NOTES OF RECENT CASES CONSTITUTIONAL LAW. (Corporations.) U.S. Sup. Ct. — The validity of a Connecticut statute relative to condemnation of the stock of minority holders in certain instances came up for con sideration in the case of Offield v. New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad Company, 27 S. C. Rep. 72. The statute provides that in case .any railroad company, acting under authority of the laws of the state, shall have acquired more than three-fourths of the capital stock of any other railroad corporation and cannot agree with the holders of outstanding stock for the purchase of the same, it may cause such stock to be appraised, and that on such appraisal the stockholder shall thereupon cease to have any interest therein and shall surrender his certificates to the corporation applying for the appraisal. The defendant in error, as lessee of the New Haven and Derby Rail road Co., had acquired all the shares of stock of that road except the two owned by plaintiff in error, and for the purpose of improvement of the road brought proceedings under the statute for the acquisition of plaintiff in error's stock. It was contended that the proceedings and statute were in violation of the constitutional provision against deprivation of property without due process of law and that relating to the impair ment of rights of contract; but the court, citing the case of Long Island Water Supply Co. v. Brooklyn, 166 U. S. 685, 41 L. Ed. 1165, 17 Sup. Ct. Rep. 718, upheld the validity of the law.CONSTITUTIONAL LAW. (Criminal Law.) Tex. — The Constitution of Texas, guaranteeing every person accused of crime a speedy public trial was invoked to defeat the " law's delay " in Waldron instate, 98 S. W. Rep. 848. Acts 28th Leg. p. 221, c. 136 prescribing the penalty for seduction, provides that if the parties marry before the accused pleads to the indictment, the prosecution shall be suspended, but not dismissed, and shall be. continued on the docket of the court from term to term for two years, and in case of any misconduct on the part of the defendant that would be ground for divorce, the prosecution shall be revived. The court, in discussing the validity of the statute, states that the defendant was relieved by it of the offense of which he was guilty by hi3 sub sequent marriage, but conditions subsequent were left hanging over him which might be equivalent to grounds of divorce. It was conceded that the legislature may define the offense of seduction and denounce the punishment therefor, but that the proposition that the legislature may authorize the continuance of an indictment or the suspen sion thereof for two years, was antagonistic to the bill of rights and unsound; that it could not be seriously contended that the legislature had
power to punish a man for seduction simply because he might treat his wife in such manner as might justify her in bringing a suit for divorce. It concludes that the provisions suspending the prosecution for two years was violative of Const. Art. 1, § 10 guaranteeing every person accused of crime a speedy public trial. CONSTITUTIONAL LAW. (Discrimination Clas sification.) Wis. — In State v. Evans, 110 N. W. Rep. 241, the question arose as to the constitu tionality of the Wisconsin statutes regulating the practice of pharmacy, the important elements of which provide that any person who shall dispense drugs in any city, etc., having five hundred or more inhabitants, unless he be a registered phar macist, shall forfeit a certain sum, and that any person who shall dispense drugs in any town, etc., having less than five hundred inhabitants, unless he be a registered pharmacist, or registered assistant pharmacist, shall forfeit, etc. The valid ity of these laws as attacked principally on the ground that they classified localities, allowing some to be served in the business of pharmacy by assistant pharmacists, who as a class, pre sumptively have less of competence than is de manded of registered pharmacists by whom the larger communities are required to be served. It was argued that the classification was false inasmuch as the health and life of every individual and that of the public is as important in the little hamlet as in the great city, and that any protection against incompetent dispensers of drugs is as much due the one as the other. The court in upholding the validity of the law cited as examples of such classification the laws requiring a certain age to vote, difference in police protec tion and protection against fire, pure water and the construction of sewers, and in speaking of the cogency and propriety of such regulations said: " Those subjects rest with the legislature and only when the court in the exercise of the utmost deference toward that other branch of the government is compelled to say that no one in the exercise of human reason could honestly reach a conclusion that distinctions exist having any relation to the purpose and policy of the legislation can it deny it validity." CONSTITUTIONAL LAW. (Employers* Liability Act.) U. S. C. C. for Tenn. — In Howard v. Illinois Central Railroad Company, 148 Fed. Rep. 997, the court holds that the liability of a com mon carrier to its employer for personal injuries is not commerce, and the regulation of such liability with respect to carriers engaged in inter state commerce, is not within the power of Con gress under the Interstate Commerce clause of
