Case Name: Emerick M. HUBER, Appellant (Defendant), v. The CITY OF CASPER, Appellee (Plaintiff)
Court: Supreme Court of Wyoming
Jurisdiction: Wyoming
Decision Date: 1986-11-05
Citations: 727 P.2d 1002
Docket Number: No. 86-13
Parties: Emerick M. HUBER, Appellant (Defendant), v. The CITY OF CASPER, Appellee (Plaintiff).
Judges: Before THOMAS, C.J., and BROWN, CARDINE, URBIGKIT and MACY, JJ.
Reporter: Pacific Reporter 2d
Volume: 727
Pages: 1002–1010

Head Matter:
Emerick M. HUBER, Appellant (Defendant), v. The CITY OF CASPER, Appellee (Plaintiff).
No. 86-13.
Supreme Court of Wyoming.
Nov. 5, 1986.
Ronald L. Brown and Burton W. Guetz of Burke and Brown, Casper, for appellant.
Richard H. Peek, Casper, for appellee.
Before THOMAS, C.J., and BROWN, CARDINE, URBIGKIT and MACY, JJ.

Opinion:
URBIGKIT, Justice.
Emerick Huber appeals convictions, affirmed by a district court acting as an intermediate appellate court, of violating a Casper city ordinance enjoining leaving the scene of an accident and failing to report an accident. Based on ordinance interpretation, we reverse.
In the early hours of Easter morning, 1985, appellant Huber, Sharon Hedges, and off-duty Highway Patrol Officer Brad Ward were returning in appellant's van from a Casper nightclub, bound for appellant's office. Near the cemetery they spotted a young woman in the darkness who "looked like she was in trouble." Huber, the driver of the van, stopped to offer assistance. The girl "looked like she had been hit a couple of times," and "her face was pretty messed up. She had been crying and looked a little bit shaky." She explained that her boyfriend had beaten her up and left her at the cemetery, and asked for a ride to her mother's house. Since the young passenger did not know her mother's address, Huber slowly drove the streets of North Casper until she spotted the house. As established by the undisputed testimony of Huber, Hedges and Ward, Huber pulled the van onto the sidewalk, turned off the engine, and placed the keys in his pocket.
Ward, who had been seated on the passenger side of the vehicle, testified at trial that he and Huber supposed the abusive boyfriend belonged to a motorcycle gang because, on the girl's arm, there was a "one percent" tattoo. He explained this curious emblem:
"[A] 1 percent is a tattoo that motorcycle riders wear which goes back to when the American Motorcycle Association came out with a statement regarding motorcyclists and said that 99 percent of all motorcyclists are good, honest, upstanding citizens and only 1 percent of the motorcyclists are the outlaw gang type members that give motorcyclists a bad name."
Ward got out to help their bruised passenger alight. Suddenly, out of the quiet night, there came a mechanized roar, and Ward looked up to see four motorcycles heading toward the van. Assuming that the lead motorcyclist was the boyfriend, and possibly a member of a "one percent" outlaw gang, with potentiality for violence, Ward pushed the girl back inside the van, jumped in beside her, and yelled to Huber to drive away. Huber started the motor but not until after the lead motorcyclist had slid into and hit the rear of the still parked van. The reason for the motorcyclist driving into the van is conjectural, although evidence revealed that his blood alcohol content, measured after the accident, was .25 per cent. This condition and the circumstance of the van parked in a narrow street were likely factors precipitating the collision.
Huber, Ward, Hedges, and the young girl, unsure whether or not there had been an accident or injuries, drove to the police station and, they claim, there reported the possible accident and deposited their guest.
Huber was charged with three criminal offenses: leaving the scene of an accident; failure to report an accident; and illegal parking. He was convicted in a trial to the court and fined a total of $1,530, and the convictions were affirmed on appeal by the district court. The appeal was pursuant to Rule 1.03, W.R.A.P., providing for appeal to the district court from decisions of municipal, justice of the peace, and county courts. The present appeal results from that intermediate court affirmance.
On appeal here, Huber contests only the City of Casper Ordinance 18-81 convictions, and not the illegal parking charge. In relevant part, Ordinance 18-81 states:
"Section 1. Becoming Involved in an Accident and Leaving the Scene Without Giving Name and Address — Prohibited.
"(a) It shall be unlawful and punishable as hereinafter provided, for any person to operate a motor vehicle within the corporate limits of the City of Casper, Wyoming and become involved in an accident with another vehicle and fail to take reasonable steps to locate and notify the driver of his name and his address .
"(b) Driver of a vehicle involved in an accident resulting in injury to or death of any person, shall as soon as practical thereafter give notice of such accident to the Casper Police Department and provide his name, address and the location of said accident." (Emphasis added.)
The three factors involved in the convictions and appeal are "operate," "driver," and notice "as soon as practical thereafter."
Ordinance 18-81 is similar to § 31-5-1101 through 31-5-1105, W.S.1977 (1984 Replacement). The elements of § 31-5-1101, which statute prohibits leaving the scene of an accident without furnishing identification and rendering aid to injured persons, are: (1) driving a vehicle, (2) involvement of the vehicle in an accident with another vehicle, and (3) failing to stop at the scene of the accident, furnish identification and render assistance. See Wood v. City of Gasper, Wyo., 683 P.2d 1147 (1984).
LEAVING THE SCENE OF AN ACCIDENT
The first appeal question, whether appellant was operating a motor vehicle when the motorcycle impact occurred, will be answered by this court in the negative.
When construing a legislative enactment, we look at the specific language of the statute to discern legislative intent. Wyoming State Department of Education v. Barber, Wyo., 649 P.2d 681 (1982). The same rules which govern the construction of statutes apply also to the construction of ordinances. Town of Torrington v. Taylor, 59 Wyo. 109, 137 P.2d 621 (1943).
There is a "general rule that words of a statute are to be interpreted in their ordinary, everyday sense unless a contrary interpretation is indicated in the specific statute." Adams v. State, Wyo., 697 P.2d 622, 624 (1985). Another precept of construction is that a penal statute will not be extended by implication or construction to embrace persons not expressly subject to its application, and corollary to this precept is that "ambiguity concerning the application of criminal statutes should be resolved in favor of lenity." Capwell v. State, Wyo., 686 P.2d 1148, 1153 (1984). See Attletweedt v. State, Wyo., 684 P.2d 812 (1984), and Horn v. State, Wyo., 556 P.2d 925 (1976).
We examine, then, how, if at all, this ordinance applies to appellant, If he was operating the van when the collision occurred, in the sense contemplated by the language of the ordinance, then the judgment of the trial court may be correct if an insufficient report was made to the Casper police. The facts adduced at trial established that Huber pulled the van partially up onto the sidewalk, shut off the engine, and put the keys into his pocket before the vehicle impact occurred.
Plainly, the word "operate" is susceptible of several quite different meanings. "Operate" might have been used by the Casper City Council in a narrow sense, as a synonym for the word "drive," or it might have been used in the broadest sense, as an alternative for the phrase "in actual physical control of." See Adams v. State, supra. It is impossible to finitely assess the intent of the City Council from the language of the ordinance because "operate" is multifaceted in linguistic application.
The meaning of "operate" has not been previously addressed by this court, and we will therefore invoke authoritative guidance in our analysis. Black's Law Dictionary (5th ed. 1979) defines "operate" as: "To perform a function, or operation, or produce an effect." "Operate" is described in 60 C.J.S. Motor Vehicles § 6(2), p. 159:
"The word 'operate' may denote a personal act in working the mechanism of the car and refer to the physical handling of the controls of the vehicle; the physical act of working the mechanism of the car; and the term is defined as meaning to regulate and control the management or operation of the car, that is, to have charge of it as the driver."
The Annotation at 93 A.L.R.3d 7, § 3[b] addresses the meaning of "operate" when not in the context of driving while intoxicated:
"[Two] definitions of 'operate' that have appeared in a significant number of cases are the following: (1) 'operate' includes not only the motion of the vehicle but also acts which engage the machinery of the vehicle that, alone or in sequence, will set in motion the motive power of the vehicle; (2) a person operates a motor vehicle when he intentionally does any act that makes use of any mechanical or electrical agency which alone or in sequence will set in motion the motive power of that vehicle
See also State v. Graves, 269 S.C. 356, 237 S.E.2d 584 (1977).
This court deems this reasoning and criteria persuasive. "Operation" means more than mere presence in a vehicle. We hold, then, that where a person is occupying the driver's seat of a motor vehicle and that vehicle is stationary in a designated parking zone or otherwise not occupying a traffic lane or impeding the flow of traffic, and the engine is switched off, that person is not operating the vehicle. This decision is in accord with precepts of statutory construction. We merely interpret "operate" in its "ordinary, everyday sense." Adams v. State, supra, 697 P.2d at 624. All of this is only to say that, in defining phraseology of the nature of the Casper ordinance, for purposes of leaving the scene of an accident a parked vehicle is not being operated when hit while standing at the curb.
FAILURE TO REPORT AN ACCIDENT
The second aspect of this appeal is whether appellant was a "[d]river of a vehicle involved in an accident," and, if so, was Huber's report to the police sufficient to satisfy the notice requirements of subsection (b) of the city ordinance:
"Driver * . shall as soon as practical give notice to the police and provide his name, address and the location of said accident."
Our examination of the record reveals that we can only speculate as to the sufficiency of the report given to the police, since no police blotter notation was made of the incident and the trial testimony of the dispatch officer was indefinite and conflicted with the testimony of other witnesses. Our discussion of "operate" is dispositive, and, as it is unlikely that a similar factual circumstance will reoccur, we will not address this subject further.
A defense has been suggested under the facts of this case to be available if Huber realized that there had been an accident and then recognized that he could have been endangered by the motorcyclists if he did not expeditiously leave the north Cas-per location at that hour of the night. The test which applies is what a reasonable person would do under similar circumstances, and this defense could be raised if Huber's report immediately after the accident was consequently delayed. As an example, see Isom v. State, 37 Ala.App. 416, 69 So.2d 716 (1954), where a black motorist involved in an accident with a white motorist was threatened with death, fled the scene, and was convicted of leaving the scene of an accident. The Court of Appeals of Alabama reversed on the basis of a refused instruction incorporating the reasonable-fear-as-justification defense. The court said:
"According to the testimony of the defendant he was confronted with danger to life or great bodily harm. It would be unjust and unreasonable to declare that, despite this, he was required to remain at the scene and go through the formality of complying with each and every requirement of the statute." 69 So.2d at 718.
See also State v. Goff, 79 S.D. 138, 109 N.W.2d 256 (1961). For discussion of the "choice of evils" defense of necessity, see, among others, People v. Trujillo, 41 Colo.App. 223, 586 P.2d 235 (1978) (prison escape); People v. Robertson, 36 Colo.App. 367, 543 P.2d 533 (1975) (prison escape); Esquibel v. State, 91 N.M. 498, 576 P.2d 1129 (1978) (prison escape); and State v. Diana, 24 Wash.App. 908, 604 P.2d 1312 (1979) (medical necessity).
The defense was available; its sufficiency need not be judged in view of the criminal-law standards and the decision of the trial court since we otherwise determine this appeal on the first issue. Here, be cause appellant was not an "operator" of a motor vehicle, appellant's convictions for violating City of Casper Ordinance 18-81, § 1(a) and 1(b) are reversed, and the case is remanded for entry of a judgment in accord herewith.
Reversed.
. Illustrative is Wyoming's all-inclusive definition of "driver" in § 31-5-102(a)(x), W.S.1977 (1984 Replacement):
" 'Driver' means every person who drives or is in actual physical control of a vehicle."
. In Burton's Legal Thesaurus (1980) there are 67 synonyms for "operate." In Webster's New International Dictionary, Unabridged (1971) there are likewise a dozen or more definitions for this verb.
. Carefully, the decision of this court was determined on the uncontroverted status and undisputed fact that Huber was not in violation of the City ordinance as a matter of law, since he was not operating the van when it was hit by the intoxicated motorcyclist. Contrariwise, the comments of the dissent encompass an interesting discussion on social issues involving intimated behavior. This court does not create crimes for justification of prior conviction. Likewise, our decision today has no application to a person charged with violating laws proscribing operating or driving while under the influence of intoxicants, where a difference in statutory phraseology and construction is found. It does seem paradoxical that Huber was cited for both illegal parking and illegal operation of a motor vehicle, since ordinarily these are mutually exclusive offenses.