People v. Oberby

• Decision Date: 10 December 1926
• Docket Number: No. 17573.,17573.
• Citation: 323 Ill. 364,154 N.E. 125
• Parties: PEOPLE v. OBERBY.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

323 Ill. 364

154 N.E. 125

PEOPLE

v.OBERBY.

No. 17573.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

Oct. 28, 1926.

Rehearing Denied Dec. 10, 1926.

Error to Third Branch, Appellate Court, First District, Error to Municipal Court of Chicago; Howard W. Hayes, Judge.

Floyd Oberby was convicted of possessing a motor vehicle on which the original engine number on the motor block had been altered. Judgment of the municipal court was affirmed by the Appellate Court (240 Ill. App. 112), and defendant brings error.

Affirmed.

Roy C. Woods, of Chicago (Roy S. Gaskill, of Chicago, of counsel), for plaintiff in error.

Oscar E. Carlstrom, Atty. Gen., Robert E. Crowe, State's Atty., of Chicago, and Virgil L. Blanding, of Springfield (Edward E. Wilson, Clarence E. Nelson, and Henry M. Porter, all of Chicago, of counsel), for the People.

STONE, C. J.

Plaintiff in error was convicted of having in his possession a certain motor vehicle on which the original engine number appearing on the motor block had been altered, in violation of section 35 of the Motor Vehicle Law (Smith-Hurd Rev. St. 1925, c. 121, § 236). It appearing that this was plaintiff in error's first offense, a fine of $200 was assessed. The judgment of the municipal court of Chicago was affirmed by the Appellate Court, and the cause comes here on writ of error.

The car in question was taken from the possession of plaintiff in error by the police. The engine block of the car bore the number 9515119, but, when heat was applied to the place on the engine block on which the number was stamped, it brought out the number 7286043, indicating that the original number had been filed off and another number put on. Plaintiff in error defended on the ground that he had purchased a second-hand engine block to put into the car; that the car, when he purchased it, had the number 9515119 stamped on the engine block; that the engine block became damaged beyond repair, and he removed it and destroyed it as required by law; and that he purchased from a dealer in used engine parts another engine block of the same make; that the block he so purchased bore no number although it was a second-hand block, and had evidently been used as part of a motor. He further testified that upon installation of this engine block in his car he stamped thereon the number 9515119, as such number had appeared on the original engine block in the car.

Section 35 of the Motor Vehicle Act provides:

‘Any person or persons, firm or corporation, who, * * * shall sell or offer for sale in this state, or who shall own or have the custody or possession of a motor vehicle, the original engine number of which has been destroyed, removed, altered, covered, or defaced, * * * shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction thereof shall be punished by a fine.’

This section also provides that on a second conviction the punishment shall be imprisonment in the penitentiary for not less than one year nor more than five years.

Plaintiff in error contends that the original engine number of the automobile in his possession was not ‘destroyed, removed, altered, covered, or defaced,’ as prohibited by the act but that his act was at most but a transfer of the originalnumber from one block to another, and it is contended that such is not prohibited by the act. As we understand this argument, it is that, in order to warrant a conviction for a violation of section 35, it is necessary that the motor vehicle have a different number than the original engine number of that car, or that it have no number at all. We are of the opinion that this is a strained construction of the language of the act. As was said by this court in People v. Billardello, 319 Ill. 124, 149 N. E. 781, 42 A. L. R. 1146, the purpose of the act is to protect the public, and is leveled against the possession of a motor vehicle tampered with as indicated in the act. It was held that the act, ‘was enacted in...