McFarland v. American Sugar Refining Co.

Citations

• 241 U.S. 79
• 36 S. Ct. 498
• 60 L. Ed. 899
• 1916 U.S. LEXIS 1803

Syllabus

<p>Act No. 10 of the Extra Session of the General Assembly of Louisiana for 1915, relating to the business of refining sugar and creating the rebuttable presumption that any person systematically paying in that State a less price for sugar than he pays in any other State is a party to a monopoly or conspiracy in restraint of trade, held unconstitutional under the equal protection and due process provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment; the classification therein, if not confined to a single party, being so arbitrary as to be beyond possible justice, and the presumptions created having no foundation except on intent to destroy.</p> <p>While the legislature may go far in raising presumptions and changing the burden of proof, there must be rational connection between the fact proved and the ultimate fact presumed.</p> <p>It is not within the province of the legislature to declare an individual guilty, or presumptively guilty, of a crime.</p> <p>A statute must fall as a whole, if it falls in sections without which there is no reason to suppose it would have been passed.</p>