People v. Lowndes
| Decision Date | 20 January 1892 |
| Citation | 29 N.E. 751,130 N.Y. 455 |
| Parties | PEOPLE v. LOWNDES. |
| Court | New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Appeal from supreme court, general term, second department.
Indictment against Stanley H. Lowndes for wrongfully planting oysters in Huntington bay without the consent of the trustees of the town of Huntington. There was a judgment of conviction, which was affirmed by the general term. Defendant appeals. Reversed.
James C. Carter and Martin J. Keogh, for appellant.
Charles R. Street and N. S. Ackerly, for the People.
The purpose of the indictment against the defendant was to charge him with the violation of the statute which provides that ‘a person who, not being at the time an actual inhabitant and resident of this state, plants oysters in the waters of this state, without the consent of the owner of the same, or of the shore, or gathers oysters or other shellfish from their beds of natural growth, in any such waters, on his own account or for his own benefit, or the benefit of a non-resident employer, is guilty of a misdemeanor, punishable by imprisonment not exceeding six months, or by fine not exceeding one hundred dollars, or both.’ And the indictment was that ‘the said Stanley H. Lowndes, then not being an actual inhabitant and resident of the state of New York at the town of Huntington, in the county of Suffolk, aforesaid on the 14th day of July, 1888, willfully and wrongfully planted oysters in the waters of Huntington bay, in said town and county, without the consent of the owners of the same, to-wit, the board of trustees of the town of Huntington, against the form of the statute in such case made and provided, and against the peace of the people of the state of New York, and their dignity.’ The defendant demurred to the indictment, on the ground that it failed to state facts sufficient to constitute an offense against the criminal law. The demurrer was overruled, and exception taken. The defendant thereupon entered his plea of not guilty, and the trial resulted in his conviction. It appeared by the evidence that in July, 1888, the defendantwas engaged in planting oysters in Huntington bay; that he was then a resident of the state of Connecticut; and that he was doing this work as the employe of his father, John Lowndes, also a resident of that state, who 20 years before had staked out the grounds and buoyed them off at the place in question in the bay, and thereafter had been engaged in planting natural oysters, and gathering the cultivated oysters there. In the view of the trial court the only question of fact was whether the place where the oysters were planted by the defendant was within the town of Huntington; and that was dependent upon the northern boundary of the royal patent from the crown made by Richard Nicholls, governor general, etc., November 30, 1666, to the freeholders and inhabitants of the town of Huntington, confirmed by the charter of Thomas Dongan, captain general and governor in chief of New York. etc., August 2, 1688, and by Benjamin Fletcher, captain general and governor in chief, etc., October 5, 1694. Those colonial patents or grants bounded the land embraced within them on the north by the sound; that is, what is known as ‘Long Island Sound.’ The bay was an open one, widening to the north; and it is claimed on the part of the defense that the bay is within the sound, and that the determination by the court that Northport bay was within the limits of the royal patent has no essential application here, because that was a landlocked harbor. Brookhaven v. Strong, 60 N. Y. 72;Robbins v. Ackerly, 91 N. Y. 98. If the locus in quo was not within the colonial patent or grant, it was the property of the state, and passed to the trustees of the town of Huntington by the legislative act of cession of May preceding the time of the alleged offense. Laws 1888, c. 279. The view taken of the case renders it unnecessary to consider the question of the northern boundary of the premises embraced in the patent, or the effect upon the rights of John Lowndes of the act of cession of 1888; nor is it necessary to inquire whether any other question of fact bearing upon the intent of the defendant should have been submitted to the jury, as urged by the defendant'scounsel. The case may be disposed of upon the exception taken to the ruling upon the demurrer.
The stature was passed with the view to discrimination between those persons who were and those who were not residents of the state, and in favor of the former to the exclusion of the latter, for the purpose of planting and gathering oysters in its waters. This, to that extent, is a lawful exercise of legislative power over the common property of the citizens of the state. McCready v. Virginia, 94 U. S. 391. The statute created two offenses,-one for planting oysters in the waters of the state, and the other for gathering oysters and other shell-fish from their natural beds in any such waters. The words, ‘without the consent of the owner of the same or of the shore,’ include the owners, whoever they may be, and are applied to the person planting who is not then an actual inhabitant or resident of the state. If this is all that is essential to the offense, and all that is made requisite by the statute, the indictment was sufficient.
But it is quite evident that such is not the construction intended or to which the statute is entitled. The...
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