Court Opinion

ID: 9696087
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 18:35:58.04297+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:18.344389
License: Public Domain

William J. Brennan, Jr., J.
(dissenting in part). I dissent from the affirmance of the judgment as it relates to the State’s cross-appeal. I think that the escheat of the stock should include therewith the dividends thereon declared within 14 years. Dividends on stock, whether declared before or within the 14-year period, are “accretions” in statutory contemplation. The majority, conceding this, and also conceding that “The Legislature could have provided for the escheat of dividends declared within 14 years,” nevertheless holds that N. J. 8. A. 2:35-15 is to be read as constituting “accretions” as an item in the catalog of escheatable items “separate and distinct from the property upon which it is an 'accretion,’” and that the condition to an escheat that the personal property “shall be and remain unclaimed for the period of fourteen successive years” is therefore applicable to an accretion. I cannot agree. The majority view is tenable only if we are to admit the existence of a redundancy in the statute. The clause immediately, preceding the reference to accretions is “and every other kind of tangible or intangible property,” which, accepting the majority interpretation, is embracive of accretions in existence over 14 years and would make wholly empty of significance the added “and accretions thereon.” We should'strive wherever possible to give substance and meaning to every word in a statute. That can readily be done here by reading the statute as it is clear to me the Legislature intended it to be read, that is, as saying that “stocks, bonds, deposits, machinery, farm crops, livestock, fixtures and every other kind *50of tangible or intangible property” shall be escheatable if unclaimed for the period of 14 successive years, in which case, not the property alone, but as well “the accretions thereon” in existence at “the time of the filing of the bill of escheat,” and without regard to the time when such accretions came into existence, are to be escheated with and as part of the property.
The impractical consequences which result under the majority’s interpretation are illustrated by what is happening in this case. The stock goes over to the State under the judgment. Dividends declared as long ago as 1901 were unclaimed upon some of it. But only the dividends declared to 1934 escheat under the judgment. Those declared and unclaimed from 1934 to the time of the filing of the bill of escheat in 1948 remain with the custodian. The State and the parties must be put to the expense of further litigation (the State must decide whether to bring one action after the 14 years have elapsed as to the dividend last declared, or to bring several as the time runs as to one or some of them), and to what purpose? None suggests itself. In the absence of a very plainly indicated legislative intent to bring about this undesirable result we should not interpret the statute to produce it. I am convinced that not only is such intention not to be found in the language of the statute but that on the contrary the Legislature has plainly evinced its desire to avoid it.
The Chief Justice and Justice Jacobs join in this dissent.
For affirmance — -Justices Heher, Oliphant, Wachenfeld and Burling — 4.
For modification — Chief Justice Vanderbilt, and Justices Jacobs and Brennan- — 3.