Arthur G. Osgood v. Central Vermont Railway Co

• Decision Date: 09 March 1905
• Citation: 60 A. 137,77 Vt. 334
• Parties: ARTHUR G. OSGOOD v. CENTRAL VERMONT RAILWAY CO
• Court: Vermont Supreme Court

60 A. 137

77 Vt. 334

ARTHUR G. OSGOOD v. CENTRAL VERMONT RAILWAY CO

Supreme Court of Vermont

March 9, 1905

October Term, 1904.

CASE FOR NEGLIGENCE. Plea, the general issue. Heard on an agreed statement of facts at the June Term, 1904, Orange County Rowell, J., presiding. Judgment, pro forma, for the plaintiff for $ 300 and costs. The defendant excepted. The agreed statement set forth the lease mentioned in the opinion alleged that the car and engine were negligently run against the plaintiff's shed by the servants of the defendant while within the scope of their employment, that, if defendant was liable on the agreed statement, judgment should be rendered against it for $ 300 and costs; and that if defendant was not liable, it should have judgment to recover its costs.

Judgment reversed, and judgment for the defendant to recover its costs.

C. W. Witters for the defendant.

Present: ROWELL, C. J., TYLER, MUNSON, START, WATSON, HASELTON, and POWERS, JJ.

OPINION

Rowell

The case is this. The defendant leased to the plaintiff for five years a piece of its roadway for a site for a coal and lumber shed, at an annual rent of fifteen dollars, payable in advance; in consideration of which the plaintiff agreed to pay said rent, and to indemnify and save harmless the defendant from all liability for loss, damage or injury to himself, his property, servants, or agents while upon or about said premises, occasioned by fire or otherwise, resulting from the negligence of the defendant, its servants, agents, or in any other manner. The action is for negligently running an engine and a car off a spur track and against the plaintiff's shed, built upon said premises pursuant to said lease, thereby wrecking the same, and breaking and destroying divers wagons and other carriages stored therein.

The plaintiff claims that said contract is in contravention of sections 3924 and 3926 of [60 A. 138] the Vt. Statutes, and also against public policy, and therefore illegal and void.

Section 3924 provides that when an engineer, fireman, or other agent of a railroad, is guilty of negligence or carelessness whereby an injury is done to a person or corporation, he shall be imprisoned not more than a year, or fined not more than a thousand dollars; but that the section shall not exempt a person nor a corporation from an action for damages.

As the inhibition to contract implied by this section, whatever it is, cannot extend beyond its penalization, it is important to determine whether it penalizes the injury complained of. Conceding for present purposes that it penalizes all injuries in which the public has an interest, does it penalize injuries in which the public has no interest, but which are wholly of private concern? This depends upon the construction to be given to it, for its language is broad enough to include all injuries, regardless of the interests they touch.

Penal statutes are to be strictly construed, though not so strictly as to defeat their purpose. They are, like other statutes, when not too plain and specific for construction, to be construed with reference to their spirit and reason; and courts have power to declare that a case that falls within their letter is not within the statute because not within its spirit and reason and the intention of the Legislature. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania says, quoting somebody, that "no man incurs a penalty unless his act is clearly within both the spirit and the letter of the statute imposing the penalty." Commonwealth v. Wells,110 Pa. 463, 468. The Supreme Court of Maryland said much the same thing in Cearfoss v. State, 42 Md. 403. There are many forcible illustrations of the application of this rule. Puffendorf mentions a case in the Bolognian law in which it was adjudged that an enactment that "whoever drew blood in the streets should be punished with the utmost severity," did not apply to a surgeon who bled a man that fell down in the street in a fit. Blackstone says that the most universal and effectual way of discovering the true meaning of a law is, when the words are dubious, by considering the reason and spirit of it, or the cause that moved its enactment; and instances a case put by Cicero, of a law that those who, in a storm, forsook the ship, should forfeit all property therein, and that the ship and the lading should belong entirely to those who stayed in it. In a tempest, all forsook the ship except one passenger, who was too sick to leave it. By chance the ship came into port, and the sick man kept possession and claimed the benefit of the law. But all the learned agreed that he was not within the reason of the law, which was to give encouragement to such as should venture their lives to save the ship, and that this was a merit to which the sick man could not pretend, for he stayed in the ship neither to save it nor to contribute to its safety. 1 Bl. Com. 61. The statute of 1st Edward II enacted that a prisoner who broke prison should be guilty of felony. But it was held not to extend to a prisoner who broke out when the prison was on fire, "for he is not to be hanged because he would not stay to be burned." Plowden says in his comments on Stradling v. Morgan, at p. 205a, as the result of many cases to which he refers, that "the sages of the law heretofore have construed statutes quite contrary to the letter in some appearance, and those statutes which comprehend all things in the letter, they have expounded to extend to but some things; and those which generally prohibit all people from doing such an act, they have interpreted to permit some people to do it; and those which include every person in the letter, they have adjudged to reach to some persons only,--which expositions have always been founded upon the intent of the Legislature, which they have collected sometimes by considering the cause and necessity of making the statute; sometimes by comparing one part of the act with another; and sometimes by foreign circumstances. So that they have ever been guided by the intent of the Legislature, which they have always taken according to the necessity of the matter, and according to that which is consonant to reason and good discretion." This agrees with Coke, who somewhere says that "he who knoweth not the reason of the law, knoweth not the law itself." And again he says, that "acts of Parliament are to be so construed as no man that is innocent or free from wrong be by a literal construction punished or endamaged." In Murray v. Baker,3 Wheat. 541, the words, "beyond seas," copied from an English statute, were construed to mean, "without the limits of the state."

In The Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States,143 U.S. 457, it was held that the penal act of February 26, 1885, "to prohibit the importation and migration of foreigners and aliens under contract or agreement to perform labor" in this country, does not apply to a contract between an alien resident out of the United States and a religious society incorporated under the laws of a state, whereby the alien engaged to remove to this country and enter into the service of the society as its rector and pastor, and removed and entered into the service accordingly. The Court said that the society was within the letter of the statute, for not only were the general words, "labor and service," both used, but, as if to guard against any narrow interpretation, and to emphasize a breadth of meaning, to those words is added, "of any kind; " and further, that as the statute made specific exceptions, and among them, professional actors, artists, lecturers, singers, and domestic servants, it thereby strengthened the idea that every other kind of labor and service was intended to be reached; and that while there was great force in this reasoning, the Court could not think that Congress intended to denounce with penalties a transaction like the one in that case. The Court went on to say that it is a familiar rule that a thing may be within the letter of a statute and yet not be within the statute because not within its spirit nor the intention of its makers; that this is not the substitution of the will of the Court for that of the Legislature, for frequently words of general meaning are used in a statute, broad enough to include the act in question, and yet a consideration of the whole legislation, or of the circumstances surrounding its enactment, or of the absurd results that would follow from such a broad meaning, makes it unreasonable to believe that the Legislature intended to include the particular case.

It is said in Ryegate v. Wardsboro, 30 Vt. 746, 749, that the letter of the law is found by experience not to be in all cases a correct guide to the true sense of the lawgiver, wherefore rules have been adopted for the construction of statutes that look to the whole and every part of the act, to the subjectmatter, the effects and consequences, the reason and spirit of the law, and thus ascertain the true meaning of the Legislature, though the meaning ascertained conflicts with the literal sense of the words. Chief Justice Marshall says in United States v. Fisher,2 Cranch 358, 386, that when the mind labors to discover the design of the Legislature, it seizes everything from which it can derive aid.

Applying this doctrine to the case in hand, we think that section 3924 does not extend to injuries in which the public has no interest, but which are wholly of private concern. Said section is a part of the railroad law that applies exclusively to "operating railroads," and contains many specific provisions on that subject, most of which were manifestly enacted for the safety, protection, and general benefit of the public, and apparently without reference to merely private matters in which the public has no...