Opinion ID: 2305399
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: the title of the ordinance

Text: One of the appellants' grounds of attack upon the Ordinance is the alleged deficiency of its title. This is based upon the fact that the title does not specifically refer to the exception contained in Section 4. The same rules which govern the validity of the title of Acts of the General Assembly also govern the validity of the titles of Baltimore City ordinances. See Constitution of Maryland, Article 3, Sec. 29 and Baltimore City Charter (1946); Everstine, Legislative Titles, 9 Md. Law Rev. 197, at 244, and cases cited in note 137. The appellants rely upon Nutwell v. Anne Arundel Co., 110 Md. 667, 73 A. 710, in which the title of an act indicated that all owners of vehicles using the public streets or roads were to be required to have licenses therefor, but the body of the Act exempted numerous kinds of vehicles and granted an exemption from other taxes on vehicles for which a license was required. The title was held misleading and invalid because of each of these departures of the body of the Act from what the title indicated. It is interesting to note that the Act also purported to grant reciprocal exemptions to holders of County licenses and to the holders of similar licenses issued by the City of Annapolis. This exception is not mentioned in the opinion and therefore would not seem to have been even suggested as a ground of invalidity of the title. We find nothing misleading in the title of the Ordinance here under attack. Certainly the mere existence of an exception would not make it so. See Mt. Vernon Co. v. Frankfort Co., 111 Md. 561, 75 A. 105, in which the title of an Act amending a provision of the Code of Public General Laws made no reference to the fact that the body of the Act exempted certain counties from its operation. In the present case the first few lines of the title show that the Ordinance is not intended to be all-inclusive by describing it as An ordinance providing that certain contracts of the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore shall contain provisions relative to the number of hours constituting a day's work for, and the minimum rate of wages to be paid to, certain employees of contractors and sub-contractors   . (Italics ours.) Certain, though not infrequently of rather indefinite significance, surely does not mean all. Even if there were any apparent defect in the title of the Ordinance, we note that since its enactment the Ordinance has been included in the Baltimore City Code of 1950 as Sections 14-21, inclusive, of Article 1. Any deficiency in the title would thereby have been cured. Jones v. State, 207 Md. 481, 115 A.2d 273, and cases therein cited. We find the appellants' contention that the Ordinance is invalid because of a defective title is not tenable.