Court Opinion

ID: 9536329
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 06:57:39.067709+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:33:19.836456
License: Public Domain

DONALDSON, Justice
(dissenting and concurring in part).
I dissent from the majority opinion and concur with that portion of Judge Prather’s special concurring opinion which holds that by applying fundamental and well-established common law principles a cause of action is stated against a liquor vendor whose bartender in violation of a statute sells intoxicating liquor to an obviously in*404toxicated person under circumstances which should have warned the bartender that his sale would create an unreasonable risk and the subsequent acts of the intoxicated person results in injury to an innocent third person.
I dissent from that portion of Judge Prather’s opinion which holds that §§ 5 and 9 of Chapter 33, 1891 Session Laws which became a part of the Revised Codes of Idaho (1908), §§ 1511 and 1515 are still in full force and effect.
In view of Judge Prather’s extensive discussion and his conclusion that the enactment of the prohibition laws did not repeal §§ 1511 and 1515 of the Idaho Revised Codes it is necessary to review some general principles of statutory construction in detail. The basic rule was announced nearly one hundred years ago by Justice Stephan J. Field in United States v. Tynen:
“ * * * and even where two acts are not in express terms repugnant, yet if the latter act covers the whole subject of the first, and embraces new provisions, plainly showing that it was a substitute for the first act, it will operate as a repeal of that act.” United States v. Tynen, 78 U.S. (11 Wall.) 88, 92, 20 L.Ed. 153, 154 (1871).1
As in most matters of statutory constructipn, general rules or maxims of this sort are only useful as shorthand notations for the logical processes which the courts must follow to reach results in particular cases.2 But this rule, upon an examination of the cases, does seem more clearly and precisely to embody the relevant considerations in the decision-making process than do most maxims of statutory interpretation. Still, each case, in the area of implied repeals especially, must be decided on its own merits in the light of clear reasoning and with guidance from past decision.
The most important two criteria which must be met to find an implied repeal of the sort which Justice Field’s rule envisions are that the repealing enactment must be a thorough, comprehensive scheme of regulation, and that it must have the same legislative “purpose,” go to the same regulatory end as the repealed law.3 Thus, taking the second criterion first, there is much talk in the cases to the effect that a subsequent general law will not repeal a prior specific or “special” law. Some of these cases actually turn on the failure of the alleged repealing act to meet the first criterion of comprehensiveness. Leaving those to one side, what the maxim about general not repealing specific often means is that the subsequent act’s purpose is, in general, to regulate, to deter or to inspire conduct of a kind or quality which is quite different from that which the prior act, in its regulatory context was supposed to reach. In the case of John Hancock Mut. Life Ins. Co. v. Haworth, 68 Idaho 185, 191 P.2d 359 (1948), thus, this court paid its respects to the general versus special *405maxim, but also articulated the grounds for its decision at some length. Those grounds seem to have been that a subsequent “general” tax law could not repeal a prior “special” law to regulate the insurance industry.4 Where, on the other hand, the prior “special” law is a part of an old regulatory scheme, the usual rule that Justice Field originally stated is given effect and the courts have had no difficulty in giving the former “specific” law no effect.5 It is not always easy to determine whether the two allegedly conflicting laws are, in fact, directed toward the same evil or the same class of conduct. But this difficulty is one inherent in the interpretation of any ambiguous statutory situation. In such cases the court must endeavor to give effect to the “purpose” or the “policy” of the statute6 (sometimes referred to as the legislature’s intent), and the determination of what that “purpose” embraces is always a taxing enterprise. But it is a necessary one, nonetheless.
The existence of the other criterion, that the repealing law is, or is a part of, a comprehensive scheme or system of regulation, is an easier matter to determine. Generally this characteristic is only found in enactments of complete laws which control entire industries such as banking or insurance, or which regulate behavior which has some common defining characteristic as in the case of a complete motor vehicle code.7 The most important thing is that the subsequent or repealing statute be complete. That is, that it appears that the more recent act’s purpose is to cover the entirety of the law which goes to the same ends as it does.8 Enactments which are merely amendatory or supplementary, therefore, will not act to repeal a prior act unless the conflict between the two is manifest.9 But, if the new or repeáling law represents a departure from the past and purports to be a complete legislative attack on the problem it will be held to repeal all previous laws in the old statutory scheme (provided, as we have said, that the prior law really is in the same category of regulation as the new act) whether they are directly in conflict with any particular provision in the new law, or not.10 This nullification of the prior law occurs not because of any conflict of language but by the force of the completeness of the new scheme itself. If the new regulation is complete, then, as a system, by definition, it cancels out prior enactments which are not part of the new system. If it is comprehensive then it does not need to be supplemented by a prior act. And as a system it is presumed to have its own internal logic which will be abused by the intrusion of prior, non-systematic enactments. One aid in determining whether *406the new statutes are meant to cover the entire area, that is to be a comprehensive regulatory scheme, is the existence of a general repealing section of the sort found in § 24 of chapter 11 of 1915 Idaho Session Laws. If a law is merely supposed to amend or supplement a particular former statute, presumably the legislature could have explicitly stated what former law was being superseded. On the other hand, when the legislature enacts a general repealing section this may be interpreted as an expression of a legislative “intent” that its most recent enactment should be construed as a comprehensive regulatory system superseding all prior laws which were part of the old scheme.11
If we proceed from these admittedly general principles distilled from the cases to the problem at hand, it seems clear that the enactment of prohibition, especially in the form the 1919 codifiers found it, was the sort of complete and comprehensive regulatory scheme which, following Mr. Justice Field’s general rule and the case law, will act to nullify the entire preceding law in the field.
The first and most important task is a careful consideration of the two sections which the code compiler in 1918 thought to have been repealed by the enactment of prohibition.
The essentials of Idaho Rev.Codes, § 1511 (1908), were enacted as § 5 of chapter 33 of 1891 Idaho Session Laws, entitled “An Act to Regulate the Sale of Intoxicating Liquors.” That act appears on its face to have been considered a complete code for the regulation of commerce and consumption of alcoholic beverages. § 5, or § 1511 of Idaho Rev.Codes of 1908 seems to have been meant to strike at the vices of alcoholism and inveterate drunkenness. As carried into the 1908 Code it provided for a process, initiated by a complaint to a Justice of the Peace or a Probate Judge alleging that some person was a habitual drunkard and where such person got his liquor. It required notice be given to the source of the liquor by service of process and notice to the public by publication that persons named and anyone on notice should not provide the named drunkard with any more alcoholic beverages. The complaint could be brought by the putative drunkard’s wife, mother, father, son, daughter, sister, the county commissioners, the mayor, or any county officer. After that any person named in the complaint could lose his liquor license, if he had one, and would be guilty of a misdemeanor if he served the drunkard. Any person with notice, but not named in the complaint would be guilty of a misdemeanor for the same act. And, finally, any person named in the complaint who> provided the habitual inebriate with an intoxicating beverage was liable for a fixed sum of two hundred dollars per offense, “in-a civil action brought in the name or for the benefit of the person making such complaint.”
There are several things worth noting about this law. One is that it was aimed at drunkards, habitual inebriates, drunk or sober. The evils against which this section was directed were those long-range,, destructive effects which we may all rightly ascribe to addiction to alcohol. The foremost of these is the damage, if not death,, of the basic social unit, the family; with, that may come the myriad harms to individual members of the family, the increase in. persons dependent on public support for their life’s needs and the social and economic loss of an able-bodied person incapacitated while his mental and physical health is ruined by drink. All of these are cumulative, long-term and intangible harms,, an obvious interpretation is that they are-the evils which the statute sought to avoid, and not the immediate harms which a drunk might do in the frenzy or lethargy of his. intoxication. To this end the statute accords relief only to those whose interests, may be injured by the service of liquor to a person afflicted with alcoholism. It did not *407matter whether he was drunk or sober at the time. No provision is made for relief in favor of a person immediately injured as a result of the drunkard’s committing a tort during any particular period of intoxication. The civil relief which was granted is obviously not like normal tort damages. It was set as a fixed sum per offense, not unlike a criminal law fine. It bore no relationship at all to the amount of ascertainable injury which the plaintiff might have suffered. This sort of damages provision is not normally provided by legislators when they create a new tort remedy. It is, rather, a kind of provision designed to give relief to persons who have suffered an injury the costs of which are so difficult to ascertain as to make a normal damage remedy unavailable.12 In this instance it is because the interests which the legislature was protecting were those of the family and the government of the drunkard. They are the parties who suffer in an intangible, long-term, and cumulative sort of way. The legislature, in protecting these special interests, sought to cut the alcoholic’s bane off at its source by attacking all traffic in intoxicating beverages to the person so afflicted.
1891 Idaho Session Laws, chapter 33, § 9, Idaho Rev.Codes of 1908, § 1515 is another law attacking illegal traffic in alcohol. It made it illegal for anyone, licensed or not, to provide anyone else, drunkard or not, who was then intoxicated — no matter if he had never before tasted a drop of spiritous liquor. It was completely a criminal provision, it made no mention of any civil liability at all. It stated that any person providing liquor to an intoxicated person was guilty of a misdemeanor and could be imprisoned in the county jail for up to six months.13
Both of these sections were enacted as part of what purported to be a comprehensive and elaborate scheme for the regulation of all traffic and use of alcoholic beverages, 1891 Idaho Session Laws, chapter 33. The core of this system of regulation was a licensing procedure which depended on the county officials and the local probate courts, justices of the peace and municipal authorities for enforcement. This comprehensive scheme, as amended, was brought forward in the 1908 Codes, as a unit under the title “Police— Licensed Occupations — The Liquor Traffic.” Thus, the two sections with which we are concerned, even though no license was necessary to trigger their effectiveness, were catalogued in the codified law of Idaho under “Licensed Occupations,” which title comprehended practically all liquor regulation.
In 1915 the state of Idaho went dry. In that year another comprehensive scheme to regulate the use of and traffic in alcoholic beverages was passed and applied to the entire state. 1915 Idaho Session Laws, chapter 11, was entitled, “An Act Defining Prohibition Districts and Regulating and Prohibiting the Manufacture, Sale, Keeping for Sale, Transportation for Sale or Gift, and Traffic in Intoxicating Liquors and Prohibiting Drinking and Drunkenness in Public Places, in such Prohibition Districts, and Fixing Fines and Penalties and Repealing Chapter 27 and Chapter 99 of the Session Laws of 1913 (relating to pharmacy use of pure alcohol in local option *408areas).” Chapter 15 of 1911 Idaho Session Laws, The Search and Seizure law, was made a part of the new law by reference (the' new law was not made an amendment of any prior enactment). And a specific repeal of a local control of pharmacy use of pure alcohol was adopted in favor of the provisions covering such use in the new law, and a general repeal of “all other Acts and parts of Acts in conflict” therewith was passed. This law was made applicable to the entire state ten days later when Chapter 28 of the same Session Laws was approved. And on January 1, 1916 the entire state became effectively a prohibition state.
This complete regulatory scheme (prohibition) came forward in the 1919 codification of the Compiled Laws of Idaho. The basic prohibitive section was C.S. 1919, § 2606:
“It shall be unlawful for any person, firm, company or corporation, its officers or agents, to sell, manufacture or dispose of any intoxicating liquor or alcohol of any kind or to have in his or its possession or to transport any intoxicating liquor or alcohol unless the same was procured and is so possessed and transported under a permit as herein provided:” (following this is a proviso excepting wood or denatured alcohol.)
There are several sections following that basic prohibition which reinforce its mandate; they are: § 2619 “Possession of alcohol without a permit unlawful,” § 2621 “Acquisition, transportation, sale and possession unlawful,” § 2622 “Drinking in public a misdemeanor,” several punishment sections, and § 2628 “Possession unlawful.” Following this are the sections of the earlier enforcement laws which were explicitly extended to be applicable to the state-wide prohibition law. This includes 14 sections which prescribe a thick and elaborate substantive and procedural scheme designed to plug any human gaps in the regulation by stating the duties of each public official and by providing them' with a variety of legal devices with which to attack any sort of breach of the law. Finally, in 1917, the whole scheme was sewed up with a law providing for search of transportation facilities and confiscation of contraband.
This entire system of legislation was-most complete in and of itself. Its theory was simply that all and any evils of intoxicating drink were to be reached and cured by outlawing all and any contact (saving two exceptions, pharmacists and clergymen) with strong beverage. It was not only illegal to give an alcoholic beverage to a drunk or drunkard, it was now illegal to give it to anybody at all, or even to have it about to give to someone. Where the theory of the old law was that liquor and its uses were legal, though subject to restraint, the theory of the new law was that it was absolutely illegal. Where the old law had to resort to sections of the sort discussed above to attack particular abuses, under the new law any indulgence was abuse and all abuses could be reached. The core of the old law had been the constant supervision which was inherent in the license, and, thus, the entire old law, as a unit, had been classified as a licensed occupation law. The new law was sui generis; its core was the blanket prohibition itself; and the regulatory apparatus was arrayed about that section and keyed to it specifically. According to the case of State v. Frederic, 28 Idaho 709, 155 P. 977 (1916), the new scheme was complete within itself, and the independently dry communities were divested of the jurisdiction which they had previously had to enforce the prohibition laws in any forum, but the district court or according to the state law procedure and under state law rules. State v. Frederic, supra.
Thus it is my conclusion that the legislature of Idaho had enacted a full, complete and comprehensive law to cover an entire area and which thus acted as a repeal of the prior law which existed on the same subject and which was designed to serve the same purpose.
Furthermore if there is doubt whether or not a legislative act impliedly or neces*409sarily repeals a prior law, such doubt may be resolved by subsequent legislative action consistent with such repeal.14 In this case, there was subsequent legislative action. According to the preface to the Compiled Statutes of 1919, most of the compilation therein had been enacted as a code by the Fifteenth Session of the Idaho Legislature. 1919 Idaho Session Laws, Chapter 2. In the Compiled Laws which were enacted as a code, Chapter 116 was the law concerning prohibition. Appended to that chapter was a note explicitly calling attention by section number to the fact that a number of sections in the prior code had been deleted because they seemed to have been superseded by the prohibition law.15 The control of spiritous beverages was certainly a hot issue in those days and it is reasonable to impute an awareness to at least some members of the legislature of just what had been deleted. There was also a general repealing section in those compiled laws which, as is customary and as the title of the enactment warned, purported to repeal all prior law which was not included in those laws.
In the early Idaho case of Territory v. Evans, 2 Idaho 651 at 654, 23 P. 232, 233, 7 L.R.A. 646 (1890), this court in considering the effect of a complete revision of the Idaho statutes said:
“One of the prime objects of a revision is the elimination of doubt. What is included therein must be construed together as the law, and all that formerly existed, and not included, is clearly repealed.”
It is true that later on in the case of State v. Martinez, 43 Idaho 180, 250 P. 239 (1926), this court found that a prior law was not brought forward in the Code as a result of mere mistake and that it was not, therefore, repealed by the force of the codification alone. In regard to the repeal section of the Code the court also held that it was inapplicable because it only proposed to repeal sections involving matters which were provided for therein. It thus appears that in Idaho an omission will work a repeal except for an inadvertent omission. Further that a general repealer section in the Code will be given effect, but only if the matter in the omitted statute is touched on in the section of the Code.
In this instance the matter covered in the omitted sections is also a subject of several sections of the prohibition law. The change in the law is a full omission and not merely a change in the language. The sections omitted were flagged by a notice appended to the compilation by the compilers and presented to the legislators. The notice specifically mentioned the section numbers of the omitted material. The subject of the material, alcoholic beverages, was, to say the least, a hot issue both locally and nationally in the years around 1919. The Code was enacted as law with a proper title which also gave notice to the legislators and the public that some sections of the 1908 Code were omitted and that they would be considered repealed. It is hard to imagine a stronger case for giving the omission from the Code and the general repealing section full weight as law. The codification of the Compiled Laws of 1919 by Chapter 2 of 1919 Idaho Session Laws should therefore be given effect to the extent that it repealed § 1511 and § 1515 of Idaho Rev.Code of 1908.

. Accord, e. g., United States v. Lovely, 319 F.2d 673 (4th Cir. 1963); The Paquette Habana, 175 U.S. 677, 685, 20 S.Ct. 290, 44 L.Ed. 320, 323 (1900) ; Kramer v. Beebe, 186 Ind. 349, 115 N.E. 83, 85 (1917). See Lloyd v. Diefendorf, 54 Idaho 607, 612, 34 P.2d 53 (1934).

. See Noble v. Glenns Ferry Bank, Ltd., 91 Idaho 364, 367, 421 P.2d 444 (1966).

. See State v. London, 156 Me. 123, 162 A.2d 150 (1960) ; State Board of Insurance v. Adams, 316 S.W.2d 773 (Tex.Civ.App.1958) ; United States v. Jordan, 109 F.Supp. 528 (D.C.D.C., 1953) ; Town of Montclair v. Stanoyevich, 6 N.J. 479, 79 A.2d 288 (1951) ; Troy Conference Academy, etc. v. Town of Poultney, 115 Vt. 480, 66 A.2d 2 (1949); Homer v. City of Fall River, 326 Mass. 673, 96 N.E.2d 152 (1951) ; Southward v. Wabash R. Co., 331 Mich. 138, 49 N.W.2d 109 (1951) ; Rosenthal v. City of Tacoma, 31 Wash.2d 32, 195 P.2d 102 (1948) ; Independence Ins. Co. v. Independent Life and Acc. I. Co., 218 S.C. 22, 61 S.E.2d 399 (1950) ; Hitchcock v. State, 213 Md. 273, 131 A.2d 714 (1957) ; McAdams v. Barbieri, 143 Conn. 405, 123 A.2d 182 (1956) ; Lane v. State, 165 Tex.Cr.R. 222, 305 S.W.2d 595 (1957) ; State v. Elam, 250 Minn. 274, 84 N.W.2d 227, (1957); State v. Morf, 80 Ariz. 220, 295 P.2d 842 (1956); State ex rel. Williamson v. Empire Oil Corp., 353 P.2d 130 (Okl.1960).

. See In re Whisaker, 134 F.Supp. 864 (D.C.D.C., 1955); State v. Buck, 200 Or. 87, 262 P.2d 495 (1953).

. E. g., Troy Conference Academy, etc. v. Town of Poultney, supra; Independence Ins. Co. v. Independent Life and Acc. I. Co., supra.

. See Messenger v. Burns, 86 Idaho 26, 382 P.2d 913 (1963) ; Swain v. Fritchman, 21 Idaho 783, 795, 125 P. 319 (1912) ; City of Idaho Falls v. Pfost, 53 Idaho 247, 23 P.2d 245 (1933) (These cases are on construction of statutes to serve their purposes and to avoid discontinuities in application.).

. See, e. g., State v. Davidson, 78 Idaho 553, 309 P.2d 211 (1957), cited with approval in State v. London, supra (both motor vehicle cases) ; Southward v. Wabash II. Co., supra (wrongful death legislation) ; Independence Ins. Co. v. Independent Life & Acc. I. Co., supra (Insurance law); State v. Elam, supra (tax law enforcement.).

. State v. London, supra; United States v. Jordan, supra; Homer v. City of Fall River, supra (“The enactment of a statute which seems to have been intended to cover the whole subject and supersedes the common law.”) ; Rosenthal v. City of Tacoma, supra; Hitchcock v. State, supra (Where the legislature attempts to deal with “the whole subject matter,” “a complete scheme of regulation” there is an actual and not an implied repeal.).

. See, e. g., State ex rel. Good v. Boyle, 67 Idaho 512, 186 P.2d 859 (1947).

. United States v. Tynen, supra; The Paquette Habana, supra; McAdams v. Barbieri, supra; cases cited supra, note 8.

. See Anglin v. Mayo, 83 So.2d 918, 921 (Fla., 1956); McCollum v. Snipes, 213 S.C. 254, 49 S.E.2d 12 (1948).

. An obvious corollary to the $200 damages provision is the “In Lieu” damages section in the American Copyright law. IT U.S.C.A. § 101(b) (1952). That allowance was specifically provided by Congress to give the “small” unknown artist recourse against the artistic or literary pirate, even though Ms actual cash loss might not normally bo enough to support a suit. The same problem of proof of actual, eompensible injury seems to be what motivated the legislature in enacting the civil damages provision of § 1511.

. Because of the narrow class of persons allowed to be plaintiffs in § 1511 and the utter lack of a civil remedy in § 1515 it is very difficult to derive any notion that the legislature was enacting a “dram shop act” to comprehend all civil damage cases. The only inferences about the “intent” of the legislature which may be drawn from the bare language of the two sections is that in § 1511 a very special wrong was given a civil remedy and in § 1515 no civil remedy was thought of one way or the other.

. Jordan v. Pearce, 91 Idaho 687, 690-691, 429 P.2d 419 (1967) ; see generally State v. Mayer, 81 Idaho 111, 338 P.2d 270 (1959).

. Idaho Compiled Statutes of 1919, History, 745.