Wade v. Woodward
| Decision Date | 06 February 1933 |
| Docket Number | 29948 |
| Court | Mississippi Supreme Court |
| Parties | WADE v. WOODWARD et al |
Suggestion Of Error Overruled March 9, 1933.
(En Banc.)
1 COUNTIES.
Constitutional provision creating board of supervisors, and charging them with duties that can only be performed at board meetings impliedly requires them to hold such meeting (Constitution 1890, section 170).
2 COUNTIES. Meeting of board of supervisors on first Monday of month, which had been time fixed for regular meetings before statutory amendment omitted time therefor, being valid, tax assessment thereat was valid under maxim that common error sometimes passes current as law (Code 1930, section 200; Constitution 1890, section 170).
Code 1906, section 296, provided that board of supervisors shall hold regular meetings at courthouse or in chancery clerk's office on first Monday of each month, but Laws 1914, chapter 236, section 1, in amending section 296, omitted words "on first Monday of each month," and omission was not corrected until adoption of Code 1930, section 200. However, board of supervisors continued to meet on first Monday of each month, as had been custom since 1892, for transaction of public business, and the assessment of land involved in 1926 and order levying county taxes in 1927 were made at these meetings.
HON. N. R. SLEDGE, Chancellor.
APPEAL from chancery court of Calhoun county, HON. N. R. SLEDGE, Chancellor.
Suit by E. O. Wade against W. A. Woodward and others. From a decree dismissing the bill, plaintiff appeals. Reversed and rendered.
Reversed, and decree here for the appellant.
Creekmore & Creekmore, of Jackson, for appellant.
The appellees base their entire case on the proposition that the Legislature in amending section 294 of the Code of 1906, which relates to the regular meetings of the Boards of Supervisors of the various counties, failed to fix a time for the regular meetings. So that for the period of time between 1916 and 1930, if the contention of the appellees be correct, there was no regular time fixed by law for the regular meetings of the Boards of Supervisors, and therefore, all proceedings of the eighty-two boards in the state were invalid and illegal. In other words, should the contention of the appellees be sustained by this court, the decision necessarily would mean that all acts of all the boards of supervisors in the state of Mississippi for a period of about fifteen years were absolutely void. It is easy to see the evil effects of such a decision.
In construing a statute of doubtful meaning, the consequences of any particular construction should be considered, whether they are good or bad.
Conard Furniture Company v. Mississippi State Tax Commission, 133 So. 652.
A statute must be construed so that its operation will be consistent and practical.
Miers v. Miers, 133 So. 133; 25 R. C. L. 959; State v. Smiley, 65 Kan. 240, 69 P. 199; Meyer Case, 209 N.Y. 386, 103 N.E. 713.
It is a matter of such general knowledge that the courts will take judicial notice of the fact that the various boards of supervisors throughout Mississippi have for years and years met in regular session on the first Monday of each month. The law always has been that, and still is, although it is true that for fourteen years there was a typographical omission from the statute. All governmental departments have unanimously and universally recognized that the first Monday was the regular meeting time of the boards. The Legislature knew this, and when the amendment was passed for the purpose of changing another phase of the law, it cannot be seriously maintained that the Legislature intended to leave the boards of supervisors without a regular time for their monthly meetings.
Even penal laws, which it is said should be strictly construed, ought not to be so construed as to defeat the obvious intention of the Legislature.
Legislative enactments are no more than any other writings to be defeated on account of mistakes, errors or omissions, provided the intention of the Legislature can be collected from the whole statute.
The intention of the Legislature is to be collected from the context, by considering the subject-matter, by looking to the occasion and necessity for the law and the circumstances under which it was enacted, to the mischief to be remedied, the object to be obtained, and the remedy in view, by comparing one part with the other and giving effect to the whole, by looking to the old law upon the subject, if any, and to other statutes upon the same or similar subjects, by considering the effects and consequences of a particular construction, and by looking to contemporaneous legislative history and contemporaneous construction of the statute.
25 R. C. L., sec. 228; 25 R. C. L., sec. 252; 25 R. C. L., secs. 260, 261.
When one construction leads to public mischief which another construction avoids, the latter is favored.
McIntyre v. McIntyre, 130 Maine, 326, 155 A. 731; Smith v. B. & O. Railroad Company, 48 F.2d 816; McGill v. City (Mo.), 38 S.W.2d 725; Town of Hartland v. Damon's Estate, 156 A. 518; Boardman v. State, 233 N.W. 556.
W. J. Evans, of Calhoun City, and J. H. Ford, of Houston, for appellees.
There is nothing in the statute under consideration here to authorize the conclusion that the Legislature, in making the change, did it by omission, or by mistake, inadvertence or error of the typist. For all that appears therein, the change was made with the deliberate purpose of giving the boards the right and authority to fix the time for holding their regular meetings to suit their own convenience and discretion. What right has this court to legislate something into this statute that the Legislature did not put into it?
Counsel want this court to do the audacious thing of holding that, because the statute provides that the boards shall hold regular meetings, the time for holding only one of which in four years is fixed by another section, such regular meetings must be held on the first Monday in each month just because the statute had so provided prior to 1914. That same statute, section 3967, Hemingway's 1927 Code, provided that the boards might hold two regular meetings in each month. Now if the court construes it to also say by construction that such regular meetings shall be held on the first Monday in each month, when, will the court say, the statute meant the second regular meeting must be held where the boards have provided for the holding of two regular meetings in each month under this statute?
Prior to 1914, the boards did not meet on the first Monday in each month because of a custom of long standing, but because of a specific statutory provision fixing that as the time therefor. Under section 1352, Code 1871, such boards held only four regular meetings in each year and the time for said meetings was fixed at the first Monday in January, March, July and October.
For this court to hold that the time is fixed by the statute in question for holding regular meetings of the board on the first Monday of each month, it will be necessary for it to write something into the section that is not in there now.
The statute here involved is clear and certain. There is no question here as to what the language used by the Legislature meant. The language here asked to be construed is language the Legislature did not use at all.
The intention and meaning of the Legislature must primarily be determined from the language of the statute itself, and not from conjectures aliunde.
25 R. C. L., sec. 217, pages 961, 963.
The courts cannot read into a statute something that is not within the manifest intention of the Legislature as gathered from the statute itself.
25 R. C. L., sec. 218, pages 963-4.
The statute here under construction is clear and certain in its language, and to read into it the language here insisted upon by appellant would be to legislate into it by "construction" a provision that is clearly foreign to it in fact or by implication.
This is an appeal from a decree dismissing a bill filed by the appellant to confirm a title which he alleges he acquired to certain described land by virtue of a tax deed thereto. The case was tried on bill, answer, and proof, from which it appears that the sale of the land for taxes, and all prior proceedings therefor, including the assessment of the land, were regular, provided the orders made by the board of supervisors in approving the assessment roll and levying the county tax were made at legal meetings of the board. The assessment of the land was made in 1926, and it was sold in April, 1928, for the taxes due thereon, in 1927. The county tax levy was made by the board of supervisors in November, 1927.
Section 294, Code 1906, and section 198, Code 1930, require members of boards of supervisors to "meet at the courthouse of their county, on the first Monday in January next succeeding the election." Section 296, Code 1906, provides that the etc.
By chapter 236, section 1, Laws 1914, section 296, Code 1906, was amended so as to read as follows: etc.
This amended statute omits the words, "on the...
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