Opinion ID: 1677203
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Barrett v. Metropolitan Government

Text: Over the course of eleven months from April 1995 to March 1996, the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County (Metropolitan Government) served five civil warrants on the appellant, Frank Barrett, alleging various violations of Title 16 of the Metropolitan Code of Laws. More specifically, three of these warrants charged that the appellant, who is the sole owner of a business that installs prepared roof coverings, failed to obtain necessary building permits before replacing several roofs. One other warrant alleged that he improperly installed roof underlayment, and the final warrant alleged that he failed to comply with a stop-work order. [9] A single hearing on each of these five warrants was held before the General Sessions Court for Davidson County on February 20, 1998. At this hearing, the Metropolitan Government sought the maximum assessment of five hundred dollars for each violation, as is permitted by current Code of Laws section 16.04.172(A). After hearing testimony and arguments of counsel, the general sessions court found by clear and convincing evidence that the defendant [was] guilty of the charges as set out, and it imposed a fine of five hundred dollars, plus court costs, for the violation of each warrant. Prior to this hearing, the appellant unsuccessfully demanded a jury trial, and he specifically declined to waive any rights under Article VI, section 14 of the Tennessee Constitution. Thereafter, the appellant sought and obtained a writ of certiorari from the Davidson County Circuit Court to review whether the general sessions court had exceeded its jurisdiction by imposing fines in excess of fifty dollars. The Circuit Court found that the general sessions court had in fact exceeded its jurisdiction, and it based this finding in large part on the particular terminology used by the Code of Laws to label the penalties imposed for violations: The Court finds that it must place some validity in the Council's choice of words. The very foundation or the basics of statutory construction mandate that a court must pay attention to the plain meaning of what a legislative body says. . . . The Court recognizes that there is a distinction between the use of the word, penalty, in the law, and the use of the word, fine. The Metropolitan Council, the legislative body here in the Metropolitan Government, for whatever reason, chose to use the word, fine. The Court thinks that they are bound by that choice. The Metropolitan Government appealed this finding to the Court of Appeals. The intermediate court reversed the circuit court, concluding that the label attached to the assessment was immaterial to whether an assessment was within the scope of Article VI, section 14. Instead, the court held that because proceedings to recover fines for the violation of a municipal ordinance have largely been considered to be in the nature of a civil debt, no assessment arising out of these proceedings could be subject to limitation by the Fifty-Dollar Fines Clause. The court was also of the opinion that Barrett could have avoided this issue had he appealed the judgment of the general sessions courtinstead of proceeding by writ of certiorari-for trial de novo before a jury. We then granted Barrett's application for permission to appeal on the sole issue of whether the assessments by the Davidson County General Sessions Court were fines within the meaning of Article VI, section 14. This case was consolidated for argument with City of Chattanooga v. Davis, in which we also granted permission to appeal on the remaining issues addressed by the Court of Appeals. [10] For the reasons given herein, we hold that proceedings involving the violation of a municipal ordinance may be subject to the limitations of Article VI, section 14 when either the intended purpose or the actual purpose or effect of the monetary assessment is to serve as a punitive measure. With respect to Davis's case, we further hold that the three-hundred dollar assessment was intended to serve as a punitive sanction and that his fine must be reduced to fifty dollars. With regard to Barrett's case, we hold that the actual purpose and effect of these sanctions were to punish the violations of the Code of Laws and that these five fines must also be reduced to fifty dollars each. Therefore, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed as modified in Davis's case, and the judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed in Barrett's case. With respect to the remaining issues in Davis's case, we find that none warrants judicial relief, and we affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals, as modified herein.
The common issue presented by both Davis and Barrett is whether a monetary assessment imposed for the violation of a municipal ordinance is subject to the provisions of Article VI, section 14 of the Tennessee Constitution. Although we have had several previous opportunities to examine the Fifty-Dollar Fines Clause in its various aspects, we have yet to analyze its effect within the specific context of a proceeding for a municipal ordinance violation. Therefore, because this is an issue of first impression for this Court, it is perhaps helpful to first examine the historical background of this important constitutional provision.
Article VI, section 14 is unique in the whole of American constitutional law, and no other provision like it may be found either in the Federal Constitution or in any other modern state constitution. Although this provision dates to our first Constitution signed in Knoxville in February 1796, we know little else about its origin. Similar clauses did not appear in any colonial charter, in any early state constitution, including the 1776 North Carolina Constitution, or in the Constitution of the State of Franklin. [11] Instead, as the Journal of the 1796 Constitutional Convention reveals, the Fifty-Dollar Fines Clause made its first appearance in the jurisprudence of this state on Saturday, January 30, 1796, when it was appended to a proposed draft constitution as section 9 of the article governing the judiciary. As originally proposed, this provision read: No fine shall be laid on any citizen of this state, that shall exceed fifty dollars, unless it shall be assessed by a jury of his peers, who shall assess the fine at the time they find the fact. Tenn. Const. art. V, § 9 (1796 draft). Though the Journal of the 1796 Convention was not kept as a verbatim record of the proceedings, no discussion or debate concerning the draft of this clause is evident. Indeed, the final provision issuing from the Convention was precisely the same as that initially proposed, except that it was amended at some point to add a final clause, if they [the jury] think the fine ought to be more than fifty dollars. Tenn. Const. art. V, § 11 (1796). [12] During the summer of 1834, sixty delegates met in Nashville for the purpose of revising and amending the Constitution, which had remained unaltered for nearly four decades. A provision identical to Article V, section 11 of the 1796 Constitution was reported to the Committee of the Whole on July 25 for consideration, and this provision was considered by the Convention on August 6. In stark contrast to virtually every other provision governing the judiciary, the Fifty-Dollar Fines Clause received scant attention. Although one amendment was proposed by William Ledbetter of Rutherford Countythe addition of a final sentence, [a]nd if the defendant shall submit, it shall not prevent the court from empaneling a jury instanter to assess the fine if it should seem proper to said courtit was defeated, and the Convention adopted the provision as originally proposed. In its final form, the Fifty-Dollar Fines Clause appeared in Article VI, section 14 of the new Constitution, with only two non-substantive changes to its former text: (1) the capitalization of State in the first clause of the provision, and (2) the syntactical amendment of the final clause to read, if they think the fine should be over fifty dollars. (emphasis added). Following the War Between the States, Tennessee entered its present constitutional period following another major convention held in Nashville during the winter of 1870. Given its unobtrusive history, it is perhaps not surprising that Article VI, section 14 was readopted without any recorded debate or proposed amendment. Although the Standing Committee on the Judiciary proposed many revisions to Article VI in its report to the Convention, the 1870 Journal records that neither the majority nor the minority reports from that committee advised changing any part of section 14. When the Convention considered this provision on February 4, the Journal merely reports, again in stark contrast to the other provisions of Article VI, that Section 14 was adopted as recommended by the [Judiciary] Committee. Consequently, the Fifty-Dollar Fines Clause emerged from the 1870 Convention in a form identical to that ratified earlier in March 1835, save only minor changes in its punctuation, and it has remained unchanged to this day. Interestingly, prior to the current constitutional period beginning in 1870, no case construed or discussed the substantive import of the Fifty-Dollar Fines Clause. In 1873, this Court first noted that Article VI, section 14 is manifestly an amplification of the provisions contained in [section] 16, [article] 1, against the imposition of excessive fines. France v. State, 65 Tenn. (6 Baxt.) 478, 485 (1873); see also State v. Bryant, 805 S.W.2d 762, 767 (Tenn.1991). Since then, this Court has further recognized that the intent behind limiting the ability to lay fines was to prevent judges from imposing unreasonable fines, and to prevent confiscation of the citizen's substance under the guise of a statute applied by a judicial tribunal. Upchurch v. State, 153 Tenn. 198, 205, 281 S.W. 462, 464 (1926); see also State v. Martin, 940 S.W.2d 567, 570 (Tenn.1997). Indeed, as this Court observed in Poindexter v. State, 137 Tenn. 386, 393, 193 S.W. 126, 128 (1917), [w]ere it not for section 14 of article 6 of the Constitution, an impecunious defendant upon whom a large fine had been imposed might be imprisoned for years at the will of the judge alone who tried him. Nevertheless, as this Court has acknowledged for nearly a century, the restriction on imposing fines contained in Article VI, section 14 does not prevent a court from imposing any monetary assessment in excess of fifty dollars. At the time that the 1796 Constitution was drafted and ratified, the term fine was understood to mean a payment to a sovereign as punishment for some offense, see Browning-Ferris Industries of Vt., Inc. v. Kelco Disposal, 492 U.S. 257, 265, 109 S.Ct. 2909, 106 L.Ed.2d 219 (1989), [13] and as we held long ago in Poindexter , Article VI, section 14 does not apply to assessments greater than fifty dollars when the assessment is not punitive in nature. To that end, Article VI, section 14 has not stood as a bar to the imposition of non-punitive measures, such as requiring a defendant to execute a $240 bond to secure child support payments, see Poindexter, 137 Tenn. at 396-97, 193 S.W. at 128, or requiring that a defendant make monthly support payments of sixty dollars, see Abbott v. State, 190 Tenn. 702, 704, 231 S.W.2d 355, 356 (1950).
Given that Article VI, section 14 has been held to make a substantive distinction between punitive and non-punitive assessments, a significant question has been presented as to whether the Fifty-Dollar Fines Clause applies to sanctions imposed for the violation of a municipal ordinance. Both panels of the Court of Appeals in these two cases believed that Article VI, section 14 does not apply to proceedings for municipal ordinance violations because these proceedings are usually considered to be civil in nature. This view is not without some support, and as even a brief review of the case law reveals, much ink has been spilled, in literally scores of cases, to delineate the precise nature and object of municipal court proceedings. Since our decision in City of Chattanooga v. Myers, 787 S.W.2d 921 (Tenn.1990), the law now appears settled that proceedings for a municipal ordinance violation are civil in nature, at least in terms of technical application of procedure and for pursuing avenues of appeal. Outside technical procedure and appeal, however, substantial conflict may still be found as to the characterization of the substantive nature of the proceeding. Indeed, depending upon the precise issue before the particular court, proceedings for a municipal ordinance violation have been described as civil in character, City of Memphis v. Smythe, 104 Tenn. 702, 703, 58 S.W. 215, 215 (1900); as partak[ing] more or less of a civil wrong, Hill v. State ex rel. Phillips, 216 Tenn. 503, 507, 392 S.W.2d 950, 952 (1965); as partly criminal, O'Haver v. Montgomery, 120 Tenn. 448, 460, 111 S.W. 449, 452 (1908); and as criminal rather than civil in substance, Metropolitan Gov't v. Miles, 524 S.W.2d 656, 660 (Tenn.1975). Despite these numerous and varying characterizations, however, the opinions of both panels below relied heavily upon O'Dell v. City of Knoxville, 54 Tenn.App. 59, 388 S.W.2d 150 (1964), which represents the only reported case that has directly addressed the effect of Article VI, section 14 upon proceedings involving a municipal ordinance violation. In O'Dell, the defendant was convicted of driving while under the influence of an intoxicant and was fined one hundred dollars by the Knoxville municipal court. Following an unsuccessful challenge to the fine in the Knox County Circuit Court as violative of Article VI, section 14, the defendant filed a direct appeal to this Court. We held that because civil practice governs proceedings for a municipal ordinance violation in terms of procedure and appeal, jurisdiction for the direct appeal was more properly with the Court of Appeals. See O'Dell v. City of Knoxville, 214 Tenn. 237, 240, 379 S.W.2d 756, 758 (1964). We then transferred the case by order to the intermediate court. Before the Court of Appeals, the defendant again challenged the one-hundred dollar fine as violative of Article VI, section 14, but the intermediate court disagreed for two reasons. First, the court believed that because the Knoxville city ordinance itself characterized its sanction for driving-under-the-influence as a penalty, and not as a fine, the limitations of Article VI, section 14 simply did not apply. See O'Dell, 54 Tenn.App. at 63, 388 S.W.2d at 152. Second, it reasoned that because a proceeding for the violation of a municipal ordinance has long been held to be a civil action, no criminal sanction could have been imposed, and hence, the constitutional limitation on fines was inapplicable. See id. at 64, 388 S.W.2d at 152. Consequently, the O'Dell court upheld the one-hundred dollar fine as imposed. Although both panels of the Court of Appeals in the cases now before us believed that O'Dell was unwavering in its conclusion that Article VI, section 14 could not apply to proceedings involving a municipal ordinance violation, a closer examination of the rationales employed by the O'Dell Court reveals that its analysis of this issue is severely flawed. First, and without question, the precise name given to the sanction is hardly determinative of its substantive purpose or effect, and this method of constitutional interpretation is simply inadequate to properly resolve the question before us today. As the Bard of `Avon classically and eloquently expressed the sentiment, What's in a name? that which we call a rose, By any other name would smell as sweet. Romeo and Juliet, act II, scene ii. Indeed, if one needed only to change the appellation of a constitutional protection in order to avoid its use as a shield against the power of the State, one could scarcely imagine that any safeguard of liberty would be worth its recitation in a written constitution. Second, the O'Dell court exalted technical form over constitutional substance in a manner rarely seen elsewhere. By holding that punitive sanctions, such as fines, can never be imposed in a civil action, the O'Dell Court essentially accorded definitive constitutional significance to the title given a legal proceeding when conducting analysis under Article VI, section 14. Since O'Dell, courts throughout the land have routinely condemned this method of constitutional analysis, and we expressly rejected it in Metropolitan Government v. Miles, 524 S.W.2d 656 (Tenn.1975), when we stated that [p]recious constitutional rights cannot be diminished or whittled away by the device of changing names of tribunals or modifying the nomenclature of legal proceedings. The test must be the nature and the essence of the proceeding rather than its title. Id. at 659 (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). [14] Although the intended character of the proceeding may be relevant to the nature of a sanction imposed in that proceeding, the O'Dell Court was plainly misguided to the extent that it believed a court could not impose a punitive sanction in a civil action. As the United States Supreme Court has acknowledged, The notion of punishment, as we commonly understand it, cuts across the division between the civil and the criminal law. It is commonly understood that civil proceedings may advance punitive as well as remedial goals, and, conversely, that both punitive and remedial goals may be served by criminal penalties. Austin v. United States, 509 U.S. 602, 610, 113 S.Ct. 2801, 125 L.Ed.2d 488 (1993) (citations and quotations omitted). Moreover, O'Dell 's rationale has been substantially, if not entirely, abrogated by our recognition that civil proceedings may impose sanctions that are so punitive in form and effect as to trigger constitutional protections. See Stuart v. State Dept. of Safety, 963 S.W.2d 28, 33 (Tenn.1998). Indeed, in the specific context of a civil proceeding for a municipal ordinance violation, this Court has held that the imposition of a pecuniary sanction triggers the protections of the double jeopardy clause to prevent a second punishment in the state courts for the same offense. See Miles, 524 S.W.2d at 660 (We hold that the imposition of a fine is punishment. (emphasis in original)). When examined in this light, it is clear that O'Dell does not represent an accurate statement of the law regarding application of the Fifty-Dollar Fines Clause. Therefore, to the extent that O'Dell compels the conclusion that proceedings involving municipal ordinance violations are outside the scope of Article VI, section 14, it is expressly overruled. Because Article VI, section 14 is concerned with the punitive purpose or effect of the sanctions imposed, the proper inquiry must be whether, despite the primary character of the proceeding, the purpose or effect of the monetary assessment is to further the goals of punishment. Accordingly, when analyzing issues touching upon the protections of Article VI, section 14, we will favor the substance of the sanction over its form, and we will not permit the language used to describe the particular sanction to govern the constitutional analysis. See State v. Martin, 940 S.W.2d 567, 570 (Tenn.1997). We also recognize that a fine within the meaning of Article VI, section 14 may be imposed in a proceeding that has been traditionally considered to be civil in nature, and although the nature of the proceeding in which the assessment is imposed may be relevant to some aspects of the inquiry, it cannot simply be the sole or determinative factor.
Because Article VI, section 14 applies to proceedings involving the violation of a municipal ordinance when the monetary sanction serves punitive goals, we must provide guidance as to how to properly determine the character of the assessment itself. From the outset, we acknowledge that only the rare case will admit of simple resolution, and these two cases in particular illustrate well the candid observation proffered by one scholar that [a] criminal fine and a civil fine do not, by the very act of their imposition, distinguish themselves. [15] Indeed, although distinguishing between punitive and non-punitive measures may have been a comparatively simple task in 1796, it has since become an increasingly complex undertaking. As the rise of the modern administrative state has obscured the line separating criminal and civil sanctions, many sanctions have become admittedly difficult to characterize as being in one class or the other. For example, many civil sanctions today seem designed, at least in part, to further some goals of punishment, and strict-liability criminal offenses aimed at protecting the public welfare are often cloaked with trappings that are traditionally associated with civil law. Nevertheless, despite the rigor and asperity of the task involved, Article VI, section 14 still commands that such a distinction be made.