People v. Raport

193 A.D. 135, 38 N.Y. Crim. 488, 183 N.Y.S. 589, 1920 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 5515
Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York·Decided July 2, 1920·Published·Cited by 1 cases

Opinions

Merrell, J.:

Defendant upon conviction was sentenced to pay a fine of twenty dollars which fine was paid. The defendant appeals from such conviction, claiming, first, that certain articles manufactured and finished, to wit, babies’ bibs, were not wearing apparel within the provisions of the statute. The appellant also contends that the statute itself is unconstitutional as discriminatory and denying certain classes of people, and particularly the defendant, the equal protection of the law guaranteed by section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution.

Section 104 of the Labor Law (as amd. by Laws of 1913, chap. 260), for the violation of which the defendant has been convicted, provides as follows:

§ 104. Manufacturing of certain articles in tenements prohibited. No article of food, no dolls or dolls’ clothing and no article of children’s or infants’ wearing apparel shall be manufactured, altered, repaired or finished, in whole or in part, for a factory, either directly or through the instrumentality of one or more contractors or other third person, in a tenement house, in any portion of an apartment, any part of which is used for living purposes.”

The penalty imposed upon the defendant for the violation of said section is provided by section 1275 of the Penal Law (as amd. by Laws of 1913, chap. 349), which provides that any person violating a provision of the Labor Law is guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction is punishable for the first offense by a fine of not less than twenty nor more than fifty dollars. Upon defendant’s conviction the minimum sentence provided by said law was imposed.

The evidence shows that the defendant had a factory at 2292 Arthur avenue, borough of The Bronx, New York city, [137] and that said defendant employed a woman to do the stitching on twenty-four dozen babies’ bibs; that on September 5, 1919, the said woman was doing the work in question in her apartment in a twenty-family tenement house at 2540 Cambrelling avenue, borough of The Bronx. No evidence was introduced on the part of the defendant, and the facts above stated appear undisputed and uncontradicted in the evidence.

It is the contention, as before stated, of the defendant, appellant, that the articles in question were not articles of “ infants’ wearing apparel ” within the meaning of the statute; and, secondly, that if the statute can be construed as applying to the articles in question, to -wit, babies’ bibs, it is ■unconstitutional.

The law is of course, enacted as a health measure, for the protection of the health of infants, and the very purposes of the statute have been violated by the acts of the defendant in the case at bar. There can be no question but that the bibs which the defendant was manufacturing were articles of wearing apparel. The cases are many holding that similar articles are wearing apparel, and that wearing apparel is not confined to clothing, hats and shoes, but that any article intended and adapfied to be worn on the person and necessary and proper for the protection of the person or for the person’s personal comfort comes within the definition of wearing apparel. There can be no question but that the bibs manufactured by the defendant were to be worn as a part of the apparel of infants. A thin lace collar to be worn on a woman’s neck has been held by the courts to be wearing apparel, although worn merely for ornamentation. (Matter of Evans & Co., 158 Fed. Rep. 153; Arnold v. United States, 147 U. S. 494; Matter of Steele, 22 Fed. Cas. 1202.)

The appellant devotes a large part of his brief in an attempt to argue that the bibs manufactured by the defendant were not wearing apparel. It seems to me that the proposition is too. plain to require any extended discussion. The articles themselves, as before stated, are worn by infants and a contract made for their manufacture in tenement houses and in unclean surroundings comes directly within the intent and meaning of the statute.

As to the constitutional question upon which the defendant [138] ■ relies, that question was not raised upon the trial, and the defendant should not be permitted to assert the same upon this appeal for the first time. (People v. Ostrander, 144 App. Div. 860; Dodge v. Cornelius, 168 N. Y. 242.) The sole defense interposed by the defendant upon the trial was that the bibs in question were not wearing apparel within the meaning of the statute. No attempt was made upon the trial to raise any question as to the constitutionality of the statute, and, therefore, if a defense, it must be deemed to have been waived.

However, it seems to me that section 104 of the Labor Law was entirely constitutional and a valid exercise of the police power of the Legislature. It was enacted purely as a health measure in order to protect the health of children, a matter of the utmost importance. The statute reads that “ No article of food, no dolls or dolls’ clothing and no article of children’s or infants’ wearing apparel shall be manufactured, altered, repaired or finished, in whole or in part, for a factory, either directly or through the instrumentality of one or more contractors or other third person in a tenement house, in any portion of an apartment, any part of which is used for - living purposes.”

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People v. Raport, 193 A.D. 135, 38 N.Y. Crim. 488, 183 N.Y.S. 589, 1920 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 5515 (N.Y. Ct. App. 1920).

193 A.D. 135 (People v. Raport) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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