Case ID: scl_46/html/0066-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Wakdlaw, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

City Council of Charleston vs. John Blake and P. Duquercron.
    
      City Ordinance— Construction.
    
    An ordinance of the City Council of Charleston imposed a penalty on the “ owner or occupier” of any house or room, the chimney of which should take fire, and blaze out at the top ‘. — Held, That, where the premises were occupied by a tenant, the owner was not liable under the ordinance.
    IN THE CITY COURT OF CHARLESTON, APRIL TERM, 1858.
    The report of his Honor, the Recorder, is as follows:
    
      “ These were actions brought in the City Court of Charleston, under the 5th séction of an ordinance of the City Council, ratified 7th February, 1848. Walker’s Digest of City Ordinances, p. 48. The words of the ordinance are, “If any chimney in the city shall take fire and blaze out at the top, the owner or occupier of the house or room in which such chimney may be, shall forfeit and pay the sum of not less than twenty or more than forty dollars.
    “ Provided, however, that if the said owner or occupier shall prove, by other testimony than his or her own, that the said chimney has been swept within two weeks, and shall also give the number of the badge of the sweeper who swept the same, he shall be released, and the said chimney sweeper, or if he be a slave, his owner, or the person having the care and management of him, shall forfeit and pay the said sum.” The actions were brought, not against the occupiers or tenants of the houses, but against the owners or landlords. Motions were made for nonsuit on the ground that, under the ordinance, the occupier alone of the house or room in which the fire occurred was liable.
    “ I overruled the motions in both the cases, and instructed tlie jury that if they thought from the evidence that the fires in the several cases did occur, the actions against the owners were well brought under the ordinance, and that they should find for the plaintiff. The juries found for the plaintiff in both cases.”
    The defendants appealed on the ground:
    That the action for the penalty under the ordinance should have been against the tenants and occupiers, and not against the landlords.
    
      Thomas Y. Simons, for appellants, submitted,
    That the construction contended for is against common right, and would make the landlord liable for the act or default of another.
    That a fair and just construction of the Statute will show that the person in possession, whether owner or occupier, and thus in default, is the person amenable to the penalty of the ordinance.
    Penal statutes receive a strict interpretation. The general words of a penal statute shall be restrained for the benefit of him against whom the penalty is inflicted. Dwarris on Statutes, 631. . In the construction of a statute, it is the office of an expositor to put such a sense upon the words that no innocent person shall receive any damage by a literal construction. Dwarris, 591. Effect not to be given to the precise words of the Act, if there will be absurdity, inconvenience, or injustice. Dwarris, 587. It is not the words of the law, but the internal sense of it, that makes the law. The letter of the law is the body — th.e sense and reason of the law is the soul. Every statute ought to be expounded, not according to the letter, but according to the meaning. “ Qui hoeret in litera hoeret in cortice.” The enlarged interpretation of a law will penetrate the soul and spirit of a law, and reach the intent and meaning of the legislator.. Dwarris, 552. A thing ■which is in the letter of a statute is not within the statute unless it be within the meaning of the enactment. Bac. Ab. tit. Statute, 1.
    Porter, City Attorney, contra.
   The opinion of the Court was delivered by

Wakdlaw, J.

Words so unequivocal, as to be incapable of any other interpretation, would be required to show a matter so unreasonable, as that a landlord who, by a lease for years, had transferred to a tenant the exclusive enjoyment and care of a house for a term, should during the term be liable for the tenant’s negligence in respect to the house. If the ordinance in question has, under the word owner, subjected a landlord, who has leased for a term, to this liability, it might be asked, what would be the rule in the case of a life estate-Looking through the ordinance we see a penalty, in the case of a slave chimney-sweeper, cast upon “ his owner or the person having the care and management of him.” If a boy slave was hired for a year, and the bailee employed him in chimney sweeping, it would not, we think, occur to any one to suppose that the bailor, as owner, could be made subject to the penalty. In the analogous case which we are considering, it appears to us that the city ordinance by the alternative, owner or occupier, intended to provide that the owner should be liable, if he occupied personally, or by agent, or servant, or guest: but that the occupant should be liable, if there was a person in possession under some definite right, not subject to the will of the owner, him who has the title in reversion. The notion that both owner and occupier were intended to be liable, we think altogether untenable.

The motion in each case granted.

O’Neall, Withers, Whitner and Glover, JJ., concurred.

Motion granted.