Seaboard Air Line Railway v. Seegers

Citations

• 207 U.S. 73
• 28 S. Ct. 28
• 52 L. Ed. 108
• 1907 U.S. LEXIS 1202

Syllabus

<p>Where a state statute applies to both intrastate and interstate shipments, but the shipment involved is wholly intrastate, this court will not consider the validity of the statute when applied to interstate1 shipments.</p> <p>A state statute may, without violating the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, put into one class all engaged in business of a special and public character, and require them to perform a duty which they can do better and -more quickly than others and impose a not exor- ' bitant penalty for the non-performance thereof.</p> <p>The statute of South Carolina of 1903 imposing a penalty of fifty dollars on all common carriers for failure to adjust damage claims within forty days is not, as to intrastate-shipments, unconstitutional as violative of the Fourteenth Amendment, neither the classification, the amount of the penalty nor the time of adjustment being beyond the power of the State to determine. And so held.in regard to a claim of $1.75, as small,'shipments are the' ones which especially need the protection of penal stat&tes of this nature.</p>