Judges: Parsons
Filed Date: 6/29/1922
Status: Precedential
Modified Date: 10/19/2024
The wrong of which the plaintiff really complains, it is inferred from the declaration and briefs, is the sale to him by the defendant of certain securities of less value than the amount he has paid for them. His contention is that by virtue of the fact that the sale was made in violation of the provisions of c. 202, Laws 1917, he may maintain his suit without proof of the facts essential to recovery in a common-law action of deceit.
The defendant's first ground of demurrer is that the statute upon which plaintiff relies, "An act to protect the public against the sale of worthless securities," is unconstitutional. The reason signed in the demurrer is: "the statute . . . is unconstitutional in that it attempts to deprive the court of the authority to decide the question of law." The provisions of the statute upon which this contention is based are not pointed out. The act provides for the decision by the insurance commissioner of certain questions of fact. Part II, art. 4, of the constitution gives the general court full power "to erect and constitute judicatories and courts of record or other courts . . . for the hearing, trying, and determining all manner of . . . actions, causes, matters, and things whatsoever, arising or happening within this state." There can be no constitutional *Page 422
objection to the investing of the insurance commissioner with judicial power as to the matters in question. The statute does not attempt to remove him from the superintending power of the supreme court as to questions of law, if the attempt to do so would violate the constitution. This power to create inferior tribunals has been frequently exercised. Boody v. Watson,
The declaration may be, and probably is, technically defective. The plaintiff does not claim that any private right of action is given by the terms of the statute or that as a private individual he can maintain an action without showing that the act complained of, beside being a wrong as against the state, had some relation to him; and concedes that to maintain the suit he must show not only the violation of the statute but that the violation was the cause of the wrong. Taylor v. Thomas,
At common law, "A right cannot be founded upon a violation of law, and hence no legal right can grow out of a contract promoting or intending to promote such a violation." Piper v. Railroad,
Case discharged.
All concurred.
Pugliese v. Golden Investment ( 1993 )
Tatterson v. Kehrlein ( 1927 )
Wilson v. Guaranteed Securities Co. ( 1928 )
Lefebvre v. Homer M. Whittier & Co. ( 1929 )
Chroniak v. Golden Investment Corp. ( 1993 )
pauline-chroniak-and-thomas-pugliese-v-golden-investment-corp-and-armand ( 1993 )
Intermountain Title Guaranty Co. v. Egbert ( 1932 )
Kenalos v. H. v. Greene Co. ( 1925 )