Court Opinion

ID: 9553291
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 19:27:14.361016+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:30:38.910044
License: Public Domain

HENRIOD, Chief Justice
(dissenting):
I dissent. The appellant says the Great Salt Lake Authority is 1) unconstitutional (a) because it does not define any territorial limits, (b) it is vague, and (c) takes private property without due process. I agree.
In our American system a person’s private property is supposed to be inviolable, unless the taking of it is urgent and for the commonweal, is designated with exactitude, and proven to be absolutely necessary by the highest type of evidence, backed by the highest type and clearest of legislation. None of these has been shown either in the stipulated facts of this case, nor the difficult-to-understand wording of a concedely poorly drawn, ambiguous statute, nor in what I believe are platitudes in the main opinion, irrelevant here.
The main opinion seems to me1 to be a constitutional ink eradicator that eliminates the apparently unwanted language penned by the framers of the constitution. . •
Let’s take 1) (a) above about not clearly defining the territory to be taken: neither the body of the act nor the Title clearly defines it. This point urged by appellant is sloughed off by the main opinion’s offering that “It is a cardinal rule of statutory construction that all parts of the enactment should be considered together so as to produce a harmonious whole and to give effect to the intent and purpose to be divined from the entire act.” It is submitted that the word “divined” could not have been used better since it means to guess, and that’s what the main opinion is doing, judicially to pre-empt objectivity as to popularity without facing up to the statute on the basis of legal principles.
The majority says that “Great Salt Lake and its environs” was the area intended over which the Great Salt Lake Authority was to have authority. Where is “Great Salt Lake and its environs” ? Are they at the present level of the lake or at that level extant at the time of the act, when it was more than four feet below the present level or according to a surveyed meander line? Does the Great Salt Lake Authority’s authority vary as to the lake’s rise and fall? If so, the act is unconstitutional for indefiniteness, *52since the territory easily could have been described by surveyed sections, or simple square mileage, irrespective of rise and fall of the lake’s level or its elusive "meander line,” — which to date has not been surveyed by the Surveyor General. There is 7.1% of the so-called “meander line” that remains unsurveyed. The rest of such so-called meander line has been surveyed piecemeal over many decades. The so-called “meander line” surveyed thusly many years ago, after the lake’s shrinkage to that of today, would represent a highly different boundary line and would represent thousands of erstwhile inundated land and a huge acre-feet area of disappeared water, representing two different boundaries.
If “meander line” is synonymous with “high water mark” as some say it is, it would be synonymous with Lake Bonneville. This would give the Great Salt Lake Authority authority to condemn the L. D. S. Temple, my house, which sits on one of Bonneville’s sand bars, and very likely that of the main opinion’s author. It would take in practically all of Utah and parts of Colorado and Nevada, before Miss Bonneville pulled stakes and took most of herself into the Pacific Ocean by a jailbreak near Preston, Idaho.
The main opinion says that conceding that the term “ ‘and its environs [gives] rise to some uncertainty * * * we can get help by looking to the title.” It concedes that we have said the title is not part of the act, but then says it can be used when the act is not clear. This is an admission that the act is not clear. If this concession is made, a man should not be stripped of his property by an act that is unclear, simply by looking at the title, which the main opinion says is not a part of the act. This is like saying one’s property may be taken under a confusing, concededly obfuscated act, if we can look to an editorial in a local newspaper to arrive at an unobjective objective.
The main opinion opines that “The fact in one small area1 * * * the meander line has not as yet been surveyed does not effect this conclusion. It is something that is susceptible of ascertainment.” This is a statement that would make any self-respecting lawyer go bald if he were examining the title to this property for a client wanting to buy it with assurance, that the title is clear, and tried to find out where the property is situated. When it is said that the area is “susceptible of ascertainment,” I think the main opinion should tell when and by what assurance. For much more than a half century the meander line has stumbled around like a drunken sailor who hasn’t reported yet to his ship. The act here contains a most peripatetic description, designed and devoted to eject a private property owner from his land, unparalleled since Tittlebat Titmouse. I think this court has *53no right judicially to legislate in order to accomplish such a ridiculous, unfair and unreasonable result.
When the main opinion says that all presumptions favor validity of the statute, it forgets that there is another and much stronger presumption, — almost a conclusive one, — -that an admittedly confusing, vague and indefinite statute being in derogation of taxpayers’ and property owners’ rights pre-empts the presumption favoring validity of the statute. Where the statute is confusing, vague and indefinite no presumption of any kind should he indulged. The statute should be held to he constitutionally offensive for that reason, where private property is proposed to he taken.
It is interesting to note the inconsistency of the present opinion, with that in Shields v. Toronto.2 In the latter case the language was crystal clear. The Constitutional provision said no member of the legislature could he elected to office if the emoluments of that office were increased during his term in office.3 The language there could not have been clearer. The fact is that the emoluments of the office sought were increased. Yet by what I believe was tortuous reasoning it was said in substance and effect that the language of the constitution interpreted broadly was not clear, and that a deviation from its terms did not violate it. In the instant case, the main opinion admits the language of the statute is confusing and uncertain, but now in reversion, says we will make it clear by the same sort of tortuous reasoning. The upshot: the court is judicially legislating, saying we will make a clear constitutional provision unclear, if we so choose, and will make an unclear statutory provision clear if we so choose.
I agree with the main opinion that the legislation, subject of this litigation, is no classic example of draftsmanship and is wanting in certainty. I certainly subscribe to the state’s amen thereto when counsel for the state said in argument that this act is not an example of careful legislative drafting, by no means has the clarity that is desired and that he was not in this court to defend it as an ideal clear-cut piece of legislation from a drafting standpoint. Both concede that the statute is not clear, joined by the main opinion. This being the case, there is no escape from the conclusion that all doubts should be resolved in favor of the property owner, and that the statute should he invalidated constitutionally on the grounds of uncertainty and vagueness.
This alone should be sufficient to reverse this case, although another cogent reason is that neither the Title of the act nor the body thereof clearly or even unclearly tells *54what the “objectives and purposes” of the act are.
The case should be reversed.

. Not so small, and not one, but two areas.

. 16 Utah 2d 61, 395 P.2d 829 (1964).

. Art. VI, § 7, Utah Constitution.