State v. Zach

• Citation: 198 Conn. 168,502 A.2d 896
• Decision Date: 24 December 1985
• Docket Number: No. 12197,12197
• Parties: STATE of Connecticut v. Leo ZACH et al.
• Court: Supreme Court of Connecticut

Page 896

502 A.2d 896

198 Conn. 168

STATE of Connecticut v. Leo ZACH et al.

No. 12197.

Supreme Court of Connecticut.

Argued Nov. 8, 1985.

Decided Dec. 24, 1985.

K. Wynne Bohonnon and R. William Bohonnon, with whom, on brief, was David M. Bohonnon, New Haven, for defendants.

Ernest J. Diette, Jr., Asst. State's Atty., with whom was Edward J. Leavitt, Asst. State's Atty., for plaintiff.

Before HEALEY, SHEA, DANNEHY, SANTANIELLO and CALLAHAN, JJ.

DANNEHY, Judge.

The defendants are recreational boaters who received infractions complaints during the summer of 1982 for their alleged failure to comply with General Statutes (Rev. to 1981) § 15-142, as amended by Public Acts 1982, Nos. 82-283, 82-348, which provides for the registration of vessels operating in state waters. Thirty-seven cases have been consolidated for the purpose of obtaining a determination by this court of certain issues raised in the infractions complaints. The defendants challenge the constitutionality of General Statutes § 15-142, and thus the basis on which the infractions complaints were issued, by way of five questions ¹ reserved to us under Practice Book § 3133. For the reasons which follow, we find that the questions were improvidently reserved and remand these cases for trial.

We begin by outlining the statutory regulation scheme under which these infractions complaints were issued. Section 15-142(a) of the General Statutes requires every vessel operating in Connecticut waters to display a valid registration number, issued by the state of Connecticut, another state or the United States. Vessels bearing a valid registration number issued by another state or the United States are expressly exempted from the Connecticut vessel registration numbering system. General Statutes (Rev. to 1981) § 15-143(a)(6), as amended by Public Acts 1982, Nos. 82-283, 82-436, 82-472. Such vessels, however, if used in Connecticut waters for more than sixty days in any calendar year, must display a valid Connecticut registration decal. General Statutes § 15-142(b). ² A registration number and a registration decal are obtained in the same manner. The registrant must file the proper application form and pay a registration fee to the commissioner of motor vehicles. General Statutes (Rev. to 1981) § 15-144(a), as amended by Public Acts 1982, Nos. 82-283, 82-348, 82-436. ³ The failure to display a proper registration number or decal in accordance with the statute is punishable by a fine of not less than $25 nor more than $200. General Statutes § 15-144(h).

We reproduce in a footnote the stipulation of facts submitted by the parties. ⁴ From the stipulation and additional information gleaned at oral argument, the following facts appear. All except five of the defendants are Connecticut residents. The vessels in question are pleasure craft owned by unspecified Delaware corporations of which some of the defendants are shareholders. None of the vessels lists a location in Connecticut as its home port. During the summer of 1982 the defendants at various times "chartered" the vessels from the Delaware corporations for weekend boating and fishing trips and other boating activities on Long Island Sound. The vessels in question are "federally documented," i.e., registered and numbered under the laws of the United States. ⁵ Although the vessels were used in Connecticut waters for more than sixty days during the summer of 1982, none of them bore a Connecticut registration decal as required by General Statutes § 15-142(b), and each of the defendants was issued an infractions complaint for his or her operation of one of these vessels without the required decal. Some of the corporate owners attempted to obtain registration decals for their vessels by filing an application form and tendering the registration fee as provided in General Statutes § 15-144(a). The commissioner of motor vehicles, however, refused to issue the decals because the owners had not paid the state use tax on the purchase price of the vessels. General Statutes (Rev. to 1981) § 12-411. ⁶

The five questions reserved to us are as follows: "(A) [Is General Statutes § 15-142] violative of the due process clause of the [United States] Constitution? (B) [Is General Statutes § 15-142] contrary to the established federal system of admiralty jurisdiction as embodied in the [United States] Constitution, statutes and case law; specifically the judiciary act of 1789? (C) [Is General Statutes § 15-142] violative of the precepts of the commerce clause of the [United States] Constitution? (D) [Is General Statutes § 15-142] violative of Article 1, Section 10, clause 3, of the [United States] Constitution which prohibits a state from imposing a tonnage tax? (E) Are federally documented vessels owned by foreign corporations homeported in other states having no connection with Connecticut liable for a sales or use tax in Connecticut?"

We begin with the observation that the reserved questions as phrased require us to pronounce upon the facial validity of General Statutes § 15-142. It is a settled rule of constitutional adjudication that a court will decide the constitutionality of a statute only as it applies to the particular facts at hand. State v. Madera, 198 Conn. 92, ---, 503 A.2d 136 (1985); State v. Pickering, 180 Conn. 54, 57, 428 A.2d 322 (1980); Shaskan v. Waltham Industries Corporation, 168 Conn. 43, 49, 357 A.2d 472 (1975). A party who challenges the constitutionality of a statute must prove that the statute has adversely affected a protected interest " 'under the facts of his particular case and not merely under some possible or hypothetical set of facts not proven to exist.' Hardware Mutual Casualty Co. v. Premo, 153 Conn. 465, 471, 217 A.2d 698 (1966); State v. Cuvelier, 175 Conn. 100, 111-12, 394 A.2d 185 (1978); Gentile v. Altermatt, 169 Conn. 267, 307, 363 A.2d 1 (1975), appeal dismissed, 423 U.S. 1041, 96 S.Ct. 763, 46 L.Ed.2d 631 (1976); Kellems v. Brown, 163 Conn. 478, 483, 313 A.2d 53, appeal dismissed, 409 U.S. 1099, 93 S.Ct. 911, 34 L.Ed.2d 678 (1972); Adams v. Rubinow, 157 Conn. 150, 152-53, 251 A.2d 49 (1968)." Weil v. Miller, 185 Conn. 495, 501, 441 A.2d 142 (1981).

This principle reflects the conviction that "under our constitutional system courts are not roving commissions assigned to pass judgment on the validity" of legislative enactments. Broadrick v. Oklahoma, 413 U.S. 601, 610-11, 93 S.Ct. 2908, 2914-15, 37 L.Ed.2d 830 (1973). The effect of an answer in the affirmative to any one of the reserved questions would be to declare General Statutes § 15-142 unconstitutional in its entirety. ⁷ The issue, however, as we must address it, is whether the statute has been unconstitutionally applied to these defendants. We are bound " 'never to anticipate a question of constitutional law in advance of the necessity of deciding it [and] never to formulate a rule of constitutional law broader than is required by the precise facts to which it is to be applied.' " United States v. Raines, 362 U.S. 17, 21, 80 S.Ct. 519, 522, 4 L.Ed.2d 524 (1960); Secretary of the State of Maryland v. Joseph H. Munson Co., 467 U.S. 947, 104 S.Ct. 2839, 2847, 81 L.Ed.2d 786 (1984); State v. Madera, supra, 198 Conn. 92 at 105, 503 A.2d 136. "A judicial holding that a legislative Act is unconstitutional is one of very grave concern. We ought not, and will not, declare a statute to be unconstitutional unless our judgment is formed in the light of this rule of our law: 'It is our duty to approach the question with caution, examine it with infinite care, make every presumption and intendment in its favor, and sustain the Act unless its invalidity is, in our judgment, beyond a reasonable doubt.' Beach v. Bradstreet, 85 Conn. 344, 349, 82 Atl. 1030 [1912]." State ex rel. Brush v. Sixth Taxing District, 104 Conn. 192, 205, 132 A. 561 (1926); Beccia v. Waterbury, 192 Conn. 127, 133, 470 A.2d 1202 (1984); Logan v. O'Neill, 187 Conn. 721, 729, 448 A.2d 1306 (1982); Walkinshaw v. O'Brien, 130 Conn. 122, 134, 32 A.2d 547 (1943).

These principles of constitutional jurisprudence are no less pertinent here merely because the issues have been presented by way of reservation. This court declared long ago that our reservation procedures do not "contemplate, and ought not to be construed to permit, that every question which a trial court may encounter ... might be brought here at once upon its being either met or scented from afar...." Hart v. Roberts, 80 Conn. 71, 74-75, 66 A. 1026 (1907). We recognized that such a practice might "inevitably result in this court being called upon to formulate principles of law which would never enter into the determination of a cause, to formulate such principles in an abstract form suited to more or less general application and not as related to a concrete state of facts and narrowed and simplified by such relation, to create a mass of dicta embodying statements of abstract general principles which might some day rise up to harass judicial action, and to unnecessarily multiply the number of appearances in this court which an action might have before final disposition was made of it." Id., 75, 66 A. 1026. We recently emphasized the importance of these "discretionary prudential concerns" to our determination of whether a reservation should be answered. State v. Sanabria, 192 Conn. 671, 684, 474 A.2d 760 (1984).

Therefore, we will not review the facial validity of General Statutes § 15-142, and the only question which remains is whether that statute has been constitutionally applied in the cases before us. That determination is dependent to an unusual degree on the facts and circumstances of the individual case. The facts of record in the present matter, however, are insufficient to afford a basis for resolution of the issues presented. It is only where the parties fully and fairly disclose all of the relevant information that we may perform the careful inquiry and thorough examination required...