Baltimore Transit Co. v. Metropolitan Transit Authority

Prescott, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The Baltimore Transit Company (Company) brought suit in the Circuit Court of Baltimore City to determine whether or not a seat tax fee had been imposed upon its streetcars in favor of the appellee, Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA). This appeal is from a decree in MTA’s favor, ruling that said seat tax fee applied to streetcars as well as buses. The questions raised, stated concisely, are: (1) did the Legislature intend, in enacting Section 13(a), infra, to impose a seat tax fee on streetcars; (2) is Section 13(a) a public local law in contravention of Article 11 A, Section 4 of the Maryland Constitution; and (3) does the title to Article 64B, infra, violate Article III, Section 29 of the Constitution ?

The facts are undisputed. The appellant is a public service-corporation engaged in operating a mass transportation system in the Baltimore metropolitan area. The operation involves the-use of both motor buses and streetcars. As a part of its system, the Company constructed tracks, and, for many years, operated streetcar lines along the streets of Baltimore City and Baltimore County.

Prior to July 1, 1961, the Company operated its buses by the authority of permits issued by the Public Service-Commission, pursuant to the provisions of Code (1957), Article 56, Sections 181-190. The Company was required to present to the Commissioner of Motor Vehicles those permits when making application for registration tags. Under Section 184, the Company was required to pay an annual fee of $4.00 per passenger seat of each motor vehicle. And the Company paid to Baltimore City, under Article 29, Section 26, of the Baltimore City Code (1950), an annual license fee of $5.00 for each regularly operated streetcar and trolley.

Under the provisions of Code (1962 Supp.), Article 64B,, Section 9(b), after January 1, 1962, all authority and regula ⁵¹³ tory control which the Public Service Commission had or exercised over the Company was transferred to, and vested in, the MTA. Section 13(a) provides, inter alia, that: “Every mass transit or transportation system * * * shall pay a seat tax fee to the Authority, the same to be used * * * in defraying its necessary administrative expenses. * * * such a seat tax fee shall be in lieu of any such fee heretofore levied, paid or payable, by such mass transportation system * * *. The * * * fee payable under this article shall be at the rate of $4.00 per seat, per vehicle used by mass transit or transportation company * * (Italics ours.) MTA interpreted Section 13(a) as imposing the seat tax fee on the Company’s streetcars, as well as its buses. The Company contested the right to collect the seat tax fee, in so far as it was sought to be imposed upon its streetcars.

This suit followed. I Appellant first contends that the Legislature did not intend to impose a seat tax fee on its trolleys and streetcars, when Section 13(a) was enacted; hence, any construction thereof requiring the payment of such a fee would be contrary to the purpose and intention of the Act. The Company begins its argument by stating that it is a cardinal rule of statutory construction that statutes should be construed to effectuate the intention of the Legislature, and, where there is doubt or ambiguity as to the meaning of a statutory enactment, its legislative history should be considered in determining such intention, which will (where doubt, or ambiguity, exists) prevail over the rules of grammatical construction. This principle of law is well established, and, we think, may be conceded.

Welsh v. Kuntz, 196 Md. 86 , 75 A. 2d 343 ; Tyrie v. Baltimore County, 215 Md. 135, 140 , 137 A. 2d 156 ; Frazier v. Warfield, 13 Md. 279 ; Smith v. Higinbothom, 187 Md. 115 , 48 A. 2d 754 ; Height v. State, 225 Md. 251, 257 , 170 A. 2d 212 . We, therefore, proceed to a consideration as to whether or not there is ambiguity in Section 13(a). Appellant cites seven cases, City of Chicago v. Keogh, 125 N. E. 881 (Ill. 1919), Harris ⁵¹⁴ v. Johnson, 161 P. 1155 (Cal. 1916), Monongahela Bridge Co. v. Pittsburgh & B. P. Ry. Co., 8 A. 233 (Pa. 1887), Condor v. Griffith, 111 N. E. 816 (Ind. 1916), Georgia Power Company v. Clark, 25 S. E. 2d 91 (Ga. 1943), Whitney v. City of Seattle, 242 P. 2d 178 (Wash. 1952), and State, use of Stumpf v. Baltimore & Belair E. Ry.

Co., 133 Md. 411 , 105 A. 532 ; an excerpt from one of the definitions of “vehicle” in Black’s Law Dictionary (4th Ed.); and 91 C.J.S., Vehicle, pp. 806-807, as authorities to sustain its claim that there is doubt as to whether the word “vehicle” as used in Section 13(a) includes its streetcars. We find it unnecessary to consider all of the cited cases in detail. Five of them concerned statutes regulating traffic; and different operating conditions between streetcars and other vehicles were held to justify the exclusion of the former from the definition of “vehicle.” The rationale of these five cases seems to reach no further than to sustain the proposition that in statutes and/or ordinances constituting rules of the road, which are obviously not applicable to fixed-rail vehicles, the definition of “vehicle” will not encompass streetcars. (In Stumpf, supra, the pertinent act explicitly exempted vehicles that ran only on rails.) As was stated by the Court in Syck v. Duluth St. Ry.

Co., 177 N. W. 944 (Minn.) : “Appellant cites decisions of other states upon somewhat similar statutes wherein the word ‘vehicle’ has been held not to include street cars. [Citations.] But, either specifically or by the context, the statute in those states excludes street cars. Cases involving the law of the road for passing or meeting vehicles do not appear to us to bear upon the question in hand, for in the very nature of things such regulation cannot affect vehicles operated along fixed tracks.” The other two cases, Whitney and Pittsburgh are, likewise, not in point. In Whitney , it was held that a railroad train was not a “motor vehicle” within the meaning of a venue statute. The reference in that case to “streetcar” was dictum based upon Condor v. Griffith, supra, which will be considered below.

Pittsburgh dealt with whether “streetcars” had to pay tolls under an act providing for the construction of a new bridge and ⁵¹⁵ fixing toil rates for “every carriage, wagon, buggy, or other wheeled vehicle, of whatever description, and for every sleigh or sled, drawn by horse.” The Court applied the principle of ejusdem generis to exclude streetcars from the definition of “vehicle,” but said: “A streetcar certainly is a wheeled vehicle in the general sense of that term. * * * To pass the railroad company’s cars over this bridge their railroad track must be permanently laid upon it so as to connect with their tracks at either end. In other words, the bridge must form part or parcel of the route of the railway. The vehicles which are specified in the Act of 1871, —‘carriages, wagons, buggies, sleighs, and sleds’- — are all of that class which requires no such special appliance to promote their passage, and it is reasonable to suppose that the general phrase ‘other wheeled vehicles, of whatever description,’ used in immediate connection therewith, may refer to vehicles of the same general class or kind of those particularly specified.” This case, actually, seems to be authority for the proposition that normally streetcars should be included in the definition of “vehicles.” The Condor v. Griffith case, supra, is the common source of the statement quoted from Black’s Law Dictionary, the citation from 91 C.J.S., 1 and the dictum in Whitney, supra, men ⁵¹⁶ tioned above. It, therefore, seems appropriate to examine this case closely.

It was decided in 1916. There, liability for a collision required consideration of an ordinance that made it unlawful for vehicles to drive on the left side of the street “except in the necessary act of crossing the same or passing a vehicle going in the same direction, * * * but the provisions of this section shall not apply to street railways [italics ours].” During the course of its opinion, the Court made the following statement: “A vehicle is any carriage or conveyance used or capable of being used as a means of transportation on land. [It] will not ordinarily include locomotives, cars and street cars, which run and are operated only over and upon a permanent track or fixed way, and it will not be held to include them unless the context of the * * * statute clearly indicates an intention to do so.” 2 It seems proper to classify Condor as another rule-of-the-road case, and appropriate that the above quotations from Black’s Law Dictionary and 91 C.J.S., p. 807, be confined to automobile law. The distinction between the word “vehicle” as used in automobile law and the Federal statutory definition is pointed out in Cyclopedic Law Dictionary (3rd Ed.), wherein it defines “vehicle” as follows: VEHICLE. By general Federal statutory definition: every description of carriage or other artificial contrivance used, or capable of being used, as a means of transportation on land.

R.S. § 4; 1 U.S.C.A. § 4 (Aircraft excluded. 44 Stat. 572 ; Title 49 U.S.C.A. (Supp. § 177)). “In automobile law, every device in, upon or by which any person or property is or may be transported or drawn upon a public highway except devices moved ⁵¹⁷ by human power or used exclusively upon stationary rails or tracks. (Uniform Act Regulating Traffic on Highways, § 1.) 11 U. L. A. 8.” Finally, upon the matter under immediate consideration, appellant urges that the provisions of Code (1957), Article 66)4, Section 2(67), which define “vehicles” for the purposes of the Motor Vehicle Article of the Code and exclude streetcars and devices propelled by electric power obtained from overhead trolley wire, but not operated upon rails or tracks, assist in creating a doubt as to the meaning of “vehicles” in Section 13(a). We do not find this argument persuasive.

For general definitions of the word “vehicle,” see Websters New International Dictionary, The American College Dictionary, Punk & Wagnalls, New Standard Dictionary, (1938), which definitions are sufficiently broad to include streetcars. Also compare 55 Am. Jur., Urban Transportation § 7, which states: “The term ‘car’ or ‘vehicle’ as used in a statute or ordinance may include a street car.” And for cases that have held streetcars to be vehicles, see Bradley v. Minneapolis St. Ry. Co., 201 N. W. 606 (Minn.) ; Syck v. Duluth St. Ry.

Co., supra; Cleveland C. C. & St. L. Ry. Co. v. Urbana B. N. Ry. Co., 73 Ohio St. Rep. 364 ; Poster v. Curtis, 99 N. F. 961 (Mass.); and Havins v. Dallas Ry. & Term. Co., 130 S. W. 2d 878 (Tex.

Civ. App.). And see the Baltimore City Code (Flack 1950), Article 29, Sections 19 and 20, wherein it is provided that “* * * all street railway cars, trackless trolleys and buses * * * shall stop on the near side” of crossings, and “all owners and operators of vehicles (italics ours) failing to comply” with the provisions shall be subject to a fine. From what has been said above, we hold that the meaning of the phrase “per vehicle used by mass transit or transportation company” is not ambiguous; hence the word “vehicle” therein must be construed as having been used in its general sense so as to include streetcars. 3 Although we have held above that no ambiguity exists in ⁵¹⁸ Section 13(a) and, therefore, its meaning must be determined from its terms,