State v. Nashville Baseball Club

• Decision Date: 22 February 1913
• Citation: 154 S.W. 1151,127 Tenn. 292
• Parties: STATE ex rel. PITTS et al. v. NASHVILLE BASEBALL CLUB et al.
• Court: Tennessee Supreme Court

154 S.W. 1151

127 Tenn. 292

STATE ex rel. PITTS et al. v. NASHVILLE BASEBALL CLUB et al.

Supreme Court of Tennessee.

February 22, 1913

Appeal from Chancery Court, Davidson County; John Allison Chancellor.

Suit by the State of Tennessee, on the relation of John A. Pitts and others, against the Nashville Baseball Club and others. From a decree for plaintiffs, defendants appeal. Reversed, and bill dismissed.

Vertrees & Vertrees and John R. Aust, all of Nashville, for appellants.

Pitts & McConnico, James L. Watts, and A. B. Anderson, all of Nashville, for appellees.

GREEN J.

The bill in this case was filed on the relation of certain citizens of Nashville, in the name of the state, against the Nashville Baseball Club, a Tennessee corporation, for the purpose of having the charter of said corporation forfeited and its affairs wound up under supervision of the court.

The ground upon which said forfeiture was asked was that the defendant had been guilty of repeated and flagrant breaches "of the statute of the state forbidding Sunday baseball games."

Several defenses were interposed, which it is not necessary here to notice, and the defendant filed an answer, in which, among other things, it was averred that the statute of the state upon which this proceeding was based was unconstitutional and invalid. The answer contained other matters which we will not discuss.

On final hearing, the chancellor decreed a dissolution of defendant Nashville Baseball Club, and from this decree an appeal was taken to this court.

Defendant insists that the act forbidding Sunday baseball games is unconstitutional, for the reason that it was passed in violation of article 2, § 18, of the Constitution, which is as follows:

"Every bill shall be read once, on three different days, and be passed each time in the house where it originated, before transmission to the other. No bill shall become a law until it shall have been read and passed, on three different days in each house, and shall have received, on its final passage in each house, the assent of a majority of all the members to which that house shall be entitled under this Constitution, and shall have been signed by the respective speakers in open session, the fact of such signing to be noted on the journal, and shall have received the approval of the Governor, or shall have been otherwise passed under the provisions of this Constitution."

The journals of the House and Senate show that a bill to prevent baseball playing on the Sabbath was introduced in the House passed two readings, and was referred to a committee. There was some delay about the report on the bill from the committee, and a like bill was introduced in the Senate, entitled "An act to prevent baseball playing on the Sabbath."

The bill introduced in the Senate passed two readings, but when called up on the third reading an amendment to the bill was adopted to the effect that, after the word "baseball" therein, there should be added the words "cricket or any other game that is played with ball, bat or club." Following this addition and amendment, the caption read:

"An act to prevent the playing of the games of baseball, cricket or any other game that is played with ball, bat or club on the Sabbath, and to prescribe the punishment therefor."

In the body of the bill thus amended the playing, not only of baseball, but of cricket and other games played with ball, bat, or club, was made unlawful on the Sabbath.

After the bill was so amended in the Senate, it passed another reading and was then sent to the House, where, giving the action there had the construction most favorable to the validity of the act, this Senate bill was substituted for the House bill and passed the House.

The foregoing was the manner in which chapter 147 of the Acts of 1885 came into our statute books.

It is said that this act was not passed on three readings on three days in either the House or Senate, as the Constitution requires. We will leave out of consideration the action of the House upon the bill, as the account of the proceedings in the House Journal appears somewhat confused, and we will only consider the action which the Senate took respecting this bill.

As introduced in the Senate, the bill only prohibited the playing of baseball on the Sabbath day. In this form it passed two readings. Before passing its third reading, however, it was amended so as to prohibit on the Sabbath day, not only the playing of baseball, but cricket and all other games played with ball, bat, or club. Obviously such an amendment could not have been properly included under the original caption of the bill, and the caption was likewise amended, so as to cover an enactment, not only against baseball, but cricket and all other games played with ball, bat or club.

Baseball is a game entirely distinct from cricket, and entirely distinct from many other games played with ball, bat or club. Legislation respecting baseball would not have covered these other games. So when the baseball bill was amended, so as to include the other games, it became entirely a new bill. It was a baseball bill no longer.

This fact was evidently recognized by the Senators, for they made a change in the caption of the bill to cover the new matters added thereto. Whenever the caption of a bill is materially changed, the bill becomes a new one. There may be additions to the caption of matters, germane and explanatory, by way of making the title more definite, which will not change the identity of the bill. If, however, there is added to the caption entirely new and foreign matter, the caption and the bill will lose their identity.

When the caption is thus radically changed, and the bill thus becomes a new one, it must pass three readings after it is so changed in order to become a valid constitutional enactment.

This question has been fully considered by this court, and our conclusions have been expressed, in Erwin v. State, 116 Tenn. 71, 93 S.W. 73, by the present Chief Justice, as follows:

"Every bill has two parts, the title and the body.

"The title must contain the subject of the proposed legislation, and that subject must be single. This was intended to serve a two-fold purpose. The subject must be expressed in the title, so that the members of the Legislature have their attention drawn directly to the matter about which they are to concern themselves in the discharge of their legislative duties. A second purpose is that the people of the state may know what their representatives are doing, and may interpose, if they choose, by petition or remonstrance. The title must be single, to prevent omnibus legislation and logrolling.

"It is obvious that, to serve these purposes, the title must be a constant quantity, not subject to amendment, or at least not subject to any alteration that will effect any substantial change in it. It fixes the identity of the bill. There may, indeed, be made a substantial change in a title; but, if so it becomes a new title, the caption of a new bill.

"What is said in the constitutional provisions quoted concerning amendments refers to the body of the bill. This, as a matter of course, may be amended in the house in which the bill originated. The Constitution also permits amendments to be ingrafted upon it in the other house. No restriction is placed upon this power of amendment, further than results from the rigidity of the title and the necessity of conforming thereto, and the requirement that there shall be a concurrence of the two houses upon the whole bill. One section may be stricken out, and its place supplied by another containing a different provision. All may be stricken out, except the title and the enacting clause, and new provisions inserted quite different from those which first constituted the body of the bill; but upon this liberty there rests one unyielding limitation, one imperious requirement. Every amendment, be it great or small, must harmonize with the title, must be germane to it, must fall within its scope.

"If an amendment foreign to the title be introduced, one of two results must follow: Either the title must be so altered as to embrace it, or the bill, as it stands, will be vitiated by it; but if the title be so changed, the bill is no longer the same. The title is new, and the bill is radically different from the thing it was before."

This bill, therefore, prohibiting the playing of baseball, cricket, and all other games with ball, bat, or club, never passed three readings in the Senate. It only passed one reading in the Senate, and was not enacted as prescribed by section 18 of article 2 of the Constitution.

Learned counsel for relators do not attempt any argument to show that this act was passed in conformity to the provisions of the Constitution, but resist the attack upon the statute by invoking the principle of stare decisis.

In 1887 one Jack Hayes appears to have been indicted in the criminal court of Davidson county for violation of this statute, and a motion to quash the indictment was made on the ground that the act upon which said indictment was based was unconstitutional. This motion to quash was overruled by the criminal judge, and the case appealed to this court, and the action of the lower court affirmed. No written opinion was filed, and we are forced to look to the record in the case of Hayes v. State to ascertain what was before the courts on the hearing of this case.

So far as we can tell, the only point made in the above case, with reference to the passage of this act, was that it did not pass three readings in the House on three different days. The opinion of the criminal judge who disposed of the case is preserved, and a newspaper report of the opinion of this court is...