LEGAL ANALYSIS 17 



the service . . ."^^ Then the court dealt with an exception in the 

 statute which provided that the prohibition of the statute was not 

 to apply to persons who had such offices before the effective date of 

 the act. To this proviso an objection had been raised "that it creates 

 a specially privileged class. It is vigorously contended that the classi- 

 fication pursuant to which some dentists are permitted to conduct 

 dental offices in a manner forbidden to others is arbitrarily rested 

 solely on the mere caprice of time, and that such discrimination is 

 completely lacking in any reasonable basis. "^^ To meet this objec- 

 tion, the court pointed to other considerations than just the principal 

 one of preventing a fraud upon the public. They were three in 

 number, only one of which in any real way furthered the basic 

 scheme: (a) every statute has to have a beginning date; (b) persons 

 had invested heavily in time, labor and capital in the establishment 

 of chain dental offices at a time when such was lawful and to pro- 

 hibit their operation would result in heavy financial loss; and (c) 

 even those thus protected by the grandfather clause would "in the 

 ordinary course of human events" not last into perpetuity. "In time, 

 more or less prolonged, all such dental offices will cease to function. "^^ 

 A further subsidiary purpose has occasionally been noted in 

 cases dealing with grandfather clauses, where the person affected by 

 the legislation claimed a denial of equal protection in the exclusion 

 of the person presently in business at the effective date of the legis- 

 lation: Particularly in an earlier era of United States Supreme Court 

 history, legislation which applied in a sense retrospectively might 

 well be considered in itself thereby unconstitutional as a deprivation 

 of property. The understandable concern of the legislature for possi- 

 ble invalidation of its enactments from this source would thus furnish 

 a legitimate purpose to be served by providing a grandfather clause. 

 The Washington court in Spokane v. Coon7^ a 1940 decision, dis- 

 cussed with approval a United States Supreme Court case^^ in which 

 this consideration was an important factor. In that case, the Kansas 

 legislature had required that all black powder for use in a coal 

 mine had to be delivered in the original sealed packages but then 

 exempted those deliveries which were yet to be made under existing 



67. Id. at 467; 122 P. 2d at 462. 



68. Id. at 469; 122 P. 2d at 463. 



69. /J. at 471; 122 P. 2d at 464. 



70. 3 Wn. 2d 243, 100 P. 2d 36 ( 1940). 



71. Williams v. Walsh, 222 U. S. 415 ( 1912), 



