Edwards v. Mayor & Council Of Bor. Of Moonachie.

• Decision Date: 17 October 1949
• Docket Number: No. A-3.,A-3.
• Parties: EDWARDS v. MAYOR & COUNCIL OF BOROUGH OF MOONACHIE.
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

68 A.2d 744

EDWARDS

v.MAYOR & COUNCIL OF BOROUGH OF MOONACHIE.

No. A-3.

Supreme Court of New Jersey.

Argued Sept. 19, 1949.

Decided Oct. 17, 1949.

Donna Edwards brought a certiorari proceeding against the Mayor and Council of the Borough of Moonachie to review an ordinance providing for licensing and regulation of trailer camps and camp sites.

The Superior Court, Appellate Division, McGeehan, J., 3 N.J.Super. 10, 65 A.2d 78, set the ordinance aside, and defendant appealed.

The Supreme Court, Heher, J., reversed the judgment and dismissed the writ, and held that the ordinance was justified under the Home Rule Act, and that provisions of the ordinance licensing trailers used as sleeping places violated neither the Fourteenth Amendment nor the state Constitution.

C. Conrad Schneider, Englewood, argued the cause for appellant. Guy W. Calissi, Wood Ridge, attorney.

Leo Rosenblum, Jersey City, argued the cause for respondent. Sebastian Gaeta, Wycoff, attorney.

The opinion of the court was delivered by

HEHER, J.

The question at issue here is the validity of an ordinance ‘to license and regulate trailer camps and camp sites,’ adopted by the defendant municipality on September 17, 1947.

‘Trailer camp’ was defined in the ordinance as ‘any place where a trailer may be parked for longer than three hours, other than in a closed building;’ ‘trailer’ as ‘any vehicle used or constructed to be used as a conveyance upon public streets, whether self-propelled or otherwise, and so designed as to permit the occupancy thereof as a dwelling or sleeping place, and non-self-propelled vehicles of any kind or character constructed or intended to be moved under fuel power;’ and ‘camp site’ as ‘any place where a person is permitted to sleep or dwell other than in a permanent dwelling.’ The license fee was fixed at $200 per annum ‘and the sum of $1 per calendar week or part thereof per trailer.’ The fee was ‘imposed for revenue.’

It was made incumbent upon the licensee to keep a ‘camp registry,’ to provide certain camp facilities, and to take specific measures for sanitation which need not be here enumerated. Suffice it to say that the regulation combines both police and tax measures. For the power, the municipality cites R.S. 40:52-1(d) and 40:52-1(g), N.J.S.A. as they were when the ordinance was adopted. The Appellate Division of the Superior Court found the inapplicability of subsection (d) so obvious as not to merit discussion. Invoking the doctrine of ejusdem generis, the general words of subsection (g) were considered as restrained by the prior specific enumeration, and so not embracive of the business in question.

The municipality, while denying the validity of this view, urges that the inclusion of ‘trailer camps and camp sites' in the class comprised in subsection (d) by the amendment effected by ch. 425 of the Laws of 1948, Pamph. L. p. 1664, served to supply the asserted want of power and to validate the ordinance. The insistence is that the question of power is governed by the state of the law at the time when the Appellate Division determined the issue, and that the regulation is effective if at that time it was grounded in statutory authority, even though there was none at all at the time of its adoption. But this reasoning is patently faulty.

The power to levy license fees, either as a police regulation or for revenue, is not inherent in municipal corporations; and an ordinance to either end without a statutory grant of power is ultra vires the municipality and void. Muhlenbrinck v. Long Branch Commissioners, 42 N.J.L. 364, 36 Am.Rep. 518 (Sup.Ct.1880); Breninger v. Belvidere, 44 N.J.L. 350 (Sup.Ct.1882); Haynes v. Cape May, 52 N.J.L. 180, 19 A. 176 (E. & A. 1889); Mulcahy v. Newark, 57 N.J.L. 513, 31 A. 226 (Sup.Ct.1895); City of Cape May v. Cape May Transportation Co., 64 N.J.L. 80, 44 A. 948 (Sup.Ct.1899); Morristown-Madison Auto Bus Co. v. Madison, 85 N.J.L. 59, 88 A. 829 (Sup.Ct.1913); Dunn v. City of Hoboken, 85 N.J.L. 79, 88 A. 1053 (Sup.Ct.1913); Becker v. Pickersgill, 105 N.J.L. 51, 143 A. 859 (Sup.Ct.1928). A subsequent grant of such authority, without more, does not serve to validate the measure. The mere inclusion of the power by legislative amendment does not give legal force to a prior local enactment void ab initio for want of such power. The amendment here is not in terms curative legislation, operating prospectively upon the invalid regulation. The validation of the ordinance was plainly not within legislative contemplation. And its subject matter was not reenacted by the local legislative tribunal after the adoption of the amendment.

It is axiomatic that, barring curative legislation, a local ordinance is utterly without force or vitality unless it constitutes the exercise of power vested in the municipal body at the time of its adoption. A municipal corporation is a government of enumerated powers, acting by a delegated authority. It is a creature of the Legislature; and it possesses only such rights and powers as have been granted in express terms, or arise by necessary or fair implication, or are incident to the powers expressly conferred, or are essential to the declared objects and purposes of the municipality. It has no inherent jurisdiction to make laws or adopt regulations of government. New Jersey Good Humor, Inc. v. Bradley Beach, 124 N.J.L. 162, 11 A.2d 113 (E. & A. 1939); City Affairs Committee v. Jersey City, 134 N.J.L. 180, 46 A.2d 425 (E. & A. 1945). The Constitution of 1947, effective January 1, 1948, secures to counties and municipal corporations powers ‘of necessary or fair implication’ or ‘incident’ or ‘essential’ to those granted in express terms; and it enjoins a liberal construction in their favor of the provisions of the Constitution and ‘of any law concerning’ them. R.S. Article IV, section VII, paragraph 11, N.J.S.A.

The inquiry, therefore, is whether the challenged local legislative action was comprehended within the grant of power existent at the time it was taken.

The rule of ejusdem generis has not heretofore been considered as limiting the class comprised in subdivision (g), cited supra, to stores for the sale of goods and chattels. The sale of coal storage service was the business regulated and taxed by the ordinance considered in Independent Warehouses, Inc., v. Scheele, 134 N.J.L. 133, 45 A.2d 703 (E. & A. 1945), affirmed 331 U.S. 70, 67 S.Ct. 1062, 91 L.Ed. 1346 (1947). And in Becker v. Pickersgill, cited supra, the old Supreme Court read the provision as including within the subject class master and journeymen electricians. In the Revision of 1937, the words ‘or occupation’ were eliminated from the concluding phrase relating to the licensing of the places and premises wherein the particular business is carried on; but that does not signify a change of substance. The specific enumeration of the businesses subject to regulation and taxation was followed not only by words which make the class inclusive of stores for the sale of ‘goods and chattels of every kind,’ but immediately thereafter by the general and all-embracive clause ‘and all other kinds of business conducted in the municipality other than herein mentioned.’

But the existence of the power is not dependent upon the meaning of this provision. It was plainly within the grant of subsection (d) as it was at the time of the adoption of the ordinance. The particular description here is ‘hotels, boarding houses, lodging and rooming houses'; but the general clause embraces ‘all other places' as well as ‘buildings used for sleeping and lodging purposes, restaurants and all other eating places, and the keepers thereof.’ To hold that the general words are not inclusive of ‘trailer camps' and ‘camp sites,’ as defined by the ordinance, would be to deprive them of all meaning. Trailer camps and camp sites, in the view of the ordinance, comprise ‘places' used for ‘sleeping and lodging purposes.’ This is not open to doubt.

The rule of ejusdem generis is in aid of construction where the expression is of doubtful meaning; and it has no application where the legislative design is expressed in plain and unambiguous terms. The doctrine is a specific application of the maxim ‘noscitur a sociis;’ and it would be a perversion of its essential purpose if it were allowed to render general words meaningless. It is not an absolute formula that overrides all other canons of interpretation; and it is never applied to defeat the legislative purpose revealed by the provision in its entirety, giving to all the terms their normal sense and significance. It goes without saying that general terms in a statute must be given a meaning beyond the particular words where it is plain from the whole that they were used in a broader sense. As with all other canons of construction, the doctrine yields to the intention revealed by the context, viewing the language in its ordinary acceptation. Mason v. United States, 260 U.S. 545, 43 S.Ct. 200, 67 L.Ed. 396 (1922); Danciger v. Cooley, 248 U.S. 319, 39 S.Ct. 119, 63 L.Ed. 266 (1918); Helvering v. Stockholms Enskilda Bank, 293 U.S. 84, 55 S.Ct. 50, 79 L.Ed. 211 (1934); United States v. Gilliland, 312 U.S. 86, 61 S.Ct. 518, 85 L.Ed. 598 (1940).

Where, as here, the words of particular description exhaust the class or genus, there is nothing left for the operation of the rule of ejusdem generis. If in that circumstance the general terms be deemed...