Latest Important Cases childhood when placed in the midst of
595
This decision coming before the Appel
rapidly moving machinery. Hence the violation of the statute may have been
late Division on appeal, Justice Clarke rested his dissenting opinion on a similar
found to bea contributing or perhaps the
ground, saying that this provision was “solely intended to prevent political
sole cause of the injury suffered.
The
result is that the defendant is entitled to go to the jury upon the question of his own due care."
combinations and fusions, and this is the very thing that I insist there is no right to prevent or hamper."
The Appellate Division declined, how Election Laws. Ballots—-Statute Pre venting Separate Nominations from Ap [bearing in Separate Columns —— Inde pendent Voting — Constitutionality ofLaw Prescribing Form of Ballot. N. Y.
ever, to take this view of the law, the majority opinion of the Court (Ingraham, P. J., McLaughlin, Miller and Dowling, JJ., concurring), rendered Sept. 28,
holding that the regulation applied
The Tammany amendment to the New York election law, known as the Levy law, passed in the last session of the
merely to the form of the ballot and the position of names thereon; "it leaves each political party unrestricted power
New York legislature (Laws of 1911,
of nomination; gives to an elector the
c. 649), so changed section 331 of the Election Law as to prevent the name of a candidate from appearing more than once on the official ballot. As amended
unrestricted and unimpaired power to vote for any person he chooses for the office to be filled. and gives to each
the law read: —— "If any person shall have been nomi nated by more than one political party or independent body for the same office,
his name shall be printed but once upon the ballot and shall appear in the party
aspirant for the office the right to have his name printed upon the ballot as a candidate of any party or independent body for any office to which he aspires if he obtains a nomination by either a political party or an independent body
of citizens. . . . l‘To declare an act of the Legislature
column of the party nominating him which appears first upon said ballot, unless the said candidate shall by a cer tificate in writing duly signed and acknowledged by him request the cus todian of primary records to print his name in the column of some other party
or independent body which shall have
void or violating a constitutional provi sion it is essential that the act of the Legislature should be in violation of some specific provision of the consti tution." (Matter of Hopper, reported in N. Y. Law Journal, Oct. 2.)
nominated him, in which event his name
The Court of Appeals reversed the ruling of the Appellate Division on
shall be printed in such other column
Oct. 10, in a unanimous decision written
only." The Supreme Court (Gavegan, J.) in a test case declared this provision un
by Chief Judge Cullen. The Court said: — "Constitutional provisions imply that
constitutional, on the ground that the Legislature could not so legislate as to induce partisan voting by making inde
every elector should have the right to vote with equal facility to other voters, or, to speak more accurately, without undue discrimination against him as to
pendent voting difficult, and that the act was an arbitrary and unlawful discrimi nation in favor of one class of voters.
the manner of casting his vote. . . . “While the constitution does not guar
