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Subject Area: Law
Topic: The American Revolution and Constitution

§ 174.: Miscellaneous regulations of the use of personal property.— - Christopher G. Tiedeman, A Treatise on State and Federal Control of Persons and Property in the United States considered from both a Civil and Criminal Standpoint, vol. 2 [1900]

Edition used:

A Treatise on State and Federal Control of Persons and Property in the United States considered from both a Civil and Criminal Standpoint (St. Louis: The F.H. Thomas Law Book Co., 1900). Vol. 2.

Part of: A Treatise on State and Federal Control of Persons and Property in the United States considered from both a Civil and Criminal Standpoint, 2 vols.

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§ 174.

Miscellaneous regulations of the use of personal property.—

In Missouri, a municipal ordinance conferred upon one person the right to remove and appropriate all carcasses of animals found in the city and not slain for food, to the exclusion of the owner. The statute was subjected to judicial construction, and it was held to be unconstitutional, so far as it applied to carcasses, which have not become a nuisance, although not slain for use as food.3 As long as the carcasses of animals are not a nuisance to the public, because of their effect upon the public health, they are as much protected by constitutional guaranties, as are the live animals.

The agricultural communities of the South suffer greatly from the depredations of thieves on the unharvested crop, and particularly from the stealing of cotton. As a means of checking this pillage, a statute was enacted in Alabama, which made it unlawful “for any person to transport or move after sunset and before sunrise of the succeeding day,” within certain counties, “any cotton in the seed,” but permitted the owner or producer to remove it from the field to the place of storage. This was held to be a reasonable police regulation, and not an unconstitutional interference with the rights of private property.1 It is a rather peculiar regulation, and may possibly be open to scientific objection, but it is no doubt constitutional. It is made in the interest of the farmer; and since the statute reserves to the owner or producer the right to remove the cotton after nightfall from the field to a place of storage, the regulation may be considered as being confined to the prohibition of all trading or dealing in cotton after sunset and before sunrise and does not interfere with any other harmless use of it by the owner.

As a part of the general law of the road, it is not unfrequently provided that certain kinds of vehicles shall not be driven or ridden on certain roads and streets. I do not know that the constitutionalty of these laws has ever been questioned, save in the case to which reference will now be made. In North Carolina a law, prohibiting the riding of bicycles on turnpike roads, was declared to be a constitutional exercise of the police power, the frightening of farmers’ horses being the chief reason for the enactment of the law. Doubtless, at the present day, even in North Carolina, and certainly generally throughout this country, the bicycle has become so well known to the horses that the riding of the bicycle has ceased to be a source of danger to the drivers of horses. It is, for this reason, unlikely that this decision would now be sustained by the courts of other States.1 A rule of county commissioners, forbidding the riding of bicycles across bridges, was sustained in Maryland, under the grant of power “to make reasonable rules and regulations for the use” of bicycles.2

[3]River Rendering Comdany v. Behr, 77 Mo. 91 (46 Am. Rep. 6).

[1]Davis v. State, 68 Ala. 58 (44 Am. Rep. 128).

[1]State v. Yopp, 97 N. C. 477.

[2]Twilley v. Perkins, 77 Md. 252.