Buck Glass Co. v. Gordy

• Decision Date: 20 June 1936
• Docket Number: 53.
• Citation: 185 A. 886,170 Md. 685
• Parties: BUCK GLASS CO. v. GORDY, COMPTROLLER.
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

185 A. 886

170 Md. 685

BUCK GLASS CO. v. GORDY, COMPTROLLER.

No. 53.

Court of Appeals of Maryland

June 20, 1936

Appeal from Circuit Court No. 2 of Baltimore City; Robert F Stanton, Judge.

Suit by the Buck Glass Company against William S. Gordy, Jr. Comptroller of the Treasury of the State of Maryland. From an adverse decree, plaintiff appeals.

Reversed and remanded, with directions.

Argued before BOND, C.J., and URNER, OFFUTT, PARKE, SLOAN, MITCHELL SHEHAN, and JOHNSON, JJ.

Walter H. Buck and R. Contee Rose, both of Baltimore (Eben F. Perkins, of Baltimore, on the brief), for appellant.

William L. Henderson, Asst. Atty. Gen., and Edgar Allan Poe, Jr., of Baltimore, Sp. Counsel (Herbert R. O'Conor, Atty. Gen., on the brief), for appellee.

BOND Chief Judge.

The question on this appeal is whether the appellant, a manufacturer of glass bottles, is, with respect to bottles made and supplied principally to sellers of milk and beer, subject to the Emergency Gross Receipts Tax of 1 per cent. imposed by chapter 188 of the Acts of 1935, Code Supplement, art. 56, §§ 72A to 72Q, on the privilege of engaging in the business of selling at retail. The provisions of the act were described in the opinions in the cases of Jones v. Gordy, 169 Md. 173, 180 A. 272, and State v. Christhilf (Md.) 185 A. 456, at this term of court. The appellant filed a bill in equity to restrain exaction of the tax with respect to sales of the bottles, the appellee answered, and after testimony taken the court below found and decreed that those were retail sales within the purview of the act, and that the appellant was taxable in respect to them. The appeal has followed.

The exact number of bottles supplied to the dealers is not stated, but it is agreed that only large or gross quantities have been sold and supplied. The total yearly tax would, if collectible, amount to approximately $4,500. The Fairfield-Western Maryland Dairy Company, for its business of selling milk in Baltimore City and the vicinity, keeps between 800,000 and 900,000 bottles in use, and somewhat under 10 per cent. of these have been purchased from the Buck Glass Company. Only a comparatively few beer bottles were made in 1935, and a few supplied to a Globe Brewing Company, which sells its beer to vendees for resale.

The suppositions on which the tax was demanded of the glass company were that by virtue of explicit definitions in the body of the statute all sellers of goods to consumers, in whatever quantities, were taxed, and that the glass company's vendees mentioned were in the position of consumers. This court is not prepared to decide that the vendees were consumers within the meaning of the statute. But assuming for the purposes of this case that they were, the court has come to the conclusion that because of a restriction in the title the statute cannot properly be construed to include among the sellers to be taxed the producers or dealers selling in gross quantities.

The title does not, in words, refer to the business of selling to consumers as the subject of the tax. On the contrary, it refers only to "the business of selling tangible personal property at retail." Sales to consumers are specified only in the definitions and other provisions in the body of the act. So far as there may be a difference in the subjects stated in the one way and the other, it is important because of the requirement of the State Constitution, article 3, § 29, that the subject of an Act of Assembly shall be described in its title. A title which is descriptive to some extent must go far to fix the understanding of its purpose among legislators and interested members of the public. "Bills are sometimes read, especially the first time, by their titles only, and the titles only are spread upon the journal." Stiefel v. Maryland Institution for the Blind, 61 Md. 144, 148. And it is the main purpose of the constitutional provision to prevent enactment under a misconception by reason of a misdescriptive title. "The object of the requirement of the Constitution is that legislators and the public may be informed by the title of the general nature of the provisions proposed to be enacted." Levin v. Hewes, 118 Md. 624, 632, 86 A. 233, 235. It follows that a restriction in the title must either confine the operation of the act to conform to that description, if such a construction is possible, or render the act void to the extent of the conflict. Scharf v. Tasker, 73 Md. 378, 383, 21 A. 56; Luman v. Hitchens Bros. Co., 90 Md. 14, 44 A. 1051, 46 L.R.A. 393; Weber v. Probey, 125 Md. 544, 551, 94 A. 162.

In the present instance as the title announces that the tax is one upon the business of selling at retail, or a retail sales tax, it seems probable that in the course of enactment of the law this was widely understood to be the effect of it.

"Statutes should be interpreted according to the most natural and obvious import of their language, without resorting to subtle or forced construction for the purpose of either limiting or extending their operation." State Tax Commission v Harrington, 126 Md. 157, 166, 94 A. 537, 540. And selling at retail means, in its common acceptation, selling by way of distributing, in smaller quantities, the gross quantities delivered by producers or wholesalers. It is an expression contrasting sales of the one kind from sales at wholesale, in the whole, or gross, quantities. The distinction...