Hooper v. Creager

• Decision Date: 07 January 1897
• Citation: 36 A. 359,84 Md. 195
• Parties: HOOPER v. CREAGER.
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

36 A. 359

84 Md. 195

HOOPER v. CREAGER.

Court of Appeals of Maryland

January 7, 1897

Motion for reargument. Overruled.

For original opinion, see 35 A. 967.

Argued before McSHERRY, C.J., and BRYAN, BRISCOE, RUSSUM, FOWLER ROBERTS, PAGE, and BOYD, JJ.

Thomas Y. Hayes and Thomas I. Elliott, for appellant.

Wm. S Bryan, Jr., and Daniel L. Brinton, for appellee.

McSHERRY C.J.

We have carefully considered the elaborate brief mailed to us before being filed in support of the motion made for a reargument of this case, but we fail to discover any reason why the motion should prevail. There is no occasion for a restatement of the grounds upon which the conclusion reached by a majority of the court was founded; but, inasmuch as it seems to be supposed that we ignored the provisions of the Code of Public Local Laws, and founded our judgment upon antecedent acts of assembly alone, it may not be amiss to remove this misapprehension. What we did was to construe a particular section of the Local Code, which was not new legislation, by referring back to, and ascertaining the meaning of the original acts of assembly that were compressed and consolidated in that section. This is a perfectly familiar method of construction, often followed by this and by other courts, and in no way at variance with the case of Mayor etc., v. Groshon, 30 Md. 436, and others of that type relied on in the brief. The case at bar and the case in 30 Md. are as wide apart as the extremities of the earth's axis. In Groshon's Case it was insisted that a public local act of assembly relating to the municipality of Frederick, and passed long before the Code of 1860 was adopted, but not incorporated in that Code when it went into effect, was still in force after the Code became operative and was in force in spite of the declaration of the legislature that all public general and public local laws not included in the Code were repealed. It was held that the local act was repealed because not included in the Code; the Code having superseded all other public general and public local legislation. But in this case there is no such condition. Both the acts of 1817 and 1828 are incorporated in section 30 of article 4 of the Public Local Laws, and there is no question of repeal involved at all; the sole question being one of construction, or as to the meaning of a statute confessedly in force. In the Groshon Case the effort was to rescue a statute from repeal. In this it is to ascertain the meaning of an unrepealed statute.

It is also contended that the decision of this court in June last ^[1] upon the record then brought up between the same parties practically conceded the...