Opinion ID: 2075955
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 17

Heading: The District's interpretation.

Text: According to the District, brief at 46, [e]ach failure of a holder to deliver each item of property is a breach of a duty under the Act. See [42-235(a)]. The Act considers each deposit and each official check as an individual item of abandoned property. See [§§ 42-206(a)] (any    deposit), [-206(b)] (a sum payable on any    written instrument). It follows that failure to deliver each deposit and each sum is a separate violation of the Act. The maximum penalty available under [§ 42-235] in this case is therefore several million dollars, based on a $1000 penalty for each withheld account and check. On the one hand, that amount might be excessive in this case because of the large number of accounts and checks Riggs kept (but not in light of the magnitude of Riggs' violation of the Act). On the other hand, if Riggs were able to withhold abandoned property as freely as it did, knowing that it can profit from income generated by that property beyond the statutory interest rate of 6%, D.C.Code § 28-3302(a), it would have a powerful incentive to violate the Act. The District's interpretation encounters textual difficulties. The opening words of the statute are [a]ny person who fails to (1) render any report or (2) perform any other duty under this chapter (parenthesized numerals added). The obligation to report is contained in Section 42-217, which contemplates a single report of all abandoned property held. The implementing Regulation provides that a holder must annually file a verified report ... even if only to indicate that they [sic] have no reportable items ... 9 DCMR § 3004.1 (1986) (emphasis added). It goes on to state that [i]n general, each report shall contain the information required by [Section 42-217]. Id. at § 3004.4. Failure to render a report thus appears to be a one-time violation, at least until the next reporting obligation the following year. The second potential trigger for liability for civil penalties is the failure to perform any other duty required under this chapter. The duty to which this phrase alludes is one that is different from the duty to render a report. Since the obligation to report apparently relates to the reporting at one time of all that is reportable, and in light of the structure of the section as a whole, it is unlikely the parallel allusion to any other duty was designed to be construed as authorizing the imposition of penalties on a per item basis. To make the point in a different way, suppose that a holder has 500 items to report and deliver. We think it makes little sense to rule that the failure to report them all is a single violation, but the failure to deliver them constitutes 500 violations, for a total of 501. There were either two violations or a thousand. In light of our construction of the duty to report as being a single one applying to all that is reportable at a given time, we interpret the phrase any other duty in a similar fashion. With respect to the duty to deliver, this approach is also consistent with Section 42-219, which requires the holder to deliver to the Mayor on a certain date all abandoned property specified in the report previously made pursuant to Section 42-217. Again, the statute apparently envisages a one-step act applicable to all that is deliverable. Moreover, Section 42-235(b) provides for a fine of no more than $300, or imprisonment for not more than ninety days, for willful refusals to report, pay, or deliver abandoned property. Surprisingly, the maximum monetary fine for a willful refusal to perform a statutory obligation is $300, while the maximum civil penalty for what may be an innocent failure to do so is $1,000. We think it obvious, in context, that the punishments authorized by Section 42-235(b) refer to a one-time failure to report, pay or deliver all abandoned property in one's possession. If the criminal provision were item-based, so that a violator could receive a separate sentence of imprisonment for ninety days for each official check or deposit which he willfully refused to report, pay, or deliver, then an officer of Riggs could receive several hundred years in prison for failure to report all of the items disputed in this case. That surely is not what the Council intended. It is improbable that one violation of Section 42-235(b) for purposes of criminal prosecution could constitute many hundreds of violations when civil penalties are being assessed. The practical consequences of the District's interpretation of the civil penalty provision are also startling. The District's audit of Riggs revealed that the bank had a total of 495 individual dormant accounts which it failed to deliver to the District in alleged violation of the UPA. Many of these accounts were very small; some were under ten dollars. In the absence of a clear statement of legislative intent, we will not ascribe to the Council the intention to make a failure to report for ten days or more an account having a value of five dollarsor even of fifty-five dollars [41] the basis for subjecting the holder to a mandatory civil penalty of $1,000, irrespective of the holder's good faith.