Sawyer v. State ex rel. Horr

• Citation: 45 Ohio St. 343,13 N.E. 84
• Parties: SAWYER v. STATE ex rel. HORR.
• Decision Date: 11 October 1887
• Court: United States State Supreme Court of Ohio

13 N.E. 84

45 Ohio St. 343

SAWYER v. STATE ex rel. HORR.

Supreme Court of Ohio.

October 11, 1887

Error to circuit court, Cuyahoga county.

Foran & Dawley , for plaintiff in error.

Boynton & Hale , for defendant in error.

OWEN C. J.

The proceeding below was in mandamus , to compel the sheriff of Cuyahoga county to issue, by his proclamation, a notice of an election of a circuit judge of the Eighth circuit of Ohio, at the general election to be held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November next. The case involves the construction of an act of the general assembly passed March 21, 1887, to amend an act relating to the organization and jurisdiction of the circuit and other courts, passed February 7, 1885, and to create the Eighth circuit. The act purports, in words, to provide for the election of three judges of the circuit court-one for the Eighth, and two for the Sixth, circuit-on the ‘ first Tuesday of November next,’ which will be one week prior to the day of the general fall election. It is claimed on behalf of the sheriff that the act is too plain to admit of construction; while the relator below maintains that it was not within the legislative intent to provide for a special election of three circuit judges one week prior to the general fall election. Several considerations support the latter view. The general law (section 2978, Rev St.) provides for the election of circuit judges on the Tuesday after the first Monday of November of each year.

The act in question does not purport to be a special act. It is amendatory of the general act. It was prompted by an overcrowded condition of the dockets, and a consequent necessity for additional judicial force. Had a special election been in the contemplation of the general assembly it is improbable that it would have been delayed until one week before the general election, to be then held in twelve counties, (at a cost of several thousand dollars,) in view of the fact that in two of the counties a registration is to be made, the ensuing work of which, in every probability, could not be completed in time for the special election. It was said by this court in Moore v. Given , 39 Ohio St. 663: ‘ That the law does not require vain, absurd, or impossible things of men is one of its favorite maxims; and it is the plain duty of the courts, in the interpretation of a statute, unless restrained by the rigid and inflexible letter of it, to lean most strongly to that view which will avoid absurd consequences, injustice, and even great inconvenience, for none of these can be presumed to have been within the legislative intent.’ See, also, as strongly supporting this rule of construction, Hirn v. State , 1 Ohio St. 20; Tracy v. Card , 2 Ohio St. 431; Slater v. Cave , 3 Ohio St. 80. In Tracy v. Card , 2 Ohio St. 431, it is said by THURMAN, J.: ‘ While, on the one hand, the judiciary should be careful not to make its office of expounding statutes a cloak for the exercise of legislative power, on the other hand it is bound not to stick in the mere letter of a law, but rather to seek for its reason and spirit, in the mischief that required a remedy, and the general scope of the legislation designed to affect it.’ In this case, the word ‘ administrator’ was, by construction, incorporated into an act, and inserted after the word ‘ executor,’ as this seemed to the court to be within the clear legislative intent. In Fosdick v. Perrysburg , 14 Ohio St. 472, the court was construing an act passed May 3, 1852, and providing that it should take effect ‘ from and after the fifteenth day of May next.’ The court, in view of all ins provisions, and of the facts that appear by the legislative journals, held that the act spoke from April 28, 1852, and took effect from the fifteenth of May next thereafter , while the letter of it would have postponed its taking effect to May, 1853.

If it be conceded, however, that the letter of this act is rigid and inflexible, and that it...