State v. Pierce County

• Decision Date: 03 January 1925
• Docket Number: 19003.
• Citation: 231 P. 801,132 Wash. 155
• Parties: STATE v. PIERCE COUNTY.
• Court: Washington Supreme Court

231 P. 801

132 Wash. 155

STATE v. PIERCE COUNTY.

No. 19003.

Supreme Court of Washington

January 3, 1925

Department 2.

Appeal from Superior Court, Pierce County; Clifford, Judge.

Action by the State against Pierce County. Judgment for plaintiff and defendant appeals. Affirmed.

J. W. Selden, Frank D. Nash, and D. D. Schneider all of Tacoma, for appellant.

John H Dunbar and R. G. Sharpe, both of Olympia, for the State.

MACKINTOSH J.

The Legislature in 1923 passed an act which appears as chapter 145, Laws 1923, relating to the admission of the insane to state hospitals, and providing for the charges to be paid by persons and counties for the care and maintenance of such insane. Section 1 outlines the procedure for the examination of relatives of the insane persons for the purpose of determining the ability of the insane person, his estate, or relatives to pay for the expense of his care and maintenance while in the state hospital. If the insane person, his estate, or relatives are found to have the financial ability to pay such expenses, they shall be ordered to pay the sum of $4.50 per week during the time that such insane person is confined in the hospital. It is further provided that, if the court find that such insane person, his estate, or relatives have not the financial ability to pay such amount, and that the insane person is 'violently insane and dangerous to life and property, the expenses shall be borne by the state of Washington.' If the court find that the insane person, his estate, or relatives have not the financial ability to pay the charges and costs, and that such insane person should be committed and is not violent or dangerous, then the costs and charges shall be paid by the county from which the commitment is made. This action was begun by the state of Washington against Pierce county under the last-mentioned provision to recover costs and charges arising from the confinement in the western state hospital for the insane of several persons who are not violently insane or dangerous to life and property, and whose estates and relatives and they themselves had not the financial ability to pay the expenses. To the complaint Pierce county demurred, and, the demurrer being overruled and the county electing to stand thereon, judgment was entered for the amount prayed for, and this appeal followed.

The provisions for the payment by the counties of the expenses mentioned in chapter 145, supra, and attacked on several grounds, which we will consider seriatim.

1. Section 1, article 13, of the state Constitution, reads as follows:

'Educational, reformatory, and penal institutions, those for the benefit of blind, deaf, dumb, or otherwise defective youth, for the insane or idiotic, and such other institutions as the public good may require, shall be fostered and supported by the state, subject to such regulations as may be provided by law. The regents, trustees, or commissioners of all such institutions * * * shall be appointed by the governor. * * *'

It is argued that under this section it becomes the duty of the state to support the insane, and that it is impossible for the Legislature, without doing violence to the constitutional provision, to provide that support shall be given by the counties. The constitutional provision that the insane hospitals shall be 'fostered and supported by the state' does not call for such restricted interpretation as that urged by the appellant. It must be that the Constitution would allow the Legislature to determine the sort and nature of insanity for which the state should confine a patient and render him maintenance and treatment. The Legislature has provided that those dangerously insane are the ones for whom the state should pay all the expenses, and in the exercise of its discretion allowed by the Constitution the Legislature has differently classified those who are not dangerously insane, in the view probably that their treatment and maintenance concerns primarily the community from which they come and not the state generally, and has said that the expense of their care and maintenance shall be borne by their counties. Furthermore, this classification seems to be justified under the last clause of the constitutional section quoted, reading that 'subject to such regulations as may be provided by law.' If the fostering and support by the state is subject to regulation of the Legislature, it would seem clearly to follow that that regulation may take the form it did in chapter 145 of providing that each county shall pay the expense of the care of its harmless insane.

This same question has been before the courts of other states, and we find, in State ex rel. Price v. Huwe, 105 Ohio St. 304, 137 N.E. 167, under a constitutional provision exactly the same as section 1, article 13, of our Constitution, that an act of the Legislature requiring that the expense of maintaining the insane shall be borne by the county from which they are committed was upheld. The court, after saying that it was elementary that statutory enactments must be sustained and enforced unless clearly in conflict with the Constitution, and after saying that the constitutional provision is not self-executing, and that the method in which insane asylums are to be fostered and supported was left to the discretion of the Legislature, proceeds to say:

'If the requirement that individuals liable for the support of a person committed to such institution pay a portion of the expense of his maintenance, or that it be relized out of the property of such person himself, is not in conflict with the constitutional provision referred to, it is difficult to see how a requirement that in the event of indigency the county from which the patient is committed shall bear such expense is violative of such constitutional provision. The institution is fostered and supported by the state, notwithstanding the requirement that those able to support and liable for the support of a patient committed thereto be required to contribute to such expense, and that where such conditions do not obtain the county from which the patient is committed be required to do so. * * * No charge is made against any county for the care and maintenance of any person committed to such institution from any other county, and in that respect the benefits conferred, and for which such payments are required, are entirely local in their character. Whatever tax levy may be necessary for such purpose would be uniform throughout the taxing district, and the power of the general assembly to require the payment of such fund, and the consequent levying of a tax to provide it, is not prohibited or limited by the provisions of section 7, article 10, of the Ohio Constitution.'

The Supreme Court of North Dakota, in State ex rel. McCue v. Lewis, 18 N.D. 125, 119 N.W. 1037, considered a constitutional provision requiring that the Legislature provide revenues for feeble-minded institutions, saying that it was not beyond the power of the Legislature to require the several counties of the state to pay for the expense of those of their residents who might be committed to such institutions:

'It is next contended by appellant's counsel that the institution for the feeble-minded is a state institution, and hence funds for its maintenance must be provided for as prescribed in section 174 of our Constitution. While it is true that such institution belongs to the state, it in no manner follows that the Legislature has not the power to provide for its partial or entire maintenance by the respective counties, as was expressly held in the foregoing authorities. The contention that chapter 237 aforesaid is unconstitutional because the payments exacted thereunder constitute a tax in excess of 4 per cent., and hence violates section 174 of the Constitution of this state, is wholly without merit; the same being besed upon a false premise. * * * The whole fallacy of appellant's contention upon this point lies in the unwarranted assumption that, because this institution is owned and controlled by the state, its maintenance and the maintenance of the inmates thereof are necessarily a state charge, and that the Legislature has no power to require the respective counties to maintain their indigent inmates or to aid the state in maintaining them. As before stated, the Legislature has the undoubted power to require the counties to pay all or any portion of the expense of maintaining such inmates.'

In Kaiser v. State, 80 Kan. 364, 102 P. 454, 24 L. R. A. (N. S.) 295, a constitutional provision exactly the same as ours was held not to interfere with the Legislature's compelling the estates of persons committed to insane hospitals to pay for the cost of the maintenance of such persons there. The principle is the same as that involved where the charge is made upon the counties.

2. Section 2, article 7, of the state Constitution, is as follows:

'The Legislature shall provide by law a uniform and equal rate of assessment and taxation on all property in the state, according to its value in money, and shall prescribe such regulations by general law as shall secure a just valuation for taxation of all property, so that every person and corporation shall pay a tax in proportion to the value of his, her, or its property. * * *'

It is argued that that portion of chapter 145, supra, which we have under consideration violates this constitutional provision requiring uniform and equal assessment and taxation; that, since the law requires a state lavy for the support of these hospitals for the insane, the requirement upon the individual counties to pay the state an additional sum for the care and maintenance of the insane amounts to double taxation. We find, again, that this same question has...