State Ex Rel. Larson v. City of Minneapolis

251 N.W. 121, 190 Minn. 138, 1933 Minn. LEXIS 893
CourtSupreme Court of Minnesota
DecidedNovember 17, 1933
DocketNo. 29,498.
StatusPublished
Cited by14 cases

This text of 251 N.W. 121 (State Ex Rel. Larson v. City of Minneapolis) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Minnesota primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State Ex Rel. Larson v. City of Minneapolis, 251 N.W. 121, 190 Minn. 138, 1933 Minn. LEXIS 893 (Mich. 1933).

Opinion

HILTON, Justice.

Mandamus to compel the respondents to issue to relator a license to sell pasteurized milk and its products within the city of Minne *139 apolis. The question presented involved the constitutionality of a city ordinance. The court upheld the ordinance, denied the relief prayed for, and ordered judgment dissolving the alternative writ. From an order denying a new trial relator appeals.

On March 11, 1932, the council of the city of Minneapolis passed a new milk ordinance to take effect on May 2, 1932. Section III thereof, in so far as here material, is:

“It shall be unlawful for any person to sell within the limits of the city of Minneapolis any pasteurized milk or its products as herein defined unless the same shall have been (1) pasteurized in a pasteurization plant located within the limits of the City of Minneapolis ; and (2) pasteurized by the process prescribed by this ordinance; (3) until a license therefor to be known as the ‘Minneapolis Pasteurized Milk License, shall have been issued to such person.

The ordinance further provides, by section XII:

“Pasteurizing plants operating under a Minneapolis milk license at the time of the passage of this ordinance and located beyond the limits of the city of Minneapolis may upon application and approval be issued a pasteurizing milk license from the first Monday in May, 1932, until December 31, 1932.”

Under the last quoted provision relator was licensed to sell pasteurized milk in Minneapolis until the date therein specified. Since then he has not been permitted to do so.

If the ordinance is unconstitutional it must be because it violates the due process clause of art. 1, § 7, of our state constitution and the due process and equal protection clauses of the fourteenth amendment of the federal constitution.

Under its police power a state or its municipalities may enact statutes and ordinances for the welfare and health of its citizens. Such a statute or ordinance, however, must be reasonable and not arbitrary; must not invade the fundamental liberties of the citizen; must, on the one hand, tend to accomplish the purpose of its adoption ; and, on the other, must not go beyond the reasonable demands *140 of the occasion. The burden of showing that an act is arbitrary and unreasonable is on the complaining party. 1 Dunnell, Minn. Dig. (2 ed. & Siipp.) § 1604, and cases cited; 2 Cooley, Constitutional Limitations (8 ed.) p. 1229, et seq. If, as claimed by respondents and found by the court, this ordinance was enacted by the city of Minneapolis for the protection of the health of its citizens, was the prohibition therein contained a reasonable regulation toward that end ? We think not.

There is no material controversy as to the facts appearing in the evidence and referred to in the findings of fact and in the court’s memorandum made a part thereof. We summarize such facts.

Belator is the owner of a milk pasteurizing plant located at Cologne, Minnesota, about 30 miles from Minneapolis, and has an investment therein of about $70,000. He has operated such a plant for more than 20 years. In addition to the pasteurizing plant he also has a creamery which he has operated for more than 35 years. For 14 months prior to December 31, 1932, he had distributed within Minneapolis, under a license issued by its city council, about 4,000 quarts of pasteurized milk and 400 to 500 pints of pasteurized cream daily, amounting to about 80 per cent of his total output. In the pasteurization process in relator’s plant, in full compliance with the requirements of the ordinance, the milk is brought up to 145 degrees and then cooled down to below 40 degrees Fahrenheit, when it is put into bottles, which are automatically capped without coming in contact with human hands, placed in cases which in the summer time are iced and put into insulated trucks, iced again, and in 60 to 70 minutes hauled to relator’s refrigerating plant in Minneapolis, where it is kept at a temperature of 40 to 45 degrees until the following morning, Avhen it is delivered to consumers.

The court found that if the requirements of the ordinance relative to the manner of pasteurizing the milk are complied with, and if such products are delivered at distribution points within the city after being placed in proper containers at the conclusion of the pasteurization process and maintained at the temperature prescribed by the ordinance during transportation, the milk will be in as safe and wholesome a condition for use by the consumers to *141 ■whom it is promptly delivered from such distribution points as though it had been so pasteurized in plants located within the limits of the city; but that if between the process of pasteurization of the milk and delivery of the same at distribution points the temperature thereof is permitted to rise above 50 degrees Fahrenheit, there is danger that any disease-producing organisms which remain therein undestroyed by the pasteurization process will so multiply as to render such milk unsafe for human consumption, and the hazard of multiplication of such disease-producing organisms is increased in proportion to the length of the interval between pasteurization and delivery for consumption; that the process of transportation in containers as provided by the ordinance does not in itself cause milk to become unwholesome or in any way to deteriorate if the same is kept at a proper temperature.

It is not contended that milk pasteurized outside the city limits and distributed within cannot be kept at all times at a temperature that will reasonably insure its wholesomeness when reaching the consumers. The court, however, found that the inspection necessary to safeguard the public health in that respect “is attended with substantial public expense, which is greater or less according to the distance to be traveled by the inspectors for the purpose of making such inspection.” In its memorandum the court states:

“If milk and milk products are in other respects produced, handled, pasteurized, transported and distributed in accordance with the laws of the state and the ordinance in question, the inevitable conclusion from the evidence would be that it makes no difference whether it is pasteurized within or without the city. If this were all the provision here in question would be plainly unreasonable and invalid.”

The record discloses that relator has at all times complied with requirements of the city ordinance and state statutes relative to pasteurized milk. The city caused relator’s pasteurization plant to be inspected at intervals of approximately once a week, and the results of such inspection were found to be satisfactory according to the requirements of the ordinance. In addition, his plant *142 was inspected by the state once or twice a year. His product has never been found to be less wholesome than that produced by plants within the city.

The court continues:

“But this is not all. The evidence, which is supported by common knowledge, shows that at all stages the process of pasteurization and the conditions of transportation and distribution need to be watched.

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Bluebook (online)
251 N.W. 121, 190 Minn. 138, 1933 Minn. LEXIS 893, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-ex-rel-larson-v-city-of-minneapolis-minn-1933.