December 16, 1942 – It is interesting to note how many things that we take
for granted today begin as strange, curious, or contested, often taking years
before they find acceptance. One such
item went to court on this date in 1942 as the City of Chicago, upon failing to
get a permanent injunction against milk sold in paper cartons from Circuit
Court Judge Benjamin P. Epstein, went immediately to the Illinois Supreme Court
with its suit. The case hinged on an
interpretation of a 1935 city ordinance requiring that milk be sold in
“standard” containers. The United States
Supreme Court had already sent the case back to Illinois, saying that it was a
matter for the state courts to decide.
The case involved milk sold in single-serving containers, and in a
19-page opinion Judge Epstein ruled that the state legislature’s milk
pasteurization law, passed on July 24, 1939, took precedence over the city’s
law and permitted milk to be sold in the cartons. “While the state legislature desired to
preserve in the city the right to regulation,” Epstein wrote, “it did not
intend to give to the city the right to prohibit that which the state permitted.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, December 11,
1942] Interesting case . . . a
mystery today why city officials would initiate a case, follow it through the
local court, the Illinois Supreme Court, the U. S. Supreme Court, back to the
local court and again to the state’s Supreme Court over a milk carton, all of
this in the middle of wartime.
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