Majority — Sanford J.
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case arose under the Insurance Law of Oregon. 2 Oregon Laws, Tit. 36, §§ 6322 to 6604. Section 6388 of this Law.provides, inter alia, as follows:
(1) “It shall be unlawful for any fire insurance company doing business in the state of Oregon to write, place or cause tó be written or placed, any policy or contract for indemnity or insurance on property situated or located in the state of Oregon, except through or by the duly authorized agent or agents of such insurance company residing and doing business in this state, to' whom the premium on such insurance §hall be paid ... .”;
(7) “Any such insurance company ... may appoint one additional agent ... in any city of this state having a population of fifty thousand or more inhabitants according to the last federal census . .
(8) “ Any such insurance company may appoint an additional agent or agents . . . in any city of this state on application to the' insurance commissioner and the payment of an annual license fee of five hundred dollars for each such agent.”
Herbring, a resident and practising attorney in the city of Portland, Oregon, in good standing, applied to. Lee, the Insurance Commissioner of Oregon, for an agént’s license to represent the Northwestern National Insurance Company of Milwaukee — a foreign corporation duly qualified to write policies of fire insurance in Oregon, and already having two agents in Portland. The application — upon which the Company had indorsed its approval — was accompanied by Herbring’s check for $2 as payment for a license fee. The Commissioner returned
The Company, so far as appears, neither replied to the Commissioner, nor paid or tendered the $500 fee, nor questioned the validity of this requirement. Herbring, however, appealed to the Circuit Court of the county from the decision of the Commissioner refusing to issue to him a license as an agent for the Company. See § 6335. The Company was not a party to this appeal. The court — which heard the matter without pleadings— finding that the Company’s application for the appointment of Herbring to act as an additional agent was denied by the Commissioner for the reason that it refused to pay the license fee of $500 required by subd. 8 of § 6388 to be paid by any insurance company appointing an additional agent, and that this provision is “ void and unconstitutional and an unlawful interference with the right of said agent to engage in the business of selling fire insurance in the State of Oregon and with the right of said
On an appeal by the Commissioner from this order, the Supreme Court of Oregbn held that the payment of the $500 fee is'required by § 6388 “as a condition precedent to the right of any fire insurance company to appoint such additional agent ”; that, “ a foreign corporation being required to comply with the statute, in order to be entitled to appoint agents and consummate its business in the state of Oregon, it follows . . . that in order for an agent to obtain a license to represent such a foreign corporation there must first be a compliance by the foreign corporation with the requirements of our state law,” and that. “ the rights of one applying for a license to act as agent for such insurance company are contingent upon the compliance of the company with conditions precedent to its right to appoint such an agent ”; and further, that subd. 8 of § 6388 is not repugnant to either the privileges and immunities clause or the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, but is a valid legislative requirement of a foreign insurance company in the conduct of. its business in Oregon. The judgment of the Circuit Court was accordingly reversed, and the proceeding dismissed. 126 Ore. 588 .
From this judgment Herbring was allowed an appeal to this Court. The only Federal question presented by his assignments of error is that the Supreme Court of Oregon “erred in holding that Sub-div. 8 of § 6388 of the Oregon Laws does not abridge the rights of the appellant Karl Herbring, guaranteed’ by § 1 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States,”
This position is not well taken. Subd. 8 of § 6388, as appears upon its face and from the entire context, is not directed against individual insurance agents and imposes no restrictions upon them, but is, as construed by the Supreme Court of the State, a provision requiring the insurance company itself to pay a $600 fee as a condition-precedent to its right to appoint an additional agent to represent it in any city. To exercise this right, as indicated by the statute, it must apply to the Insurance Commissioner and pay the additional license fee for such agent. It is plainly no interference whatever with the right of the individual to carry on the business of an insurance agent, or class legislation in this respect. It is obvious that, as pointed out by the Supreme Court of Oregon, in order that an .agent may be licensed to represent a company there must first be a compliance by the company with-the requirement of the statute; the right of one applying for a license.to act as an agent for the company, being contingent upon such compliance. No one has the right to receive a license to represent a company as its agent, when the company itself has no right to appoint him. And the contention that the statute is an unconstitutional interference with the individual
2. The appellant also urges in argument, that “ if the statute be regarded as a corporate regulation, rather than as an individual prohibition, it is unconstitutional, in that it is unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious” and cannot be sustained under the police power of the State. In other words, he seeks in argument to challenge the validity of the statute on the ground that it is an infringement of the Company’s constitutional right to appoint an additional agent. The Company itself is not here insisting that the statute constitutes an impairment of its own right; it raised no such question before the Commissioner, and for aught that appears acquiesced in that officer’s view of the validity of the statute.
It may well be that under the facts in this case Her-bring’s individual interest in this question is not direct but merely collateral and remote and not such as would have entitled him to challenge the constitutional validity of the statute on the ground that it is an impairment of the Company’s own rights. But, however that may be, there is no assignment of error here which challenges the validity of the statute on that ground; and the question which Herbring seeks to raise in argument, is not before us for decision.
The judgment is
Affirmed.