Court Opinion

ID: 9571000
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:28:20.558093+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:25:58.443029
License: Public Domain

REYNOLDSON, Justice
(dissenting).
The majority decision acknowledges our basic rule for construction of forfeiture., statutes, applied in State v. One (1) Certain 1969 Ford Van, 191 N.W.2d 662, 666 (Iowa 1971) :
“ [I]t is penal in its nature and must be strictly construed. Nothing can be read into it that is not plainly there.”
Even more recently, in State v. Kaufman, Iowa, 201 N.W.2d 722, 723 (Iowa 1972) we said, “[Forfeitures are not favored and forfeiture statutes should be strictly construed.”
But the majority invokes the exception to the above rule, that statutes are not to be construed so strictly as to defeat the “obvious” intention of the legislature.
I suggest it is not “obvious” that the legislature, by the use of the words “automobile or other vehicle,” intended to include an airplane. Such conclusion may be reached only by the most strained construction, and by reading into those words something not “plainly there.”
Etymologically it is possible to use “vehicle” to signify a conveyance working on land, water, and air, as Justice Holmes observed in McBoyle v. United States, 283 U.S. 25, 26, 51 S.Ct. 340, 75 L.Ed. 816, 818 (1931). But, as Holmes then pointed out, in everyday speech “vehicle” calls up the picture of a thing moving on land.
The majority answers this by reasoning that McBoyle was decided in 1931, and in current times reference has been made to moon exploration “space” vehicles, diluting the concept of an earthbound contrivance.
But no one contends the Iowa legislature at the time of this enactment intended “vehicle” to be given anything other than its ordinary meaning. The State concedes as much:
“During the period when this statute was drafted, early 1920’s, an automobile was the basic means of transportation while an airplane was only just developing for commercial transportation purposes. Consequently, people thought a vehicle consisted only of those ‘things’ which moved along the ground.” — State’s brief, page 8.
Such concession should have settled for this lawsuit what the legislature “obvi- - ously” intended in using the word “vehicle,” even though it is based on inaccurate legislative history.
Section 3161, The Code, 1924, provided for the forfeiture of “[a]ny animal-drawn or motor vehicle, or other conveyance of any kind.”
Section 2000, The Code, 1924 (now § 127.1, The Code, 1973) provided:
“The term ‘conveyance’ as used in this chapter [on seizure and sale of conveyance used to transport intoxicating liquors] shall embrace wagons, buggies, teams, automobiles, motor vehicles, water and air craft, and all other forms of conveyances except railway, street and interurban cars.”
Section 3161, The Code, 1924, along with other sections, was repealed by the Regular Session of the 47th General Assembly, Chapter 114, in 1937. No section on forfeiture of vehicles or conveyances was reenacted at that time. But in § 13 of that chapter the legislature did enact what became § 3169.13, The Code, 1939 (later § 204.13, The Code, 1971) relating to places *798resorted to for the purpose of using narcotic drugs. The 1937 legislature demonstrated beyond dispute it knew the difference between a vehicle and an airplane by use of the language, “Any store, shop, warehouse, dwelling house, building, vehicle, boat, aircraft, or any place whatever * * * shall be deemed a common nuisance.” (Emphasis added.)
Against this backdrop, four years later, with the above words in the same code chapter before it, the legislature selected the word “vehicle” in formulating a provision for the forfeiture of “[a]ny automobile or other vehicle.” Regular Session of the 49th General Assembly, Chapter 132, Section 1. This section, substantially unchanged, appeared at § 204.11(3), The Code, 1966, the section involved in the case at bar.
In 1971, the First Regular Session of the 64th General Assembly Chapter 148, repealed § 204.11 and enacted the present § 204.505. Section 204.505(1), The Code, 1973, provides for forfeiture of “[a] 11 raw materials, products and equipment of any kind which are used, or intended for use, in manufacturing, compounding, processing, delivering, importing, or exporting any controlled substance in violation of this chapter.” Section 204.505(8) provides: “Chapter 127 shall be applicable to conveyances used to transport or hold any controlled substance * * (Emphasis added.)
Thus the legislature went from the very general all-inclusive term, “conveyance,” to the more limited word, “vehicle,” then back to “conveyance.” When construing statutes the courts search for legislative intent as shown by what the legislature said, rather than what it should or might have said. Rule 344(f)(13), Rules of Civil Procedure. Since in 1947 the legislature said “automobile or other vehicle” rather than “conveyance” as it had said previously and has said subsequently, we must ascribe different meanings to the different words.
There is little logic in asserting the legislature used the words “vehicle” and “conveyance” interchangeably when, in the same code, conveyance was defined as embracing, separately, vehicles and aircraft. The legislature, with the choice before it, selected the more restrictive word.
Adopting majority’s rationale that the meaning of “vehicle” must nonetheless be expanded (in an era of space exploration) violates another basic rule of statutory construction. We have always held in construing a statute the court must consider the legislature’s intent at the time of its enactment. Cray v. Howard-Winneshiek Community Sch. Dist., 260 Iowa 465, 150 N.W.2d 84 (1967); State v. City of Council Bluffs, 230 Iowa 1109, 300 N.W. 264 (1941); Ballard-Hassett Co. v. Miller, 219 Iowa 1066, 260 N.W. 65 (1935).
Not only must majority’s conclusion require the fiction of enduing the 1947 enacting legislature with omnipotent and visionary foresight, it irretrievably falls into that error red-flagged by Justice Holmes:
“[I]t is reasonable that a fair warning should be given to the world in language that the common world will understand, of what the law intends to do if a certain line is passed. To make the warning fair, so far as possible the line should be clear. When a rule of conduct is laid down in words that evoke in the common mind only the picture of vehicles moving on land, the statute should not be extended to aircraft simply because it may seem to us that a similar policy applies, or upon the speculation that if the legislature had thought of it, very likely broader words would have been used.” (Emphasis added.)
—McBoyle, supra, 283 U.S. at 27, 51 S.Ct. at 341, 75 L.Ed. at 818-819.
A third rule of statutory construction is violated by majority’s opinion. It is the common-sense rule of associated words (noscitur a sociis), long recognized in our decisions. See Smith v. City of Fort *799Dodge, 160 N.W.2d 492, (Iowa 1968) and cases there cited. When two or more words are grouped together, and ordinarily have a similar meaning, but are not equally comprehensive, the general word will be limited and qualified by the special word. 2 Sutherland, Statutory Construction, § 4908, at p. 393 (3rd ed. 1943). Here the general word “vehicle” is qualified and limited by the special word “automobile,” a contrivance which travels on the ground. As thus limited, the word “vehicle” cannot embrace an airplane.
The difference between the etymological meaning and the man-on-the-street concept of “vehicle” has been recognized by almost all modern-day court decisions interpreting that word. First Bank and Trust Co. of Princeton, Ky. v. Feuquay, 405 F.2d 990 (6 Cir. 1969); In re Hayden’s Estate, 174 Kan. 140, 254 P.2d 813 (1953); Building Inspector of Falmouth v. Gingrass, 338 Mass. 274, 154 N.E.2d 896 (1959); Rich v. Finley, 325 Mass. 99, 89 N.E.2d 213 (1949); Byrd v. Piedmont Aviation, Inc., 256 N.C. 684, 124 S.E.2d 880 (1962); Marr v. American Flyers Airline Corporation, 443 P.2d 961 (Okl.l968); State v. Work, 75 Wash.2d 204, 449 P.2d 806 (1969); Newberger v. Pokrass, 27 Wis.2d 405, 134 N.W.2d 495 (1965); Gridley v. Cardenas, 3 Wis.2d 623, 89 N.W.2d 286 (1958).
The general holding is thus distilled in the annotation found at 165 A.L.R. 916:
“Although the result is always contingent on the particular wording involved, it has been almost invariably held, in the construction of statutes and regulations, that airplanes are not within the terms ‘vehicles,’ ‘motor vehicles,’ etc.”
Other supportive statements are found in the following authorities: 8 Am.Jur.2d, Aviation § 20, at p. 638 (“An airplane is in a class by itself. It has usually been held, in the absence of any express provision on the subject calling for a different conclusion, not to be within the terms ‘vehicle,’ ‘motor vehicle,’ ‘vessel,’ or the like.”); Ballentine’s Law Dictionary 1334 (3rd ed. 1969), (“The word [vehicle] is commonly understood as something which moves or runs on the land, not something that flies in the air, although etymologically the term might be considered as broad enough to cover a conveyance propelled in the air.”); 91 C.J.S., Vehicle, at p. 806 (“[I]n everyday speech ‘vehicle’ calls up the picture of a thing moving on land, and, accordingly, the term ordinarily is not applied to an aircraft * * * .”); 2 Funk & Wagnalls New Standard Dictionary of the English Language 2637 (1940) (“vehicle * * *, That in or on which anything is or may be carried; especially, a contrivance with wheels or runners for carrying something * * * ; specif., in law, any artificial contrivance used or capable of being used as a means of transportation on land.”).
The single supportive case relied on by the majority (United States v. One Pitcairn Biplane, 11 F.Supp. 24 [W.D.N.Y. 1935]), from the lowest federal court, has been cited only three times in its 38-year existence. It was cited in a dictum in South Mississippi Airways v. Chicago & South. Airlines, 200 Miss. 329, 26 So.2d 455 (1946), which held the Mississippi statutes had not recognized air transportation as falling within the jurisdiction of the state’s public service commission. It appears in Grace v. MacArthur, 170 F.Supp. 442 (E.D.Ark. 1959) on an entirely unrelated point. Finally, it was referred to in the annotation, 165 A.L.R. 916, 918, as “Apparently the only case in which an airplane was considered to be a ‘vehicle’ * * *
It is also significant that when the legislature set out to define “aircraft” in § 328.1, The Code, it was not defined in the terms of “vehicle”:
“ ‘Aircraft’ means any contrivance now known, or hereafter invented, used or designed for navigation of or flight in the air, for the purpose of transporting persons or property, or both.” (Emphasis added.)
There is nothing in the facts of this case, our statutes, or our decisions which justifies this court in departing from the reasoning of the overwhelming majority of *800jurisdictions which have considered the true import of the word “vehicle.” There is still less reason for this court to retreat from our rule requiring strict construction of forfeiture statutes even though, in a different context, interpreting a non-penal statute, a liberal approach might permit a different conclusion.
I would sustain the writ.