Court Opinion

ID: 9545399
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:11:19.18109+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:14:40.911832
License: Public Domain

PlERRON, J.,
dissenting: I respectfully dissent. The statutes of Kansas contain many provisions requiring a person with criminal convictions to disclose that information. This is not specifically required of a person selling securities. Given that the legislature ob*267viously knows how to write in this requirement, a court inserting it into a criminal statute is not appropriate.
After a business goes under, there may be many things that investors, in retrospect, may feel they should have asked about. The difficulty with the State’s interpretation of the criminal statute in question is that one cannot determine from reading it that there is a requirement to disclose, without request, a criminal record. A fair reading seems to require disclosures about the business itself, not the personal background of the sellers.
One might wonder if an investor may, in the future, be able to support a criminal prosecution for the failure of a seller of securities to reveal a past bankruptcy, difficulty with alcohol, or tumultuous marital history, or for some other subjective interest of the investor that was not asked about.
The legislature could certainly require a provision of the kind suggested here. But the usual rules of criminal statutory interpretation would not seem to support the finding of that requirement in this statute.