United States Supreme Court Cases & Opinions

U.S. Supreme Court

Dillingham v. McLaughlin, 264 U.S. 370 (1924)

Dillingham v. McLaughlin

Nos. 690 and 691

Argued March 17, 1924

Decided April 7, 1924

264 U.S. 370

Syllabus

1. Business so nearly akin to banking as to be equally clothed with a public interest may be brought under state supervision by confinement to corporations. P. 373.

2. So held of a business, conducted by a common law trust, of soliciting and receiving loans in small monthly payments under loan contracts which entitled the respective lenders, when they had paid in a stated percentage, to borrow the face value of their contracts in the order of their applications therefor on real estate security, or, upon sale of this borrowing right, to receive the amounts paid in on their contracts with a problematical "bonus," or, by paying up contracts in full, to receive back their face value with a share in a "surplus," with provisions as to forfeiture, etc. Id.

3. A law of New York forbidding any individual, partnership, or unincorporated association to engage in the business of receiving deposits or payments of money in installments, for cooperative, mutual loan, savings, or investment purposes in sums of less than $500 each held not violative of the Equal Protection Clause in not applying to the business of receiving larger deposits in view of the greater protection needed by small investors and the elements of chance, risk, and delay to investors existing in this case. P. 264 U. S. 374.

4. A party as to whom a statute is not unduly discriminative cannot contest its constitutionality upon the ground that it discriminates unduly against others. Id.

5. The operation of reasonable state laws for the protection of the public cannot be headed off by making contracts reaching into the future. Id.

Reversed.

Page 264 U. S. 371

Cross-appeals from a decree of the district court in a suit brought by Dillingham et al., trustees, against New York officials to enjoin them from enforcing a New York statute making the continuance of the plaintiffs' business a misdemeanor. Laws, N.Y. 1923, c. 895.