78 SALMON GEAR LIMITATION 



contracts. In speaking of this exemption the United States Supreme 

 Court is quoted as follows: " '. . . [T]here are nevertheless other 

 considerations to be taken into account. The statute is criminal. A 

 retrospective operation of it was to be avoided, might indeed be 

 illegar."^^ 



Purely administrative considerations also serve as a legitimate 

 subsidiary purpose. Often, for example, a person will object to some 

 legislative classification on the ground that either he should not 

 have been included or that someone else who is likewise a source 

 of harm to be avoided by the statute is exempted from its operation. 

 Yet, such factors as the diflficulties of effective enforcement as to 

 the persons exempted from the statute, or the extra expense in- 

 volved, will justify the classification. State v. Kitsap County BankP 

 a 1941 decision, is a good illustration. In that case the bank argued 

 that the state's unemployment compensation statute was unconsti- 

 tutional, objecting upon the ground, among others, that in providing 

 for the law to apply only to those employers who had eight or more 

 employees the legislature had further provided that where various 

 "employing units" were controlled by "the same interest," the total 

 number of employees of all these units was the critical number: if it 

 was eight or more, the act applied. The bank objected to this as 

 an unreasonable classification of employers. The court, however, 

 held the act valid, saying with respect to this particular argument: 



"Obviously the reason for [the enactment of the provision concerning 

 'employing units' controlled by 'the same interest'] was to prevent persons, 

 who would otherwise fall within the classification of employers within the 

 terms of the act, from evading the statute through various forms of dis- 

 integrated ownership and control, thus lessening the number of employees 

 within the protection of the act . . . Contemplation of some of the practical 

 difficulties in the administration of the act renders the matter even clearer 

 ... It cannot be held that the legislature, in failing to further refine the 

 classification now under discussion so as to exempt therefrom persons who 

 were not actually engaged in any evasive practice, was acting unreasonably, 

 arbitrarily, or capriciously. The practical difficulties of devising a statute 

 which would operate to prevent such practices, while not applying to other 

 cases, and the expense involved in connection with the administration of 

 such refined legislation, afford ample justification for the broad inclusive 



features of [the challenged section]."'^'* 



That such subsidiary considerations can be a legitimate basis 



72. 3 Wn. 2d at 252, 253; 100 P. 2d at 40. 



73. 10 Wn. 2d 520, 1 17 P. 2d 228 (1941 ). 



74. Id. at 525 and 527, 528; 1 1 7 P. 2d at 23 1 , 232. 



