Potter Mfg. Co. v. A.B. Meyer & Co.

• Citation: 85 N.E. 725
• Decision Date: 09 October 1908
• Docket Number: No. 6,412.,6,412.
• Parties: POTTER MFG. CO. v. A. B. MEYER & CO. et al.
• Court: Court of Appeals of Indiana

85 N.E. 725

POTTER MFG. CO.

v.A. B. MEYER & CO. et al.

No. 6,412.^*

Appellate Court of Indiana, Division No. 2.

Oct. 9, 1908.

Appeal from Superior Court, Marion County; Vinson Carter, Judge.

Action by the Potter Manufacturing Company, as cross-complainant, to foreclose a mechanic's lien against A. B. Meyer & Co. and others. Judgment for defendants, and cross-complainant appeals. Reversed and remanded.

John S. Berryhill, for appellant. McCarty & Rossman and Chas. Martindale, for appellees.

ROBY, J.

Cross-complainant, the Potter Manufacturing Company, brings this action to foreclose a mechanic's lien on the property of the Indianapolis Light & Heat Company (formerly the Marion County Hot Water Heating and the Indianapolis Light & Power Companies). The other parties to the suit are also lienholders. The lien sought to be foreclosed was for materials furnished and labor performed for J. J. Smith & Co., contractors, and their sureties after their failure, who constructed a water system consisting of an intake from Fall creek and a sewer for the discharge of water. A general denial to the cross-complaint closed the issues. The items sought to be recovered upon are set forth in exhibits to the cross-complaint. Exhibit B consists of charges for brace screws, washers for braces, brick buckets, labor in making wooden braces, blacksmithing work, sharpening pikes, and a few other smaller items; also charges for the use of a railroad switch for unloading cars. Exhibit A consists of charges for rent of a machine known as the “Potter trench machine,” which is a machine that straddles the trench or ditch and hoists the buckets, attached to cables, into which dirt is shoveled, and carries the dirt away in these buckets to the side of the ditch, emptying it into a pile or wagon box, where it can be hauled away, or generally carries the buckets back and empties them into that part of the trench which has been completed and ready to be filled. The principal item of expense was the rental of the trench machine, and whether or not this item can be the subject of a mechanic's lien is the main question to be decided.

Excellent arguments are presented by both appellants and appellees as to whether the statute will cover this case. The prime object of interpretation of statutes is to determine the intention of the Legislature. When the statute expresses no intention on a question to which it gives rise, and yet some intention must necessarily be imputed, this is determined by inference grounded on legal principles; but when the intention is expressed the task is one of verbal construction only. It is not allowable to interpret what has no need of interpretation, and it is clear that the only thing involved in this dispute is the verbal construction of the statute: Does its language give a right to a lien to one who furnishes a ditching machine for use in the erection of a system of waterworks? Appellees say that “this case is the very reductio ad absurdum of the mechanic's lien law,” and that “the worst enemy of this class of legislation could not invent a better illustration of the extreme to which such legislation may be pushed.” It is true that the question of whether one can have a lien for furnishing a machine to do work on structures named in the statute has never been before this court, and the right may have never been asserted in this state; but the failure to exercise a right does not affect the power to use it. When the original mechanic's lien law was enacted, such a question as the present one could likely not arise. No such...