Nickles v. Echelberger

31 N.E.2d 474, 31 N.E. 474, 21 Ohio Law. Abs. 679, 6 Ohio Op. 41, 1935 Ohio Misc. LEXIS 1340
CourtOhio Court of Appeals
DecidedMarch 22, 1935
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 31 N.E.2d 474 (Nickles v. Echelberger) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Ohio Court of Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Nickles v. Echelberger, 31 N.E.2d 474, 31 N.E. 474, 21 Ohio Law. Abs. 679, 6 Ohio Op. 41, 1935 Ohio Misc. LEXIS 1340 (Ohio Ct. App. 1935).

Opinion

OPINION

By THE COURT

The Nickles case is an action in equity originating in the Common Pleas Court of Ashland County. Thereby injunctive relief is sought to restrain'the mayor from the issuance of warrants, under city ordinances, for the arrest of Rastetter or any one else operating the plaintiff’s trucks in the sale and delivery of bread and other baked goods in the city of Ashland. This action comes to this court on appeal.

The Rastetter case had its inception in the Municipal Court of the city of Ashland. Therein an affidavit was filed against him under municipal ordinances Nos. 154 and 155, charging that he did unlawfully peddle and sell bread in the city of Ashland without having first obtained a license and permit so to do from the mayor of said city. Rastetter was found guilty of the offense charged and was fined Twenty-five Dollars and the costs. Error was prosecuted therefrom to the Common Pleas Court, which consolidated the proceeding with the suit of equity, ánd upon final hearing the judgment was affirmed and the injunction denied, and from these judgments, Nickles and Rastetter prosecute error and appeal to this court, wherein the same were presented and heard jointly.

The claimed errors upon which the Rastetter proceeding is predicated are nine in number; all of which are not urged in oral argument or in briefs filed. We shall therefore consider only the claim that the Municipal Court’s judgment is contrary to law and against the weight of the evidence. These errors, if maintainable, are determinative of the entire controversy.

The Nickles action is submitted to this court upon the record of testimony made in the trial court. It is maintained therefrom that the evidence offered warrants the issuance of the writ prayed for.

In both cases three certain ordinances of the city of Ashland are drawn in question, as is also one section of the General Code. Y/e shall quote them in full.

Section 154. “It shall be unlawful for any peddler, transient person or persons within the limits of the city to peddle or sell either for cash or upon the installment plan goods, wares, or merchandise or offer for sale such goods, wares or merchandise without first having obtained a license and permit for such business from the mayor.”
Section 155. “The mayor is hereby authorized to issue such license or permit to any such person or persons, firm, company or corporation applying to him for same, and the mayor is hereby authorized to demand and receive from such applicant for such license or permit a sum of not less than $1.00 or more than $25.00 per day for each and every day of such sales; provided however that this section and the preceding section shall not apply to persons selling by sample, to retailers only, nor to [681]*681any agricultural article, or products offered or exposed for sale by the producer.”
Section 156. “Whoever violates any of the provisions of §§154 and 155 relating to the licensing of peddlers and transient dealers, upon conviction thereof shall be fined not less than $1.00 or more than $25.00 for each offense.”

Sec 3672, GC, appearing under the title of General Powers, Enumeration of Powers, License, as applying to municipalities generally, provides:

Sec 3672 GC, License power; exception. “To license exhibitors of shows or performances of any kind; not prohibited by law, hawkers, peddlers, auctioneers of horses and other animals on the highways or public grounds of the corporation, vendors of gun powder and other explosives, taverns and houses of public entertainments, and hucksters in the public streets or markets, and, in granting such license, may exact and receive such sum of money as it may think reasonable, but no municipal corporation may require of the owner of any product of his own raising, or the manufacturer of any article manufactured by him, license to vend or sell in any way, by himself or agent, any such article or product. Such council may confer upon, vest in and delegate to the mayor of the corporation authority to grant, issue and revoke licenses.”

As pointed out by the brief of counsel for the city and its officer, Ordinance No. 155 does not contain, the exception appearing in §3672, GC, pertaining to the exemption of a "manufacturer of any article manufactured by him, license to vend or sell in any way, by himself, or agent, any such article or product.”

The record in the criminal case discloses an admission by the plaintiff in error “that prior to his arrest, he has been engaged in the selling of bread upon the streets of Ashland, city of Ashland, from house to house.” Thereafter appears the testimony of Alfred Nickles, both direct and cross-examination and interrogation by the court. This discloses that Nickles owned and operated a bakery in the village of Navarre. (Stark County, Ohio) that he sold at wholesale and retail only products of his own manufacture. That he had 69 retail routes, which were covered by trucks which he owned and which were driven by his agents, including the plaintiff in error, that they were paid a salary and commission, that they received their loads in the morning and settled at night for the articles sold and turned in the unsold portion. From this undisputed evidence the trial court found that Rastetter was an independent contractor and peddler. We are unable to understand how it was possible to reach such a conclusion from the evidence presented. Viewed in the light of the distinction pronounced by the court in Industrial Commission v Laird, 126 Oh St, 619, it is certain that the appellant had and exercised complete control over the activities of Rastetter. He not only had the right to control but exercised it daily. It is beyond question that Rastetter was but an employee and agent of Nickles. The city however, further maintains that even if this conclusion from the evidence be true, that a bakery is not a manufacturing establishment and not within the exception created by §3672, GC, and that therefore the statute could not be controvened by the ordinance.

We are invited to adopt a restricted definition of the term “manufacture”. In State v Hennessey Co., 71 Mont., 301, 230 Pac., 64, it was held that a bakery is a manufacturing plant; and the court in arriving at that result selects with approval the definition taken from the Century Dictionary, which to us seems more nearly to embrace the present enlarged meaning of the term, as is therein said: .

“The operation of making goods or wares of any kind; the production of articles for use from raw or prepared materials by giving to those materials new forms, qualities, properties or combinations, whether by hand labor or by machinery; used more especially of production in a large way by machinery or by many hands working collectively.”

See also City of Ozark v Hammond, Mo., 49 SW Ind., 129; Campbell Baking Co. v City of Harrisonville, 19 Fed. (2d), 159; and In re Irish, 122 Kan., 33, 250 Pac., 1056.

In Commonwealth v Thackra Mfg. Co,. 156 Pa., 510, 27 Atl., 13, it is recognized that the power to manufacture implies a power to sell the article produced, but that when one also buys and sells that he becomes a merchant, and, although the two characters may be united in one person, they do not merge. Considering the dual capacity that such a one may have, it is said in Chattanooga Plow Co. v Hays, 125 Tenn., 148 SW, 1068, that “the marked distinction between a manufacturer and a [682]

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
31 N.E.2d 474, 31 N.E. 474, 21 Ohio Law. Abs. 679, 6 Ohio Op. 41, 1935 Ohio Misc. LEXIS 1340, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/nickles-v-echelberger-ohioctapp-1935.