Nexsen v. Ward
| Decision Date | 08 January 1914 |
| Citation | 80 S.E. 599,96 S.C. 313 |
| Parties | NEXSEN v. WARD ET AL. |
| Court | South Carolina Supreme Court |
Appeal from Common Pleas Circuit Court of Williamsburg County; S.W G. Shipp, Judge.
Action by J. L. Nexsen against R. E. Ward and another. From a judgment for defendants, plaintiff appeals. Reversed.
Le Roy Lee, of Kingstree, for appellant.
Kelley & Hinds, of Kingstree, for respondents.
In 1912 plaintiff rented defendant a farm, and advanced him fertilizer of the value of $100.91 to make his crop. Defendant refused to pay for the fertilizer, and was disposing of the crop when plaintiff obtained a warrant from the clerk of the circuit court, and had two bales of cotton seized, claiming that he had a statutory lien on it for his debt. On motion of defendant, the court set aside the warrant, on the ground that the statutes do not give the landlord a lien for advances to his tenant, unless the same is in writing. This appeal questions that ruling.
Some apparent conflicts in the provisions of the statutes, as they appear in the Codes of 1882, 1902, and 1912, disappear when we consider the original enactments, and the order in time and purpose of their adoption. The agricultural lien law was adopted piecemeal, and it has been frequently amended, so that a careful study of its history is necessary to reach a correct conclusion upon the question for decision.
In 1866 (13 Stat. 380) "any person" who advanced supplies to one engaged in the cultivation of the soil to make his crop was given a preferred lien thereon, provided the agreement was in writing. In 1869 (14 Stat. 229) laborers were given a prior lien on the crops for their wages. The statute did not specifically require that the contract should be in writing; but, in Hair v. Blease, 8 S. C. 63 the court construed the statute to require that the contract should be in writing to have the effect of giving the laborer a lien. By act approved March 4, 1878 (16 Stat. 410), which was in effect a re-enactment of the act of 1866, with amendments, landlords were given a prior and preferred lien for rent to the extent of one-third of the crops, to be valid without recording or filing, and the act further provided that every lien for advances and for rent, when the agreement was for more than one-third of the crop, should be filed and indexed in the office of the register of mesne conveyances. By act approved December 23, 1878 (16 Stat. 743), entitled "An act for the further protection of landlords in the collection of moneys due by tenants for rents and advances," the landlord's lien for rent was extended to all crops raised on the leased land, whether by his tenants or other persons. Section 2 of that act reads "That, subject to the liens provided for in said act (the act of March 4, 1878) and enforcible in the same way as therein provided, the landlords shall have a lien on all the crops raised by the tenant for all advances made by the landlord during the year."
Although the statute did not provide in terms that the landlord's lien for advances need not be in writing, it is clear that that was the intention of the Legislature, because, otherwise, the section is meaningless, and had no force or effect whatever, since, under the prior act of March 4, 1878, the landlord, being included in the general class, "any person," could have had a lien for advances by making an agreement therefor in writing. The rules of construction require that this section must have some meaning, and it can be given no other. The subsequent act of 1880 (17 Stat. 413) shows, also, that the Legislature gave it that construction, because that act required that all liens therein provided for except the landlord's lien for rent, should be in writing--a requirement which was useless and meaningless, unless section 2, supra, had the effect of giving the landlord a lien for advances without writing, because there was no other provision in the statutes for a lien without writing.
This brings us to the act of 1880, supra, by which section 6 of the act of March 4, 1878, was amended. The body of the section, as amended, may be passed over as not affecting the question under consideration; but a proviso was added to it, which reads: "Provided, that all liens herein provided for shall be in writing, except the landlord's lien for rent, when the amount does not exceed one-third of the crop; provided, further, that so much of any act or acts as are inconsistent with the provisions of this act be, and the same is, hereby repealed." As we have already shown, this proviso was intended to repeal section 2 of the act of December 23, 1878, above quoted.
The statutes above referred to were codified in the General Statutes of 1882, in chapter 95, headed, "Of Chattel Mortgages and Liens," and under the subhead, "Liens on Crops," in the following sections. Only the general purport of sections 2397 and 2304 is given, because the remainder of these sections throws no light on the question under consideration.
Section 2397 gives a preferred lien to "any person" making advances, provided it is in writing.
Section 2399 reads as follows: "Each landlord leasing lands for agricultural purposes shall have a prior and preferred lien for rent to the extent of all crops raised on the lands leased by him, whether the same be raised by the tenant or other persons, and enforcible in the same manner as liens for advances, which said lien shall be valid without recording or filing: Provided, that, subject to the liens herein provided for and enforcible in the same way, the landlord shall have a lien on all the crops raised by the tenant for all advances made by the landlord during the year: Provided, further, every lien for advances and for rent, when the agreement is for more than one-third of the crop, shall be indexed in the office of the register of mesne conveyances of the county in which the lienor resides," etc. (The remainder of the section relates to the details of indexing, and is not pertinent.)
Section 2403 gives laborers a prior lien on the crops for their wages.
It appears that section 2 of the act of December 23, 1878, was codified in the italicized part of section 2399, supra. It also appears, upon the face of these sections, that they are in conflict, in that the person who makes advances, the landlord, and the laborer, each appears to have a prior lien on the crops. This led to the passage of the act of 1885 (19 Stat. 146), entitled "An act to prescribe the priorities of certain statutory liens."
Section 3 repeals all inconsistent acts.
It is contended that the use of the word "liens" in section 2 of the act of 1885 indicates an intention to include both the landlord's lien for rent and his lien for advances. Several considerations seem to show that the word "liens" was unintentionally substituted for the word "lien" by a slip of the pen or an error of the printer. The statute had made direct reference to only one lien of the landlord, and the word "liens" is immediately followed by the words "such lien," showing that both words should be plural or both singular. The headnote to the section reads, "Lien for rent need not be in writing." Of course, that is only the construction of the Code commissioner of that time, and is of no consequence, except that it gives us the benefit of a contemporaneous construction. Of more consequence is the fact that, as the lien law then stood, section 2400 of the General Statutes required all liens to be in writing, except the landlord's lien for rent, and it is hardly conceivable that the Legislature would have undertaken to repeal such an unequivocal declaration of its intention by such an inconclusive circumstance as the mere use of the plural word "liens" in the section above quoted. Finally, that section was codified in the first italicized sentence in section 3057 of the Civil Code of 1902, which is copied below, and the word "lien" is there used, which is, I think, conclusive of the question. For these reasons, I do not think that the act of 1885 was intended to have the effect of giving the landlord a lien for advances without writing.
But since that time the Legislature has made material changes in the statutes, the necessary effect of which, I think, accomplishes that result.
Section 5 of article 6 of the Constitution of 1895 provided for the codification of all the general statutes of the state every ten years, and it was therein provided further that the Codes adopted thereunder shall be declared "to be the only general statutory law of the state." In pursuance of that provision, the Code of 1902 was adopted, and declared by the Legislature "to be the only general statutory law of the state."
The inevitable consequence of that enactment and declaration is to repeal all general statutory laws which were not included in the Code,...
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