Court Opinion

ID: 9851635
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:16:34.298931+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:22:09.551180
License: Public Domain

Miller, J.,
dissenting.
The object of Chapter 298, Acts of 1952, page 389, is to-restrict and regulate disposition of drugs, preparations or articles intended to prevent venereal disease or conception. By forbidding their sale in vending machines, the act prevents such clandestine and easy acquisition as might tend to encourage their promiscuous use. Thus the underlying and dominant purpose behind the legislation is to protect public health and morals.
The mandatory and explicit language of section 52 of the Constitution of Virginia is that “No law shall embrace more than one object, which shall be expressed in its title; * * # .” Yet notwithstanding that emphatic language, the title of this act really expresses no object. The vague and illusive declaration in the title that it is “An act to restrict the sale *635of certain commodities; to require certain permits, * * * ” and “to confer the rule making power upon the State Board of Pharmacy, * * * ” and other like assertions, conveys no intelligible information to the reader. Those words and phrases constitute mere language without meaning. The title certainly fails to apprise anyone of the object, purpose, intent or subject of the legislation. At no place in the title is there found the slightest reference to the true purpose of the act. There is no mention or indication that the act has to do with prophylactics, drugs, contraceptives, venereal disease, or the use of vending machines as a means of selling any goods. Nor does the title even indicate that the act is to protect public health or morals.
The purpose of constitutional provisions such as that embodied in section 52 is to prevent the legislators and the public from being misled, and to apprise them of the subject matter of the proposed legislation.
“ * * # The dominant objective of the provision is to insure the titling of legislative acts in a manner that will give reasonable notice of the purview to the members of the assembly, and to the public. * * * ” 1 Sutherland: Statutory Construction, sec. 1702, p. 287.
“ # * * The aim of the constitutional provision is to give information as to the subject of legislation with which the act deals, to apprise the members of the legislature, and the people, of the subject of legislation under consideration, or to challenge the attention of those affected by the act to its provisions, so that they may have an opportunity of being heard thereon if they so desire.” 50 Am. Tur., Statutes, sec. 166, p. 146.
“ * * * It has therefore been held that the title is sufficient if it is not productive of surprise and fraud, and is not calculated to mislead the legislature or the people, hut is of such character as fairly to apprise legislators, and the public in general, of the subject matter of the legislation, and of the interests that are or may be affected thereby, and to put any*636one having an interest in the subject matter on inquiry.” 50 Am. Jur., Statutes, sec. 167, p. 147.
“ * * * While it may be difficult to formulate a rule by which to determine the extent to which the title of a bill must specialize its object, it may be safely assumed that the title must not only embrace the subject of proposed legislation, but also express it clearly and fully enough to give 'notice of the legislative purpose. * * * ” 50 Am. Jur., Statutes, sec. 181, p. 161.
“While the title of a statute need not be an index to, or a synopsis of, its contents, it must set forth the subject of the statute with sufficient clearness to give notice of the legislative intent and purpose to those interested in, or affected by, the statute.” 82 C. J. S., Statutes, sec. 219, p. 364.
In 1889 when construing and stating the purpose of Article V, section 15, of our then Constitution, which embodied the same language as section 52 of our present Constitution, this court said:
“As to the constitutional provision in question, it is, as we have had occasion in a recent case to declare, not only mandatory, but of great public utility. It was introduced into the constitution for a wise purpose, and ought to be reasonably interpreted and firmly enforced. One of its objects is to prevent corrupt or surreptitious legislation by incorporating into a bill obnoxious provisions of which the tide gives no indication, and its requirement is that the title, while it need not be a complete index of the act, must indicate its object with sufficient distinctness to enable the members of the legislature to fairly understand it by simply hearing the title read. In other words, the title is not to be used as a deceptive cover for vicious legislation.” Fidelity Insurance, etc., Co., et al. v. Shenandoah Valley Railroad Co., et al., 86 Va. 1, 5, 9 S. E. 759.
The title now in question gives no notice to the public of the general subject dealt with, nor does it afford notice to the interests likely to be affected by the legislation. No member of the legislature could obtain the faintest idea of the *637object, purpose or contents of the act by reading the title.
Our constitutional provision does not merely require that only one object be “embraced” in the law, but it also requires that the object be “expressed” in the title. That, I take it, means that the title must fairly state the subject or include provisions related to the object or purpose of the act.
“ * * * It is sufficient if the title fairly expresses the subject, or is sufficiently comprehensive to include the several provisions relating to or connected with that subject.” Westgate v. Township of Adrian, 161 Mich. 333, 335, 126 N. W. 422, cited with approval in Southern Railway Co. v. Russell, 133 Va. 292, 303, 112 S. E. 700.
The majority opinion asserts that “While the title is general, it is evident that the Act relates to the regulation of the sale of certain commodities.” That is undoubtedly true. Yet the opinion, like the title, fails to tell me what object is expressed in the title, or to say how one may, by reading the title, be advised of the subject of the legislation.
“If a title totally fails to express the subject of an act, or if a title is misleading, the entire act is invalid. * * # ” 1 Sutherland: Statutory Construction, sec. 1708, p. 298.
Profit might be had from perusal of the title to a quite similar act passed some years ago in Kentucky and discussed in Markendorf v. Friedman, 280 Ky. 484, 133 S. W. (2d) 516. The title is:
“An Act relating to the sale, control and licensing of the sale of appliances, drugs and mechanical preparations intended or having special utility for the prevention of venereal diseases.” Kentucky Acts, 1938, C. 55, p. 387.
It may be true that the title to our act is not subject to the charge that it constitutes a cover for surreptitious legislation, for it really indicates nothing. The only thing that can be said in defense of the title is that its total lack of stated object, subject or purpose might arouse one’s curiosity to read the act and thus obtain the information that the Constitution says shall be given him in the title. Yet the possibility of arousing *638idle curiosity by failure to state or express the object is not compliance with the constitutional provision.
The fallacy that I find inherent in the majority opinion is that it does not recognize the distinction between what is meant by “embrace” and “expressed.”
The distinction in the meaning and effect of these words as used in a similar constitutional provision is clearly set out in Mayor, etc., of Jersey City v. Speer, 78 N. J. Law 34, 42, 72 A. 448, 451, affirmed in 79 N. J. Law 598, 76 A. 1037:
“ * # * The requirement as to its title is that the object of every act shall be ‘expressed’ therein, which is a very different matter from its being ‘embraced’ thereby, as has been frequently pointed out in our cases.
“ ‘It is not enough,’ said Beasley, C.J., in Rader v. Union Tp. Committee, 39 N. J. Law, 509, ‘that it [a title] embraces the legislative purpose. It must express it.’ ‘To confound what the title of an act expresses with what it embraces is to nullify the mandate of the Constitution.’ Griffith v. Trenton, 76 N. J. Law 23, 69 A. 29.
“ ‘It has been thoroughly settled,’ said Chancellor Magie in State v. Twining, 73 N. J. Law, 683, 64 Atl. 1073, 1135, ‘by repeated decisions of our courts, including the court of last resort, that to accord with this constitutional provision the title of every act must not only include, but must also express, its object.’ ”
Nothing stated in this title is indicative of or germane to the object, purpose, or contents of the body of the act, and thus it fails to meet the requirements of the Constitution.