Board of Commissioners of County of Elkhart v. Albright

• Decision Date: 04 June 1907
• Docket Number: 21,024
• Parties: Board of Commissioners of the County of Elkhart et al. v. Albright et al
• Court: Indiana Supreme Court

81 N.E. 578

168 Ind. 564

Board of Commissioners of the County of Elkhart et al.

v.

Albright et al

No. 21,024

Supreme Court of Indiana

June 4, 1907

From Elkhart Circuit Court; James S. Dodge, Judge.

Suit by Eli M. Albright and others against the Board of Commissioners of the County of Elkhart and others. From a decree for plaintiffs, defendants appeal.

Reversed.

J. B Gattshall, Elisha A. Baker, James L. Harman, William B Hille, James H. State, Perry L. Turner and J. M. Van Fleet for appellants.

Miller, Drake & Hubbell, Elias D. Salsbury and Lou W. Vail, for appellees.

OPINION

Gillett, J.

Suit by appellees, as taxpayers, to enjoin the making of expenditures for the maintenance of the Elkhart Superior Court. There was a decree in favor of appellees. The matter is before us on a special finding, but it is unnecessary to go into the facts, as the whole controversy relates to the validity of the act of January 31, 1907 (Acts 1907, p. 7), by which a superior court district, composed of the counties of Elkhart and St. Joseph, was sought to be created. The first question is as to the sufficiency of the title to said act. It is as follows:

"An act entitled an act to establish superior courts in the counties of Elkhart and St. Joseph, to be presided over by one judge, to define the authority and jurisdiction of said courts, to provide for the appointment, election, commission and compensation of the judge thereof, for clerk and sheriff and compensation of the same, for the practice and procedure in said courts, for changes of venue from the judge thereof or from the county and the transfer of causes on account thereof to other courts and for changes of venue from judges of circuit courts or other courts and the transfer of causes to said superior courts, for the time and place of holding said courts, and declaring an emergency."

Article 4, § 19, of the Constitution, provides: "Every act shall embrace but one subject and matters properly connected therewith; which subject shall be expressed in the title. But if any subject shall be embraced in an act which shall not be expressed in the title, such act shall be void only as to so much thereof as shall not be expressed in the title." It is the subject, and not the matters connected therewith, which is required to be set forth in the title, and a very general statement of the character of an act may be quite sufficient to call attention to the nature of the enactment. Thus the title, "an act to authorize the formation of new counties," was held sufficient to authorize a provision for the organization and sitting of courts in the counties created by said act as a part of the internal furnishings of such political corporations. Brandon v. State (1861), 16 Ind. 197. Here the title not only indicates that the act is to establish superior courts in said counties, but that which follows tends still further to make for certainty and to challenge inquiry upon the part of all. It is quite permissible to use the details of a title, where available, to grasp the general subject to which an act relates. Maule Coal Co. v. Partenheimer (1900), 155 Ind. 100, 55 N.E. 751; Isenhour v. State (1901), 157 Ind. 517, 87 Am. St. 228, 62 N.E. 40. A standard text-book states: "The subject of an act may be expressed generally in the title, or spelled out from details, and occasionally from details which are independent and unconnected except through some general subject as cousins german are related through a common ancestor. According to the authorities the general subject need not appear in the title, if it is clearly disclosed or readily inferred from the details expressed." 1 Lewis's Sutherland, Stat. Constr. (2d ed.), § 134.

There is no merit in the contention that the act relates to more than one subject. It is true that there is more than one subsidiary subject mentioned in the act, but there is no difficulty in "spelling out" from the title, taken as a whole, a single general subject. This becomes still clearer when the title is read in the light of the act. As was said in Western Union Tel. Co. v. Braxtan (1905), 165 Ind. 165, 168, 74 N.E. 985: "In the interpretation of the title we must look to the body of the act, and in construing the body we must look to the title; and if it appears from both that all the provisions of the act are fairly referable to one general subject, and that subject is clearly expressed in the title, the act is valid, though there may be more than the general subject expressed therein."

We do not find ourselves impressed with the claim that the title is false and delusive, in that, while it purports to be an act creating superior courts, it is in reality an act creating courts with the same jurisdiction as the circuit courts of the counties within the district. The title itself directly states that the authority and jurisdiction of said courts are fixed in the act, and this was itself a challenge to examine its provisions. It cannot be said that a so-called superior court in this State has any fixed measure of jurisdiction. Indeed, at the time of the passage of this act, there had for a number of years existed superior courts in the counties of Lake, Porter and Laporte, with practically the same jurisdiction as was attempted to be vested in the courts in question. The contention under consideration is fully met by Hargis v. Board, etc. (1905), 165 Ind. 194, 73 N.E. 915, wherein we said: "The title of an act is to receive a liberal construction if necessary to sustain the legislative intent. If the words used in a title, taken in any sense or meaning they will bear, are sufficient to cover the provisions of the act, the act will be sustained even though such meaning may not be the most common meaning of such words. * * * 'The courts will not resort to a critical construction of the title in order to hold a statute unconstitutional. On the contrary the language of the title is in all cases given a liberal interpretation, and the largest scope accorded the words employed that reason will permit in order to bring within the purview of the title all the provisions of the act.' 26 Am. and Eng. Ency. Law (2d ed.), 583."

The principal contention of counsel for appellees is that it is incompetent for the General Assembly to create a superior court having the same quantum of jurisdiction as that which is possessed by the circuit court. The Constitution (Art. 7, § 1) provides: "The judicial power of the State shall be vested in a Supreme Court, in circuit courts, and in such other courts as the General Assembly may establish." Prior to the amendment of 1881 the word "inferior" was used in said section where the word "other" occurs. It is asserted that the latter word is used in the Constitution more than twenty times, and that in every other instance it is used as meaning "different from the subject previously mentioned." From this it is argued that the word must have the same meaning in the section we are considering. Assuming that this proposition has for its basis a rule of construction, the statement of it would require limitations beyond those which the contention implies. As applying to words which constitute the subsidiary coinage of literary use, we should regard it as a serious mistake, even in construing an instrument so carefully framed as a constitution, to assume that they are always used in precisely the same sense, since they are peculiarly liable to be shaded, or even molded, by the particular context in which they are found. It is as to such words that the principle noscitur a sociis has particular application. It is pointed out by Vattel that, "words and expressions have a different force, sometimes even a quite different signification, according to the occasion, their connection, and their relation to other words." Vattel, Law of Nations (7th Am. ed.), *254. See, also, Potter's Dwarris, Statutes, 196. The context is such in the instances where the word "other" is elsewhere used in the Constitution that no light is shed upon the meaning of the word in the section under consideration. Under the ejusdem generis rule, which finds its ordinary application where the word "other" is used in introducing unenumerated particulars following specific terms, there is commonly an intendment that the unenumerated particulars are of the same class as the terms specifically mentioned. So, at the least, no violence is done to the word in assuming that the provision of the Constitution is broad enough to authorize the creation of courts like the circuit courts. The court which sits at Elkhart, although it has the same jurisdiction as the circuit court at Goshen, is, nevertheless, another court. Indeed, it would seem, unless there is something evincing a design to give to the circuit court a particular and unique jurisdiction, which it is inadmissible to parallel from its beginning to its end, that it would be enough to distinguish the two courts that one is a court presided over by a judge who holds for six years, while the other court has a judge whose term cannot, under the Constitution, exceed four years.

In Commonwealth, ex rel., v. Hipple (1871), 69 Pa. 9, it was held that, under a provision of the Pennsylvania constitution authorizing the creation of "other courts," it was competent to establish criminal courts having concurrent jurisdiction with criminal courts existing under the constitution, the court saying "The constitution having neither defined nor limited the jurisdiction of the courts named in the constitution, or of those to be afterwards established, the power to create new courts and new law judges carried with it the power to invest them with such jurisdictions as appear to be necessary and proper, and to part and divide the judicial powers of ...