Martin

This is an appeal from a decree declaring illegal and rescinded a contract for the conditional sale of a dairy and milk distribution business, including a herd of dairy stock, which sale also included as a part of the business a lease of certain premises and a grazing permit, and awarding the vendees the return of his purchase price and rentals paid, less certain credits realized from the disposition of some of the herd. The decree ordered the return to the vendors of the remaining livestock and personal property purported so to have been sold and of the possession of the lease and permit land.

The ground of the declaration of illegality is that the herd of cows was infected with Bang’s Disease, contagious abortion, a fact known to the appellants, the vendors, when they delivered the herd to the appellees, which diseased cattle the Alaska law made it illegal to sell and for which sale that law imposed a fine. It is not contended that the delivery of the herd under the conditional sales contract did not constitute such a sale.

The law is a health regulation, since the spread of the contagion throughout Alaska herds, with the accompanying deaths of some of the cows and the…