Hopper v. Haines

Irving, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. This case was argued orally at the last term of the Court, and a conchtsion was announced, but was after-wards withdrawn, and a re-argument upon notes was ordered in respect to section twenty-two of Art. 53, of the Code of Public General Laws, as added by the Act of 1868, ch. 292, and the effect of the Act of 1870, ch. 279, and subsequent legislation upon it. The appellant's counsel conducted their case in the lower Court and in this Court, on the theory, that section twenty-two of Article 53, which was enacted by the Act of 1868, was in full force in Harford County, where the transactions took place in the summer and autumn of 1.884, which gave rise to this suit. That view has again been pressed in the re-argument upon notes.

After the most careful examination and consideration, we are unable to accept this view. By the Act of 1868, ch. 292, section twenty-two was added to Article 53, of the Code of Public General Laws, title “Landlord and Tenant,'' to follow section 21. The added section reads thus: “Section 22. In all cases of renting lands wherein a share of the growing crop or crops shall be reserved as rent, said rent reserved shall be a lien on such crop or crops which shall not be diverted by any sale made thereof by the tenant, or by the assignment of the tenant in bankruptcy, or by the process of law issued against the tenant.” This section was given general operation throughout the State, and introduced an entirely new element into the relation of landlord and tenant, which was not allowed to remain a general law any longer than the next meeting of the Legislature in 1870, when, by its chapter 279, section ⁷⁰ 22, as enacted by the Act of 1868, cli. 292, was,repealed, amended and re-enacted as section 22.

The section as amended made advances, also, which were made on the faith of the crops to be grown, a lien in the same way 'as the crop rent, but confined the lien given by the section in all case's to loritten contracts of renting. This section, then, as amended and re-enacted, was, by another section of the law, made solely to apply to the counties of Saint Mary’s, Prince George’s and Charles. The language of the second section of this Act is “the provisions of this Act shall only apply” to the counties just named. We cannot, assent to the view of the appellant’s counsel that by the language “the provisions of this Act shall only apply,” &c., was meant that the repeal of section 22 should only apply to the counties named, and that the amendments supplied by this Act of 1870, would also apply to the counties named in the second section of the Act.

If the Legislature had so intended it would not have repealed section twenty-two outright, and in so many words re-enacted section 22, in different language, with different provisions respecting advances on the faith of the crop, and the character of the contract, making all the provisions dependent for operation upon the fact whether the contract was in writing. It did not retain section twenty-two and make a section twenty-three which should only be operative in the counties designated; but in express terms it repealed section twenty-two as- enacted by 1868, and made an entirely new section twenty-two. Being for three counties, it was esteemed a general law to that extent, and was eo nomine, enacted as a section in Article 53, of the Code of General Laws. If it had been intended as a local law merely, and that the repeal was not to he effected as to the residue of the State, it would have been differently framed and made in terms a local law, as would have been very easy.

The Legislature ⁷¹ had evidently found that as a universal law of the State it was not deemed wise or acceptable. That the purpose of the Legislature was as we decide it to be, and that it was so understood in the State to have done, we note the fact that by the Act of 1876, cli. 384, the public character of the law and general effect of it was recognized by the Legislature in repealing this section 22 again, and re-enacting it, admitting Calvert County to the sphere of its operation. Then, again, in 1884, chapter 67, the same section of Art. 53, of the Code of Public G-eneral Laws, namely, section twenty-two as enacted by the Act of 1876, was again repealed and again amended and re-enated as section 22 of Art. 53, and a proviso was added to the section itself, making it solely applicable to the counties of St. Mary’s, Prince George’s, Charles, Calvert, Anne Arundel and Dorchester, instead of making that provision by separate section, as in the Act of 1870. This Act not only amended the statute in certain particulars, but added Anne Arundel and Dorchester counties to the area of its operation.

This was the law when the trover alleged in this cause was committed, if committed as charged; for the Act was made to take effect immediately on its passage, and was approved on the 20th of March, 1884, and then became effective. As further indicating the legislative understanding of the limited effect of the law after the Act of 1870 was passed, and how the counties regarded it, we note the Act of 1886, ch. 182, when it was desired to bring Worcester County within the scope of its operation, did the thing in the same way as the preceding Acts, by repealing section 22 and re-enacting the same, and adding Worcester County to its area of effect. We cannot see how legislative purpose could have been more plainly indicated, nor how it is possible for us to hold that section twenty-two, as enacted in 1868, continued operative in 1884, in Harford County, notwithstanding the inter- ⁷² veiling legislation of 1810 and 1816 and 1884, which, expressly repeal that section and re-enact it as section twenty-two;, and do not leave section twenty-two intact and make a new section introducing the neiv provisions. To adopt appellant's view we should he forced into declaring, that though the Acts of 1810 and 1884, do in express terms repeal section twenty-two and make a new section twenty-two, still it was not the purpose of the Legislature t¡o do that, and their bungling must he corrected by sifting from the new section twenty-two certain portions for ■ general application in the State, and give the section as a whole only local operation.

This would not only he a novel mode of interpretation, hut plainly unnatural, anomalous, and wholly impracticable. Having reached the conclusion that section twenty-two of the Code, as added by the Act of 1868, was not operative in Harford County after the Act of 1810, the solution of the other questions arising on this appeal, becomes very simple and easy. The action is trover. The plaintiff declares for three hundred bushels of wheat which shé had stored at the warehouse of Joseph Ross, on the canal at Conowingo, in .Harford County, which the narr. alleged the defendant to have taken and converted to his own use.

The husband of the appellee, Mrs. Haines, was the tenant of the appellant's farm in Harford County, and had been for several years, upon a crop-rent. According to appellant's own testimony, for the year 1884, the tenant was, by the contract, to have one-half of the products for his share. The tenant, being indebted to one James S. Chenoworth, made a mortgage to him of sundry articles of jrersonal property, including his interest in a share of the wheat crop growing on the farm rented of appellant for the year 1884, to secure an indebtedness recited in the mortgage as thirteen hundred and nineteen dollars and forty cents. Upon the 29th of January, 1884, decree ⁷³ was obtained for a sale of tlie mortgaged property, to pay the mortgage debt.

Trustees were appointed who sold the property on the 29th of April, 1884, to various purchasers. The tenant’s (the mortgagor’s) one-half interest in the wheat crop was sold to the appellee, Mrs. Haines. The sale was reported to the Court under oath of' the trustees, and recited that the purchaser had complied with the terms of sale. The sale, however, had not been ratified by the Court when the act sued for was committed; a fact relied on by appellant, but which, the sequel will show, we do not think can defeat- the action.

The wheat was harvested, and the tenant proceeded to divide the same, as had been his habit previously, according to appellant’s own statement, without his supervision or participation. Having harvested and threshed the wheat, the tenant, acting as the agent of his wife, delivered in September, 1884, at Ross’ warehouse, at Conowingo, six hundred and thirty-four bushels, in two piles of three hundred and seventeen bushels each, in a separate parcel or pile — one for the appellant, and the other for the appellee. He left the wheat in the care of Mr. Ross; one pile for appellant, and the other for appellee, by her direction. Appellant’s wheat was also put with Ross by appellant’s direction.

Appellant took his own wheat away by boat to Baltimore, and against the remonstrance of Ross, who told appellant’s agent it was Mrs. Haines’ wheat — he took her wheat also ; and it is for the value of that wheat of appellee, so taken by appellant, that she sued for conversion. There were three bills of exception taken at the trial. The first was to the refusal of the Court when the plaintiff rested his case, to say that there was no legally sufficient evidence to justify recovery. The second was to the admission of certain testimony offered by the plaintiff' in rebuttal, and the third embraced the prayers.

As our decision upon the prayers will cover the whole case, we ⁷⁴ will not examine the exceptions seriatim. All the prayers of the appellee Avere granted, all those of the appellant were refused. The defendant’s (appellant’s) prayer at the conclusion of the plaintiff’s evidence, and his two prayers at the conclusion of the case, all, to some extent, involved the idea, that the appellant had a lien on the whole crop for his rent, and, therefore, was not ansAverable in trover to the