Court Opinion

ID: 9753171
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 19:01:53.07696+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:30.107457
License: Public Domain

Heher, J.
(dissenting). The indictments charge that Closter Village, Inc. and Stoldt, Low and Antovel, “they, then being officers and directors” of the corporation, “being then and there contractors,” “as such did enter into a contract” with another “for the construction of a certain dwelling house upon certain lands known as Lot 11, Block 284 on ‘Map of Closter Village, Section 2, Closter, Bergen County, N. J.’ ” (presumably lands of the corporation, yet there is no direct allegation of ownership), and “did receive” from such person, “purchaser under said contract,” a given sum of money “for the. purpose of paying all claims due or to become due and owing from them the said contractors, for labor and materials incident to the construction of the dwelling house aforesaid, but despite the specific purpose” for which the money “was placed in their hands,” it was appropriated to other purposes in violation of the “trust” created by B. S. 2:124 — 16, now N. J. S. 2A :102-10.
But this was a contract of purchase pure and simple, unperformed no doubt because of the insolvency of the corporate land developer; and the purchaser was not as such “the owner or mortgagor of real estate or any leasehold or other interest therein” for whom a “building” was “being erected, constructed, completed, altered, repaired” or added to. The “interest,” whatever it- was and however it may be termed, arose- from the contract of sale and purchase itself and the payment of the allegedly misappropriated money. There was no prior interest.
The court holds that the “vendee under a contract for the purchase of real estate is the owner of an interest in such property,” citing Palisade Gardens v. Grosch, 120 N. J. Eq. 294 (Ch.1936), affirmed 121 N. J. Eq. 240 (E. & A. 1937), and Haughwout and Pomeroy v. Murphy, 22 N. J. Eq. 531 *189(E. & A. 1871). But those cases concern a rule of equity, not of law; and we are here dealing with a highly penal statute that cannot be extended by importing into its definitive terms the purely equitable doctrine of conversion that “upon an agreement for the sale of lands, the contract is regarded, for most purposes, as if specifically executed. The purchaser becomes the equitable owner of the lands, and the vendor of the purchase money. After the contract, the vendor is the trustee of the legal estate for the vendee.” Haughwout and Pomeroy v. Murphy,. supra. A contract of sale is not a deed transferring title to the land; a contract of sale and purchase has in view the later execution of a deed conveying the title. We have here a mere executory contract to convey.
The deletion of the phrase “or any leasehold, or other interest therein” from the subsequent revision of the Crimes Act, N. J. S. 2A :102-10, effective January 1, 1952, cannot, I submit, be dismissed as simply a “clarification” and “elimination” of the “obsolete,” and “clearly surplusage under (the) definition” of the term “real estate” contained in R. S. 1937, 1 :l-2, as amended by L. 1948, p. 47, L. 1953, p. 18, as including “lands, tenements and hereditaments and all rights thereto and interests therein.” This is but the general definition of the term applicable “unless it be otherwise expressly provided or there is something in the subject or context repugnant to such construction.” Certainly, this general interpretive rule cannot be invoked to enlarge the category of crime denounced by the self-contained section 2A :102-10 of the Crimes Act. And it does not have in view a mere equitable interest represented by the doctrine of conversion.
It is well to remember here the cardinal rule that penal statutes are to be construed strictly against the State and favorably to the liberty of the citizen. Statutes creating and defining crimes cannot be extended by intendment. Purely statutory offenses cannot be established by implication. Before one can be punished criminally, his act must be plainly and rrnmistakably within the statute. United States v. Resnick, 299 U. S. 207, 57 S. Ct. 126, 81 L. Ed. *190127 (1936); Todd v. United States, 158 U. S. 278, 15 S. Ct. 889, 39 L. Ed. 982 (1895).
The standards of certainty in statutes “punishing for offenses is higher than in those depending primarily upon civil sanctions for enforcement”; the crime “must be defined with appropriate definiteness”; there must be “ascertainable standards of guilt”; “Men of common intelligence cannot be required to guess at the meaning of the enactment”; and the vagueness may be from “uncertainty in regard to persons within the scope of the act, or in regard to the applicable tests to ascertain guilt.” Winters v. People of State of New York, 333 U. S. 507, 68 S. Ct. 665, 92 L. Ed. 840 (1948).
Definiteness in criminal legislation has its roots in the common law and in the due process clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. Judicial “enlargement of a criminal act by interpretation is at war with a fundamental concept of the common law that crimes must be defined with appropriate definiteness”; while the act should be interpreted “so as * * * to give full effect to its plain terms,” there can be no departure from “its words and context.” Pierce v. United States, 314 U. S. 306, 62 S. Ct. 237, 86 L. Ed. 226 (1941). Compare Jordan v. De George, 341 U. S. 223, 71 S. Ct. 703, 95 L. Ed. 886 (1951); also United States v. Cardiff, 344 U. S. 174, 73 S. Ct. 189, 97 L. Ed. 200 (1952); Musser v. State of Utah, 333 U. S. 95, 68 S. Ct. 397, 92 L. Ed. 562 (1948).
And doubt as to the meaning of the statute is to be resolved against the State; the terms are to be understood in the narrower sense unaided by the strictly equitable doctrine of conversion.
Does not the excision from the current revision, N. J. S. 2A :102-10, of the phrase “or any leasehold or other interest therein” suggest legislative awareness of the vice of generality in the terms, so much so as to have in major part no determinate meaning? At all events, the statute was thereby limited in its trust concept to moneys received by a “contractor” from the “owner or mortgagee” of real estate; and thus the class was specifically confined to the owners and mortgagees *191of real estate. There is no indication of a purpose to include contracts of sale and purchase, by borrowing the equitable doctrine of conversion. And this would seem to serve as a legislative exposition of the true sense and significance of the earlier terms. The words cannot be enlarged beyond their clear import. United States v. Besnich, supra. The scope of criminal statutes should not be extended to conduct not clearly within their terms. United States v. Williams, 341 U. S. 70, 71 S. Ct. 581, 95 L. Ed. 758 (1951).
As to the two indictments for conversion, neither the corporation nor its named officers were in this factual context the “agents” of the vendee “entrusted with the care” of the particular moneys paid to the vendor corporation under the contract of purchase and sale within the intendment of B. S. 2:124r-ll, and so they cannot be criminally answerable for the fraudulent conversion so laid to them. Since it is conceded that they have no other basis, I would vacate these indictments as groundless in fact.
I would reverse the order under review and remand the cause with direction to quash the indictments.
For affirmance — Chief Justice Vanderbilt, and Justices Oliphant, Wachenfeld, Burling, Jacobs and Brennan— 6.
For reversal — Justice Heher- — 1.