Pioneer Mill Co., Application of, 5053

• Decision Date: 25 May 1972
• Docket Number: No. 5053,5053
• Citation: 53 Haw. 496,497 P.2d 549
• Parties: , 53 Haw. 573 Application of PIONEER MILL COMPANY, Limited, to reglster and confirm its title to land situate at Lahaina, lsland and County of Maui, State of Hawaii.
• Court: Hawaii Supreme Court

Page 549

497 P.2d 549

53 Haw. 496, 53 Haw. 573

Application of PIONEER MILL COMPANY, Limited, to reglster

and confirm its title to land situate at Lahaina,

lsland and County of Maui, State of Hawaii.

No. 5053.

Supreme Court of Hawai'i.

May 25, 1972.

Rehearing Denied July 6, 1972.

Syllabus by the Court

1. Under the Hawaii Constitution, a judge who becomes a candidate for public office forfeits his judgeship.

2. A judge who has made a public announcement in a campaign headquarters concerning his intention to seek office is a 'candidate' within the terms of the Hawaii Constitution without regard to the fact that formal nomination papers are filed only later, and without regard to the fact that the phraseology of the announcement expressed an intention 'to become a candidate' a month later.

3. While ordinarily acts a 'de facto officer' are the same validity as acts of a true office holder, where a judge is disqualified from holding office because of basic constitutional protections designed in part for the benefit of litigants, the de facto doctrine does not apply.

4. The applicability of a constitutional provision that absolutely disqualifies a judge from holding office in order to protect the rights of litigants will be reached on appeal even if the issue was not properly preserved by the parties.

5. A judge may not enter a valid decision when he did not take part in the trial of a case, except to the extent allowed by Haw.Rules Civ.Pro. Rule 63.

6. A 'master' may not be appointed to report facts determined in an earlier trial in which the 'master' acted as the trial judge.

Donald E. Scearce, Honolulu (Robert B. Bunn, Honolulu, with him on the briefs, Cades Schutte Fleming & Wright, Honolulu, of counsel), for applicant-appellant.

Allen W. Wooddell, Honolulu (Stephen M. Okano and Franklin K. Mukai, Honolulu, on the briefs, Wooddell, Mukai, Wirtz & Ichiki, Honolulu, of counsel), for contestants-appellants.

Andrew S. O. Lee, Deputy Atty. Gen. (George Pai, Atty. Gen. and Gerald Y. Y. Chang, Deputy Atty. Gen., Honolulu, with him on the briefs), for appellee.

Before RICHARDSON, C. J., MARUMOTO, ABE and LEVINSON, JJ., and VITOUSEK, Circuit Judge, in place of KOBAYASHI, J., disqualified.

ABE, Justice.

On June 28, 1919, Pioneer Mill Co. filed an application in the Land Court to register title to a parcel of Hawaii real estate. For reasons not apparent in the record, the matter was not heard until September of 1967. On November 15, 1967, the Land Court judge rendered an informal oral decision from the bench. No formal decision was written at that time, nothing was filed, and the judge expressly stated that the decision would be effective only when signed. The case then remained dormant until March of 1970 when Pioneer Mill submitted proposed findings of fact.

In the meantime, the Land Court judge, on February 3, 1970 made a public announcement concerning his intention to seek public office. ¹ Formal nomination papers were filed on August 13, 1970.

On March 13, 1970, some time after the announcement relating to his candidacy, the Land Court judge attempted to conclude the Pioneer Mill litigation. The formal decision that was filed was signed by both the Land Court judge and by the 'Second judge of the Land Court.' The latter had heard none of the evidence in the case and had not participated in the trial in any way. In addition, in a curious order dated March 13, 1970 the second judge of the Land Court appointed the first Land Court judge a 'master' to report findings made in the trial held three years earlier. ²

On this appeal the parties argued and briefed the question of whether the Second Circuit Court should have dismissed the State's appeal from the Land Court because the issues had not been framed within a certain time. Noting that a more basic issue was posed by the Land Court judge's announcement relating to his candidacy for public office, we requested additional briefing. We have concluded that the Land Court judge had become a candidate for public office at the time he rendered the decision below, and that under the Hawaii Constitution, he had forfeited his judgeship. The case must be remanded for a new trial.

Haw.Const. art. V, sec. 3 provides:

Any justice or judge who shall become a candidate for an elective office shall thereby forfeit his office.

In our view this provision seeks to accomplish two objectives: (1) to remove from the bench any judge whose impartiality might be affected by the fact that he is seeking public office; and (2) to avoid even the appearance that a judge might temper his decision so as to garner the most votes.

Neither the constitutional provision nor the convention's record defines the moment at which a person becomes a candidate. In our view, however, if the drafters of Art. V intended to accomplish anything, they intended to disqualify a judge who, as here, has availed himself of a campaign headquarters set up for him and has made a public announcement that he will seek office. We see no distinction between a person who announces that he will become a candidate in one month and a person who announces that he is a candidate. In either case the constitutional draftsmen had reason to fear that a judge would either lack complete independence or would lack the appearance of independence.

We reject the position that a person becomes a candidate only when his formal nomination papers are filed. We think that when the constitutional draftsmen chose the word 'candidate,' they intended the ordinary meaning of the word to apply. We do not believe that our constitution's draftsmen would have used the broad term 'candidate' if they had intended to disqualify a judge only after he has filed his nomination papers.

Under the dissent's interpretation our constitutional draftsmen apparently had no objection to one of the Supreme Court justices' remaining on the bench after announcing today that on the expiration of the term of his judgeship he would become a candidate for public office. He could make speeches at a campaign headquarters set up by his supporters, and they could actively solicit funds, enlist volunteer workers, and pursue the votes of the public. So long as the judge cloaks his references to his campaign with the magic words that he 'will become' a candidate, he could remain on the bench. We think our constitution's draftsmen intended otherwise.

The main thrust of the dissent seems to be that the constitutional disqualification is a rather silly provision and should be interpreted as strictly as possible. The dissent points out that the provision disqualifies judges when there is little likelihood that they are not impartial, that it burdens litigants by necessitating retrials of correctly decided cases, that it requires this court and potentially disqualified judges to make a complex factual determination of when a person becomes a 'candidate' and that the provision creates dangers that a judge will be unwillingly catapulted into a candidacy by acts of overzealous supporters, or will announce his candidacy, and later revoke the announcement when it is too late to regain his judgeship.

These points should be presented not to us, but to the drafters of the Constitution. Our task as judges is not to rewrite the Constitution. Our system of government depends on each branch's recognition of the limitations to its power. The constitutional drafters wrote the Constitution which the people adopted. Our task is to apply the language in particular factual settings. When interpreting ambiguous provisions we attempt to determine the purposes which the provision was designed to achieve. We are always reluctant to decide that the constitutional draftsmen intended to accomplish what appears to be an absurd result. But when we conclude that the constitution's draftsmen intended to use the word candidate in its ordinary meaning, the inquiry stops. We do not go on to decide whether or not the provision is sensible, and we do not, if we feel a provision is unwise, simply indulge in an exacerbated interpretation of a commonly used term.

In any event, we think the need to preserve both actual and apparent integrity of the judicial system warrants the imposition of whatever difficulties are posed for individual judges.

Our holding is supported both by reason and precedent. A very early case, Leonard v. Commonwealth, 112 Pa. 607, 4 A. 220 (1886), dealt with a provision of the Pennsylvania Constitution which provided that 'any person who shall, while a candidate for office . . . be guilty of . . . willful violation of any election law, shall be forever disqualified from holding any office . . ..' The Pennsylvania court was called upon to decide whether an official had been a 'candidate' at the time he violated an election law. Although the facts and constitutional provisions involved in that case are not identical to those before us now, we find the court's analysis of the word 'candidate' instructive:

The clause of the constitution referred to must receive a liberal construction. It is to be interpreted so as to carry out the great principles of government, not to defeat them. It is not to receive a technical construction, like a commonlaw law instrument or statute . . .. The object aimed at in the constitutional provision was the purification of our elections. . . . It recognizes the fact that many of the frauds which affect elections, and sometimes thwart the will of the people, are perpetrated in what may be termed the preliminary stages of an election,-in those proceedings by means of which candidates are selected for the people to vote for at the general election. . . .

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The word 'candidate' in the constitution is to be understood in its ordinary popular meaning, as the people understood it whose votes at the polls gave that instrument the force and effect of organic law. Webster defines the word to mean 'one who seeks or aspires to some office or...