Opinion ID: 1905859
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: History of the Statute.

Text: Because each party claims that the history of the statute favors the construction which it presses, we begin our analysis with that subject. The predecessor to § 279.24 was enacted in 1862, as chapter 172, § 27 of the Acts and Resolutions of the Ninth General Assembly. [4] In that act, the critical language was or for any other sufficient cause. . . . Defendant points out the subsequent deletion of the word other in the evolution of the phrase which eventually became any good cause. It argues that other might formerly have acted as a limitation on the word any, but that its deletion indicates an intention to read the present phrase broadly by giving an open-ended construction to the word any. See, e. g., Day v. Mill Owners' Mutual Fire Ins. Co., 70 Iowa 710, 713, 29 N.W. 443, 445 (1886). The statutory history, however, lends no support for such a reading. The deletion of other occurred in 1897. Compare § 1734, The Code 1873, with § 2782, The Code 1897. The enactment of the Code of 1897 followed extensive study of the Code of 1873, and the promulgation of The Proposed Revision of the Code of Iowa in 1895 by the Code Commission. See Loth, An Outline of Iowa Codes, Compilations and Revisions, 3 Iowa Code Ann. VII, XIV-XVI (West 1967). The basic language which is now § 279.24 was found in Title XIII, chapter 14, § 19(7) of the proposed revision. Accompanying the proposed revision was the Report of the Code Commission. That report, at page 80, states that chapter 14 was rearranged and largely rewritten for the purposes of methodical arrangement and concise statement.. . . A discussion of the changes incorporated into § 19 occurs at page 81, but noticeably absent is any mention of an intent for § 19(7) to effect any change in prior law. See also Report of the Code Commission at 3-4 (It must be distinctly understood that a change of language does not necessarily indicate any intention to change the meaning of the law. The Commission is authorized to rewrite the sections of the Code and statutes for the purpose of improving the expression of the law and it has faithfully done so. . . .). The significance of this history is this: we should attach little importance to deletion of the other. Further, we are better assured that the cases from other states which construe statutes containing that word are of some aid to us.