Court Opinion

ID: 9808980
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 20:57:21.724853+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:23:15.963262
License: Public Domain

PeaesoN, C. J.
dissenliente. The ruling, in Hill v. Kesler, that the words “any debt,” as used in the Constitution, embrace preexisting debts, as well as debts contracted after the adoption of the Constitution, certainly gives to the words their fullest extension. As to debts contracted afterwards, there was no difficulty, fox’, a man in giving credit could have an eve to the existing state of things. As to pre-existing debts, there was vei’y great difficulty. On the one hand, the prohibition of the Constitution of the United States, as to impairing the obligation of contracts — on the other, the necessity for relief, to a people who, by the loss of their slave property, and other consequences of the late disastrous war, wei’e unable to pay their debts, without being deprived of the means of subsistence. Upon this latter view of the question, there has been a wary general acquiescence, on the part of the profession and of the people, in the decision made, by a majority of the Court. Certainly there has been no desire on the part of the Courts of the State, to disturb Hill v. Kesler. After these “two little words” had been allowed to have so large an effect, taking them in one sense, the attempt to press them again into service, for a different field of action, and, in a sense entirely different, so as to make them embrace damages for tort, and injuries caused by misfeasance, does not, as it seerps to me, come with a very good grace. The ground of “a necessity for relief,” which was the main consideration in Hill v. Kesler, has no application and there is no context or subjunctive words which can have the effect to extend the naked meaning of the word “debt”— for instance, in the Constitution of the State of Ohio, after the words “any debt,” the words or “other liabilities” are super-added. Upon these latter words, the Court puts its construction, that the homestead is exempted from sale for damages *213assessed in actions for tori. There are no words to that effect, in the Constitution of the State of North Carolina, and the construction tons wholly upon the words “any debt,” unaided by considerations of necessity, or any collateral matter.
The ordinary meaning of the word “deb t,” is, a sum of money due to another by contract. The relation of debtor and creditor implies, as of course, that the one has given credit to, that is, trusted the other, in a contract.
It is true, the word debt is sometimes used in a broader sense. One pays a debt to nature when he dies ; he pays a debt to justice when he is hung for murder ; he pays a debt to the State, when fined for a misdemeanor; he pays a debt to the party injured by slander or other private wrong, when he satisfies the damages assessed by the jury.
I cannot bring my judgment, to the conclusion, that the word is used by the Constitution in this broad and figurative sense, To give it that construction, will carry the remedy beyond the mischief, and, instead of providing home and the means of subsistence for unfortunate debtors, by putting a certain amount of property beyond the reach of creditors, to meet a pressing necessity growing out of the consequences of the war, the effect of the construction will be, to grant impunity to wilful wrongs and injuries to private rights, without any special necessity caused by the war, and thus make a most important change of the law, in respect to the rights of person and rights of property, merely for the sake, of making a change. If, such was the purpose, every principle of construction, called for the use, of plain and unequivocal words to express the intention.
There is another view of the subject entitled to much weight. This change in the law, will in nine cases out of ten, take from the party injured all civil remedy for redress; he is not obliged to trust any one hereaíter, so as to become his creditor by contract, unless he may choose to do so, but, how can a man pre-rent another from uttering slander or seducing a daughter, or *214from instituting a malicious prosecution, if he has no mode of recovering damages ? The only way, to protect our good citizens from such injuries, would be, to provide a public remedy in the stead of the private remedy, by making all such injuries, indictable as misdemeanors. In the- absence of such a provision, the conclusion is forced upon me, that the Constitution did not mean to make so important a change, by which, every one is put at the mercy of the vicious and ill-disposed, and will be driven in the absence of all protection, either by indictment or by civil action which can be made effectual, to take the law, into his own hands.
RodmAN, Justice, concurs.