upon others guilty of like delinquency this statute cannot be sustained.
But arbitrary selection can never be justified by calling it classification. The equal protection demanded by the Fourteenth Amendment forbids this. No language is more worthy of frequent and thoughtful consideration than these words of Mr. Justice Matthews, speaking for this court, in Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356, 369: "When we consider the nature and the theory of our institutions of government, the principles upon which they are supposed to rest, and review the history of their development, we are constrained to conclude that they do not mean to leave room for the play and action of purely personal and arbitrary power." The first official action of this nation declared the foundation of government in these words: "We hold these truths to be self-evident,
Questions of this character have been frequently presented to the courts, and it is well to notice a few of the decisions. In Alabama a statute provided that a railroad corporation, or any complainant against it, taking an appeal from a judgment of a justice of the peace in a suit for damages to live stock, and failing to sustain such appeal, should be liable for a reasonable attorney's fee incurred by reason thereof. Code Alabama, 1876, § 1715. This statute was less obnoxious to the charge of discrimination than the one before us, in that it gave the same right to the corporation as to its adversary, and it was limited to cases in which an appeal was taken from a judgment already rendered by a competent judicial officer; yet the Supreme Court of that State, South & North Alabama Railroad v. Morris, 64 Alabama, 193, 199, held it in conflict with both the state and the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, saying: "Justice cannot be sold or denied by the exaction of a pecuniary consideration for its enjoyment from one, when it is given freely and open-handed to another, without money and without price. Nor can it be permitted that litigants shall be debarred from the free exercise of this constitutional right by the imposition of arbitrary, unjust and odious discriminations, perpetrated under color of establishing peculiar rules for a particular occupation. Unequal, partial and discriminatory legislation, which secures this right to
In Mississippi an act somewhat similar in its nature, Laws Miss. 1882, p. 110, was adjudged unconstitutional, Chicago, St. Louis &c. Railroad v. Moss, 60 Mississippi, 641, the court saying, on page 646: "The right of appeal cannot be fettered and clogged with reference to the parties litigant or the attitude they occupy as plaintiff or defendant. All litigants, whether plaintiff or defendant, should be regarded with equal favor by the law, and before the tribunals for administering it, and should have the same right to appeal with others similarly situated. All must have the equal protection of the law, and its instrumentalities. The same rule must exist for all in the same circumstances."
In Michigan a statute was passed, Laws Michigan, 1885, c. 234, authorizing the taxing of an attorney's fee of twenty-five dollars in actions against a railroad company for damages for
So, in Arkansas, an act was passed providing that when stock was killed by a railroad company the owner might demand an appraisement, and that if the appraised value was not paid within a certain time and an action was brought an attorney's fee for the plaintiff might be taxed and collected, but it was held by the Supreme Court, St. Louis &c. Railway v. Williams, 49 Arkansas, 492, that such legislation could not be sustained. It was construed to be an act imposing a penalty
Besides these cases involving attorney's fees are others in which legislation imposing special burdens on an individual or a class has been declared beyond the power of the legislature as against equality of right. In San Antonio &c. Railway v. Wilson, 19 S.W. Rep. 910, the Court of Appeals of Texas held that a statute providing that in the event of a railroad company's refusing to pay its indebtedness to an employé within twenty days after demand, he could recover as damages twenty per cent in addition to the amount due, was class legislation and unconstitutional. In the course of the opinion, after referring to those statutes allowing double damages for stock killed, the court observed: "But when we consider the relations of railway companies to their own servants, both as to contracts of employment and payment, we find a field in which special legislation has no right ordinarily to enter, and in which railways stand on the same footing with all other corporations or persons." In Atchison & Nebraska Railroad v. Baty, 6 Nebraska, 37, there was presented for consideration a statute which gave to the owner of live stock accidentally killed or destroyed on a railroad track
In State v. Goodwill, 33 West Va. 179, the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia held unconstitutional a statute which prohibited persons engaged in mining and manufacturing from issuing for the payment of labor any order or paper except such as was specified in the act; and on the same day in State v. Fire Creek Coal & Coke Co., 33 West Va. 188, the same court also set aside another statute which prohibited persons and corporations engaged in mining and manufacturing, and interested in selling merchandise and supplies, from selling any merchandise or supplies to their employés at a greater per cent of profit than they sell to others not employed by them. In Park v. The Free Press Co., 72 Michigan, 560, it was held that an act limiting the recovery in suits brought for libel in certain cases to actual damages, as defined in the act, was not within the scope of constitutional legislation. In Pearson v. Portland, 69 Maine, 278, a statute, which provided that no damages for injury to person or property caused by a defect in the highway, could be recovered of any city or town by any person who, at the time the damage was done, was a resident of any country where damage done under similar circumstances was not by the laws of that country recoverable, was held to conflict with the equality clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution.
It must not be understood that by citing we endorse all these decisions. Our purpose is rather to show the extent to which the courts of the various States have gone in enforcing the constitutional obligation of equal protection. Other cases of a similar character may be found in the reports, but a mere accumulation of authorities is of little value. It is apparent that the mere fact of classification is not sufficient to relieve a statute from the reach of the equality clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and that in all cases it must appear not only that a classification has been made, but also that it is one based upon some reasonable ground — some difference which bears a just and proper relation to the attempted classification —
Reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
MR. JUSTICE GRAY, with whom concurred MR. CHIEF JUSTICE FULLER and MR. JUSTICE WHITE, dissenting.
The Chief Justice, Mr. Justice White and myself are unable to concur in this judgment. The grounds of our dissent may be briefly stated.
Costs in civil actions at law are the creature of statute. From early times, there have been statutes making different rules as to costs, according to the nature of the issue, and the amount involved; and sometimes allowing costs to the prevailing party when plaintiff, and not when defendant. The whole matter of costs, including the party to or against whom they may be given, the items or sums to be allowed, and the right to costs as depending upon the nature of the suit, upon the amount or value of the thing sued for or recovered, or upon other circumstances, is and always has been within the regulation and control of the legislature, exercising its discretionary power, not oppressively to either party, but as the best interests of the litigants and of the public may appear to it to demand. Bac. Ab., Costs, passim; Postan v. Stanway, 5 East, 261; Green v. Liter, 8 Cranch, 229, 242; Kneass v. Schuylkill Bank, 4 Wash. C.C. 106; Lowe v. Kansas, 163 U.S. 81.
The statute of the State of Texas, now in question, does but enact that any person having a valid bona fide claim, not exceeding fifty dollars, against a railroad corporation, for personal services or damages, or for overcharges on freight, or for destruction or injury of stock by its trains, and presenting the claim, verified by his affidavit, to the corporation, and, if it is not paid within thirty days, suing thereon in the proper court, and finally obtaining judgment for the full amount thereof in that court, or in any court to which the suit may be appealed, shall be entitled to recover, in addition to other
The legislature of a State must be presumed to have acted from lawful motives, unless the contrary appears upon the face of the statute. If, for instance, the legislature of Texas was satisfied, from observation and experience, that railroad corporations within the State were accustomed, beyond other corporations or persons, to unconscionably resist the payment of such petty claims, with the object of exhausting the patience and the means of the claimants, by prolonged litigation and perhaps repeated appeals, railroad corporations alone might well be required, when ultimately defeated in a suit upon such a claim, to pay a moderate attorney's fee, as a just, though often inadequate, contribution to the expenses to which they had put the plaintiff in establishing a rightful demand. Whether such a state of things as above supposed did in fact exist, and whether, for that or other reasons, sound policy required the allowance of such a fee to either party, or to the plaintiff only, were questions to be determined by the legislature, when dealing with the subject of costs, except in so far as it saw fit to commit the matter to the decision of the courts.
The constitutionality of statutes allowing plaintiffs only to recover an attorney's fee, as part of the judgment, in particular classes of actions selected by the legislature, appears to have been upheld by the courts of most of the States in which it has been challenged. Kansas Pacific Railway v. Mower, 16 Kansas, 573, 582; Same v. Yanz, 16 Kansas, 583: Peoria &c.
It is to be regretted that so important a precedent, as this case may afford, for interference by the national judiciary with the legislation of the several States on little questions of costs, should be established upon argument ex parte in behalf of the railroad corporation, without any argument for the original plaintiff. But it is hardly surprising that the owner of a claim for fifty dollars only, having been compelled to follow up, through all the courts of the State, the contest over this ten dollar fee, should at last have become discouraged, and unwilling to undergo the expense of employing counsel to maintain his rights before this court.
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