Lewis v. Fisher

McSherry, J. delivered the opinion of the Court. Section 15, of Article 47 of the Code provides in substance that when any person or body corporate shall make an assignment for the benefit of his or its creditors, or shall be adjudged insolvent, or shall have his or its property taken possession of by a receiver “all moneys due and owing from such person or body corporate, for wages or salaries to clerks, servants or employees, contracted not more than three months anterior to the execution of such assignment, adjudication of insolvency or appointment of a receiver shall first be paid , in full out of such property or estate, etc.” The appellant, who is an attorney at law, claims to be paid in full the fees due him by the American Casualty Insurance and Security Company, an insolvent corporation whose assets were placed in the hands of a receiver by a decree of the Circuit Court of Baltimore City, on November the twenty-third, 1893. Whether he comeswithin the statute just alluded to and is, therefore, entitled to a priority in the payment of his claim, is the sole question raised by the pending appeal, and that the question is an exceedingly narrow oné. We have before us only the petition of the appellant, together with his itemized account verified by affidavit, and the answer of the receivers.

From these it appears that the claim is made up of two charges for salary for the month of December, 1892, and the month of January, 1893, and nine other charges for services rendered and for retainers in particular cases. All of these items, except the last six, which aggregate the sum of nine, hundred dollars, bear date more than three months prior to November twenty-third, 1893, and are, in consequence, under the statute, entitled to no priority. The six items with which we have to deal are not items for salary. Four of the six are for retainers in cases undisposed of, and the remainining two are for fees in cases previously tried.

The statute has relation to wages or salaries due to clerks, servants or employees. The appellant was, confessedly, not a clerk of the insolvent company; and unless the sums he claims were wages or salary, and unless ¹⁴¹ he was when they were earned a servant or employee within the meaning and intent of the statute, he is not entitled to claim the benefit of the above provision of the Code. We are not content to dispose of this question by adopting any of the varying definitions of the terms “Wages,” “Servants” and “Employees,” given in different lexicons, because there are well recognized rules of construction which ought to control in the judicial interpretation- of the statute. If we look to the object which the Legislature had in view in adopting this particular act, and if we bear in mind the familiar doctrine that the signification of the words used is to be gathered therefrom, and also from their association and collocation, there would seem to be but little, if any, difficulty in disposing of this contention.

Now, the title of the original Act which forms the section of the Code referred to in the beginning of this opinion is, “An act to provide for the payment of wages and salaries due employees of insolvent employers,” and the obvious scope of the enactment is, in the language of Bacon, J., in Coffin v. Reynolds, 37 N. Y. 639 , when discussing a somewhat similar provision of a New York Statute, “to protect the classes most appropriately described by the words used as those engaged in manual labor as distinguished from officers of the corporation or professional men engaged in its service ; in short to afford additional relief to a class who usually labor for small compensation, to whom the moderate pittance of their wages is an object of interest and necessity, and who are poorly qualified to take care of their own concerns or look sharply after their employer.” “To the language of the Act must be applied the rule common in the construction of statutes, that when two or more words of analogous meaning are coupled together they are understood to be used in their cognate sense, express the- same relations and give color and expression to each other.” Wakefield v. Fargo et al., 90 N. Y. 213 . Or, as stated by Lord Bacon, “the coupling of the words together shews that they are to be understood in the same sense.” Bac. ¹⁴² Works, vol. 4, p. 26; see, also, Com. v. DeJardin, 126 Mass. 46 . The word “employee,” though generally and ordinarily quite comprehensive, cannot, if regard be had to the -principle just stated, be given a wider meaning than the cognate words “clerks” and “servants” with which it is associated, but must be restricted in its signification so as to include only persons who perform the same kind of service that is due from clerks or servants. “A statute which treats of persons of an inferior rank cannot by any general word be so extended as to embrace a superior; the class first mentioned is to be taken as the most comprehensive; specialia generalibus derogant. Black Intro., sec. 3; Sandiman v. Breach, 7 B. & C. 96; Reg. v. Cleworth, 4 Best & S. 927; Kitchen v. Shaw, 6 A. & E. 729; Branwell v. Pennock, 7 B. & C. 536; Williams v. Golding, L. R. 1, C. P. 69; Broom!s Max. 625; Smith v. People, 47 N. Y. 337 , Allen J. 90 N. Y. supra.” Now, by no possible construction could an attorney at law be included under the term “clerk,” and it is not unreasonable to suppose, looking to the subject-matter with which the legislature was dealing, and to the mischiefs it intended to remedy, that the word “servant” was used in the sense in which it was employed in the common law. “The first sort of servants acknowledged by the laws of England are menial sej'vants\ so called from being intra moenia, or domestics. * * * Another species of servants are called apprentices (from apprendre, to learn.) * * * A third species of servants are laborers, who are only hired by the day or week, and. do not live intra moenia as a part of the family. * * * There is yet a fourth species of servants, if they may be so called, being rather in a superior, a ministerial capacity, such as stewards, factors, bailiffs; whom, however, the law considers as servants pro tempore with regard