A state may restrict the fee chargeable by attorneys at law in
case arising under the state workmen's compensation act without
depriving them of property or liberty of contract in violation of
the Fourteenth Amendment. P.
267 U. S.
541.
192 N.W. 953 affirmed.
Error to a judgment of the Supreme Court of Nebraska ordering
that the right of the plaintiff in error to practice as attorney at
law be suspended unless he refund to a client a fee received and
paid in violation of a provision of the state workmen's
compensation law providing that, in cases thereunder, the pay of
the attorney should be fixed by the court, and invalidating any
contract for other and further pay.
MR. JUSTICE HOLMES delivered the opinion of the Court.
Upon a report of the respondents, a committee of members of the
bar, the plaintiff in error was ordered to be suspended from the
right to practice as attorney unless he should refund to a client a
fee received by him of $620 and interest within a time fixed. The
ground of the order was that, by ยง 3031, Comp. St.1922, only such
sum could be demanded for services in bringing a suit under the
Workmen's Compensation Act of the state as the court
Page 267 U. S. 541
should allow, and that a contract for other and further pay was
void. The supreme court of the state, while crediting the plaintiff
in error with an honest belief that the statute had a narrower
meaning, made the order complained of, and the case is brought here
on a contention that the statute, as construed, unreasonably
restricts the liberty of contract and contravenes the Fourteenth
Amendment by depriving the plaintiff in error of his liberty and
property without due process of law.
The plaintiff in error recognizes that this Court is bound by
the construction given to the state law by the state court, yet
wastes a good deal of argument in the effort to prove the
construction wrong. When the constitutional question is reached,
late cases are relied upon for the general proposition that
unreasonable interference with freedom of contract cannot be
sustained.
Adkins v. Children's Hospital, 261 U.
S. 525;
Charles Wolff Packing Co. v. Court of
Industrial Relations, 262 U. S. 522. But
the question is specific whether we can pronounce this law
unreasonable against the opinion of the legislature and supreme
court of the state. The Court adverts to the fact that a large
proportion of those who come under the statute have to look to it
in case of injury, and need to be protected against improvident
contracts in the interest not only of themselves and their
families, but of the public. A somewhat similar principle has been
sanctioned by this Court.
Calhoun v. Massie, 253 U.
S. 170. When we add the considerations that an attorney
practices under a license from the state and that the subject
matter is a right created by statute, it is obvious that the state
may attach such conditions to the license in respect of such
matters as it believes to be necessary in order to make it a public
good. Of course, a reasonable time from the issue of the mandate of
this Court will be allowed for the plaintiff in error to comply
with the judgment affirmed.
Judgment affirmed.