City of Chicago v. Ingersoll Steel & Disc Division of Borg-Warner Corp.

20 N.E.2d 287, 371 Ill. 183
CourtIllinois Supreme Court
DecidedFebruary 20, 1939
DocketNo. 24967. Judgment reversed.
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 20 N.E.2d 287 (City of Chicago v. Ingersoll Steel & Disc Division of Borg-Warner Corp.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Illinois Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
City of Chicago v. Ingersoll Steel & Disc Division of Borg-Warner Corp., 20 N.E.2d 287, 371 Ill. 183 (Ill. 1939).

Opinion

Mr. Justice Farthing

delivered the opinion of the court:

A complaint in the municipal court of Chicago charged that the Ingersoll Steel & Disc Division of Borg-Warner Corporation operated a machine shop in that city without a license, in violation of section 3834a of the revised Chicago code of 1931, as amended. The court overruled appellant’s motion to dismiss the complaint. The grounds of that motion were: (1) The power granted in the Cities and Villages act to regulate machine shops relates to the machine-shop business and does not cover a manufacturing establishment which, incidental to its manufacturing business, operates a machine or tool shop for its own purposes; (2) the power to regulate machine shops, contained in that act, does not give the city authority to license manufacturing establishments using metal, or manufacturing metal products or using machinery similar to that found in machine shops, and (3) the ordinance shows on its face that it is, in fact, a revenue measure, and not a regulatory measure. The appellant was found guilty and was fined $50 and costs. The trial judge certified that the validity of a municipal ordinance was involved and that, in his opinion, the public interest required a direct appeal to this court.

The appellant has a factory at 1030 West One Hundred Twentieth street, in Chicago, where it operates rolling mills, stamps metal containers, fabricates metal parts for agricultural implements, passenger cars and trucks, and makes various other stampings and forgings. Its plant is equipped with hydraulic and mechanical presses, steel hammers, grinding machines, upset forging machines, and furnaces for heating products which are fabricated while hot. The plant covers a square block and consists of separate buildings all of which are joined by passageways. The appellant repairs its machinery and makes about half the tools and dies it uses in its manufacturing processes in its own tool room or machine shop, located near the center of the plant. It does no such work for any one else. This shop contains lathes, planers, boring mills, grinding machines and other equipment. No one is admitted to the plant except employees and those persons who have business at the office. Approximately six hundred fifty people are employed at the plant, and, of this number, sixty-five work in the shop.

The Cities and Villages act (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1937, chap. 24, art. 5, sec. 82, par. 65.81) confers on cities the power “to direct the location and regulate the use and construction of breweries, distilleries, livery, boarding or sales stables, blacksmith shops, foundries, machine shops, garages, laundries and bathing beaches, within the limits of the city or village.” Under the claim that it was exercising the power so granted, the city of Chicago passed sections 3834(a) to 3834(h) of its revised municipal code. The first of these sections defines a machine shop as “a work shop in which machines are made or metal parts thereof are repaired, or where parts of machines, or tools, implements, gears, dies, screws or other metal articles are cut, filed, shaped or repaired by means of a lathe or other machinery.” This section forbids all persons to operate machine shops as thus defined without having obtained a license so to do but provides that the ordinance shall not apply to any class of machine shops specifically licensed under other ordinances of the city. Section 3834(b) provides for application for licenses; 3834(c) for investigations by the commissioner of health, the commissioner of buildings and the chief fire prevention engineer; 3834(d) names the license fee payable based on the number of employees in the machine shop; 3834(e) fixes sanitary requirements; 3834(f) prohibits night operations in certain localities, and 3834(h) provides penalties for violations of the ordinance.

By its motion to dismiss and the points relied on for reversal, appellant challenges the validity of the ordinance. For this reason, and by virtue of the certificate mentioned above, we have jurisdiction of this direct appeal.

Municipal corporations derive their existence and all their powers from the General Assembly. They possess no inherent powers. If they desire to legislate upon a particular subject or occupation they must be able to point out the statute which authorizes this to be done. Statutes conferring powers upon municipal corporations are strictly construed and any fair or reasonable doubt that an asserted power exists is resolved against the municipality. Municipal corporations only possess such implied powers as are necessarily incident to the powers expressly granted. (Crerar Clinch Coal Co. v. City of Chicago, 341 Ill. 471; City of Chicago v. Arbuckle Bros. 344 id. 597; City of Chicago v. Northern Paper Stock Co. 337 id. 194.) The question whether a particular business comes within the municipal power to license, regulate and tax, granted by statute, must be determined by the general character and scope of that business. (City of Chicago v. Northern Paper Stock Co. supra; Eastman v. City of Chicago, 79 Ill. 178; Commonwealth v. Farnum, 114 Mass. 267; Commonwealth v. Ringold, 182 id. 308.) In City of Chicago v. Northern Paper Stock Co. supra, we held invalid an ordinance which the city sought to enforce against a defendant engaged in the business of buying paper and rags from other dealers, and sorting, grading and selling them to mills and factories. We held that the ordinance applied only to junk stores and yards and that the city could not extend its power by a mere definition which would include defendant’s business, citing Emmons v. City of Lewistown, 132 Ill. 380. In Crerar Clinch Coal Co. v. City of Chicago, supra, we held void an ordinance which purported to regulate and license private garages. We discussed People v. City of Chicago, 261 Ill. 16, and pointed out that section 82 is to be construed as regulating the various kinds of business that it enumerates. We also pointed out that in People v. Ericson, 263 Ill. 368, and People v. Village of Oak Park, 266 id. 365, section 82 was construed as authority to cities to regulate the garage business. At page 476 of the Crerar case we said: “That the legislature intended clause 82 as amended in 1911 to apply to various classes of business, including garage business, is evidenced by the fact that the amendments of 1919 and 1921, declared invalid for reasons set out in the case of People v. Kaul, [302 Ill. 317] provided for the regulation and control of ‘public garages, private garages and stables designed for the use of five or more vehicles, etc.’ In no case called to our attention has it been held that under clause 82 as amended in 1911 the language ‘breweries, distilleries, livery, boarding or sales stables, blacksmith shops, foundries, machine shops and laundries’ related to anything but such businesses, and it seems clear that if the legislature had intended by the insertion of the word ‘garages’ in the amendment of 1911 to 0have it apply to private garages though other provisions of the clause applied only to businesses, it would have plainly so stated.” We reached the same conclusion in Eastman v. City of Chicago, supra, where we held that a bookseller who incidentally bought and sold second-hand books as well as new books, was not “a dealer in second-hand goods” within the meaning of the ordinance there involved. Appellee contends that we overruled the Eastman case in City of Chicago v. Efantis, 339 Ill. 55, but this is not true.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Glenview Rural Fire Protection District v. Raymond
311 N.E.2d 302 (Appellate Court of Illinois, 1974)
Village of Lombard v. Illinois Bell Telephone Co.
90 N.E.2d 105 (Illinois Supreme Court, 1950)
Branigar v. Village of Riverdale
72 N.E.2d 201 (Illinois Supreme Court, 1947)
Clarke v. Storchak
52 N.E.2d 229 (Illinois Supreme Court, 1943)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
20 N.E.2d 287, 371 Ill. 183, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/city-of-chicago-v-ingersoll-steel-disc-division-of-borg-warner-corp-ill-1939.