Court Opinion

ID: 9761102
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 01:31:44.075938+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:20.124063
License: Public Domain

George Rose Smith, Justice, dissenting. The statute in question was undoubtedly passed to provide farmers with additional protection against improvident or dishonest grain warehousemen, but the majority’s narrow interpretation of the act has deprived Wright and other farmers of the protection that was intended. We must assume that the legislature was familiar with the evil it was trying to correct. When I look at the facts which gave rise to the enactment of the statute, facts which the majority have quite properly omitted in stating their views, I am convinced that the act had a remedial purpose and should be liberally construed to achieve that purpose. According to the proof, 98% of the public grain warehousemen in Arkansas are primarily engaged in buying and selling grain, not in storing it. Harrisburg Elevators, for example, bought 140,000 bushels of soybeans in January and February, 1983, the month pertinent here, but it had only about 7,000 bushels in storage. The average farmer does not have the tractor-trailers and equipment necessary for him to sell and deliver his own crop. Consequently he is compelled, as Wright was compelled, to sell his crop to a grain warehouseman. In that situation the application of the statute is clear.: Ownership of grain shall not change by reason of an owner delivering grain to a public grain warehouseman, and no public grain warehouseman shall sell or encumber any grain within his possession unless the owner of the grain has by written document transferred title of the grain to the warehouseman. The act declares that title shall not pass by the farmer’s “delivering” his grain to a public warehouseman, but the majority hold that the legislators really meant to say “delivering for storage.” Why? Most grain is not delivered for storage. The farmer who does deliver his crop for storage, a comparatively rare transaction, has scant need for the new statute. He receives a warehouse receipt for his grain, and if the warehouseman cannot honor the receipt the farmer is protected by the warehouseman’s surety bond, required by law. Futhermore, the farmer who merely stores his grain still owns it. There is not the slightest reason for him to transfer title to the warehouseman by written document, as the same sentence in the act contemplates. To the contrary, he does not intend to pass title when he stores his crop. Yet, as the majority interpret the statue, he must make a written . transfer of title to obtain the protection intended by the act. All that Harrisburg had to do in buying Wright’s crop was to have him sign any piece of paper transferring title. It was Harrisburg, knowledgeable in the business, who was at fault, not Wright. But it is Wright who suffers the consequences. I would construe the statute to give effect to the purpose for which it was passed. I agree that the j udgment should be reversed as to the bonding company, but I would affirm on the principal issue. Dudley, J., joins in this dissent.