Baker v. Maxwell

• Decision Date: 27 June 1918
• Docket Number: 31492
• Parties: THOMAS BAKER, Appellant, v. HUGH MAXWELL, Appellee
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

168 N.W. 160

183 Iowa 1192

THOMAS BAKER, Appellant, v. HUGH MAXWELL, Appellee

No. 31492

Supreme Court of Iowa, Des Moines

June 27, 1918

Appeal from Plymouth District Court.--W. D. BOIES, Judge.

ACTION in replevin to recover the possession of a portable mill used for sawing lumber. There was a directed verdict and judgment for defendant, and the plaintiff appeals. The material facts are stated in the opinion.--Reversed.

Reversed and remanded.

C. R Metcalf, for appellant.

Hess & Hess, for appellee.

WEAVER J. PRESTON, C. J., GAYNOR and STEVENS, JJ., concur.

OPINION

WEAVER, J.

The plaintiff is conceded to be a married man, the head of a family, and, with his family, has been for many years a resident of the state. He has little, if any, property except that hereinafter mentioned, and, for a considerable period, has been employed by others in cutting and converting native trees and logs into lumber. In this work, he owns and makes use of a portable mill, which he operates himself, with such help as is afforded him by his wife and minor son. The power used is steam, and the entire outfit is so designed as to be readily moved from place to place and from farm to farm, as may be desired by those having such work to be done; and its value is about $ 800. One Rawson, having obtained a judgment against plaintiff, procured the issuance of an execution for its collection, and caused it to be levied upon said property. Plaintiff thereupon served written notice upon the sheriff that he claimed the property to be exempt from seizure on execution, and demanded that the levy be discharged. The demand was refused, and plaintiff then brought this action to recover the possession.

The defendant denied the alleged exempt character of the property, and, on trial of this issue to a jury, the court directed a verdict for the defendant, and the plaintiff appeals.

There appears to be no material fact on which there is any occasion for the consideration of the jury, and the arguments in this court are very properly directed to the legal proposition whether, under the undisputed facts, the trial court properly directed a verdict for the defendant.

Our general exemption law is found in Code Section 4008, and that portion of it which has more particular bearing upon this controversy is the clause which provides that a resident head of a family, if a farmer, mechanic, surveyor, clergyman, lawyer, physician, teacher, or professor, may hold exempt from execution the proper tools, instruments, and books pertaining to his occupation, and, if a physician, public officer, farmer, teamster, or other laborer, may also hold exempt the team and vehicle with which he habitually earns his living. In support of the ruling below, the appellee relies upon two propositions: First, that plaintiff is neither farmer, mechanic, surveyor, clergyman, lawyer, physician, teacher, nor professor, and therefore is not entitled to any exemption for the tools, instruments, or implements suitable to his employment or business, but is a common laborer, for whom there is no exemption except a team and vehicle, if he employs such aids in earning his living; and second, that, if it should be held that plaintiff is a mechanic, within the meaning of the statute, the portable mill is not a tool, instrument, or implement of his employment, which the law exempts.

Without at all conceding the correctness of appellee's contention that one who is a laborer, as distinguished from a mechanic, is entitled to no exemption from execution for the tools and implements suitable for his employment, our views upon the other proposition are such as to render unnecessary any discussion of that question.

It is the plaintiff's theory that, under a fair and liberal construction of the term used in the Code Section above cited, he may be classed as a mechanic; and to the question thus raised we give our first attention.

Cases may be found in which the term "mechanic" is limited to a skilled workman, employed in shaping materials such as wood, metal, or stone into some kind of a structure or machine or other object requiring the use of tools; but the prevailing tendency of modern courts, including this court, is to broaden and enlarge the scope of the word; and this is especially true in construing and applying exemption laws. For example, in Smith & Funk v. Osburn, 53 Iowa 474, 5 N.W. 681, the question arose upon a claim of exemption for a printing press, type, and other materials used in the printing business. At that time, the statute which specifically exempts such property had not been enacted, and the claim of exemption was based on the theory that the printer was a mechanic, and that the presses and other property seized were the tools and implements of his trade. We sustained that claim, and exempted his property as the tools of a mechanic, and we defined the word "mechanic" as being applied to "one who works with machines or instruments," etc.; and, in our judgment, if the owner of and user of a printing office outfit may be classed as a mechanic, and a complicated and expensive piece of machinery like a newspaper press and equipment may be exempted as a proper tool or implement of his employment, there ought to be no hesitation in admitting a lumber sawyer and his portable mill to the same class. That very question was considered in Gulledge v. Preddy, 32 Ark. 433, and the owner and operator of a sawmill was there classed as a mechanic. As further illustrating the liberality of the courts in defining these terms and applying exemption laws, the word "mechanic" has been held to include a dentist (Maxon v....