Court Opinion

ID: 9700939
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 21:54:12.580739+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:02:19.684572
License: Public Domain

McAuliffe, Judge,
dissenting.
The Court today holds that a farmer forced to bankruptcy may keep his tractor. That may seem unremarkable, until one considers that the tractor involved here is not a John Deere, but a Peterbilt. It will never plow a field, for it is the working part of a tractor-trailer rig—an over-the-road truck. The Court says that not only is this tractor a “tool of the trade” of the farmer, but two of them are, and so is a Fruehauf tanker truck. I cannot agree.
Unfortunately, the statute creating the “tools of the trade” exemption is susceptible to at least two quite disparate interpretations. Section ll-504(b)(l) of the Courts and Judicial Proceedings Article provides that the following items are exempt:
Wearing apparel, books, tools, instruments, or appliances necessary for the practice of any trade or profession except those kept for sale, lease, or barter.
Initially, there is the question of what is a “trade” or a “profession.” I suspect that when first used by the Legislature, those words had a much narrower connotation than we give them today. The broader of the two, “trade,” most likely meant skilled handicrafts.1 Contemporary usage cer*73tainly encompasses a more expansive application of both words, and without pausing to discuss the relative merits of the dynamic or strict construction views of statutory construction, let me simply concede that the words themselves will support a very narrow or a very broad interpretation. Similarly, the words “tools,” “instruments,” and “appliances” may be afforded meanings that would permit inclusion of a very broad spectrum of items.
But the Legislature never intended to exempt all “tools, instruments, or appliances.” The words “necessary for the practice of any trade or profession” are intended as words of limitation. Unfortunately, the expansive meaning afforded the words “trade or profession” by the majority, sufficient to embrace any business, destroys the intended limitation.
The admonition of Article III, § 44 of the Maryland Constitution, that the General Assembly shall pass laws “to protect from execution a reasonable amount of the property of the debtor,” (emphasis added) should suggest a reasonably narrow interpretation of statutes intended to give it effect. Instead, the majority classifies virtually everything as a “tool of the trade,” and suggests that effect be given to the Constitution by limiting the exemption to those things that are reasonably necessary to enable the bankrupt to carry on his business. No criteria are furnished—instead we answer the inquiry of the federal court by saying that “[t]he determination of what is reasonably necessary is to be resolved in the light of the particular circumstances and with due regard given the objectives of the statute.”
The majority finds that the 1973 amendment to this statute was “more than a streamlining of the old statute” and that the General Assembly “intended that the new subsection have a significantly different import.” That is a rather interesting conclusion, when one considers: the amendment was accomplished solely as a part of the Code revision process; the Revisor repeatedly told the Legislature that no substantive change was intended unless specifically noted; and the Revisor waved no promised flag of *74substantive change with respect to this section. Intriguing is the majority’s suggestion that the Revisor’s Note “lends guidance more from what he did not say than from what he did say,” and that the Revisor’s failure to indicate that the changes were of a substantive nature somehow indicates that they were. Majority opinion at 12. I find that difficult to reconcile with a rule of statutory construction firmly established in this State:
Recodification of statutes is presumed to be for the purpose of clarity rather than change of meaning. Thus, even a change in the phraseology of a statute by a codification will not ordinarily modify the law unless the change is so material that to modify the law appears unmistakably from the language of the Code. Rohrbaugh v. Estate of Stern, 305 Md. 443, 449, 505 A.2d 113 (1986) (quoting Consumer Protection v. Consumer Pub., 304 Md. 731, 768, 501 A.2d 48 (1985) and In re Special Investigation No. 236, 295 Md. 573, 576-77, 458 A.2d 75 (1983)).
See also Duffy v. Conaway, 295 Md. 242, 257-58, 455 A.2d 955 (1983); Office & Prof. Employees Int’l v. MTA, 295 Md. 88, 100, 453 A.2d 1191 (1982); Hoffman v. Key Fed. Sav. & Loan, 286 Md. 28, 43, 416 A.2d 1265 (1979); Bureau of Mines v. George’s Creek, 272 Md. 143, 155, 321 A.2d 748 (1974).
I am willing to ascribe to the Revisor and the Legislature the specific intent to eliminate, as obsolete, the description of tools of the trade as those “moved or worked by hand or foot.” That change would permit the carpenter to include, as an exempted tool of his trade, the power hand saw he carries with him from job to job. It would not, I suggest, include the right to include as exemptions the large table saws of a furniture factory.
Quite apart from my disagreement with the majority’s decision to jettison any limiting influence of the words “trade or profession,” I am unable to accept the classification of the tractors, trailers, wagon, and van as “tools, instruments, or appliances.” I am also unwilling to accept *75the conclusion of the majority that included within the tools of a trade or profession exemption are: the electronic diagnostic machines of auto mechanics, the electric typewriter and word processors of secretaries, the sound systems of musicians, and the computers of accountants. By considering virtually everything that is usable as a “tool, instrument, or appliance,” and every enterprise for profit as a “trade or profession,” the majority has divorced the exemption from its original, limited scope. Presumably, the Lear jet of the charter pilot is potentially exempt as a tool of his trade, as is the tractor-trailer of the long distance truck driver. I suggest that this interpretation is well outside the intendment of the Legislature. It confuses capital assets of the debtor, which should be available to the creditors, with tools of the trade of skilled tradesmen and professionals, which should be exempted. In Matter of Patterson, 825 F.2d 1140 (7th Cir.1987), a bankrupt dairy farming couple claimed an exemption for their tractors and cows as tools of their trade. Their contention was that
both tractors and cows are instrumentalities for turning raw materials (grass, hay, water, etc.) into salable products (milk, cheese, etc.) and therefore are tools of the farming trade in a broad sense.
Judge Posner, writing for the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, explained why the exemption would not be allowed:
If “tools” is to be given so capacious a definition as the Pattersons urge, then the exemption is not for the tools of a person’s trade but for the capital assets of his business, even though it is to those assets that creditors primarily look for repayment of the bankrupt’s debts.
The purpose of the tools of the trade exemption is to enable an artisan to retain tools of modest value so that he is not forced out of his trade. Although as a matter of semantics farm “implements” could be thought to cover
*76machinery and vehicles as well as hand tools, this would be an incongruous interpretation.
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States have long granted an exemption for tools or implements of the trade, and in interpreting these exemptions state courts have generally distinguished between personal hand tools of modest value, on the one hand, and machinery on the other. See 3 Collier on Bankruptcy ¶ 522.15, at p. 522-52.3 n. 1 (15th ed., King ed., 1986).
There would be no semantic violence in regarding the Pattersons’ tractor as a tool of the farming trade ... but, while the question is a close one, we think the tractor is no more a tool of the trade in the statutory sense than the cow is. The tractor is not a modest implement but an expensive piece of machinery. It is one of the principal capital assets of a small farm. To exempt it would be like exempting the airplanes owned by an air charter service. Matter of Patterson, supra, 825 F.2d at 1146-47.
Until 1976, the tools of the trade exemption was subject to a constitutional limitation of $500. The removal of that limitation was not intended to substitute Peterbilt tractors for hand saws, but to delete from the Constitution a specific dollar amount that could not readily be changed to reflect changes in the economy. The dollar limitation that lasted for so long is instructive, however, in determining the intended scope of the exemption.
Although there will be cases presenting close questions as to what should be considered a tool of the trade within the meaning of this exemption, and how much of the value of qualifying tools should be exempted as reasonable, this is not such a case. I agree with the common sense position taken by the trustee and the bankruptcy judge—none of the items listed in the certified question is a tool, instrument, or *77appliance of a trade or profession within the meaning of the Maryland exemption statute.
Judge COLE concurs in the views expressed herein.

. The Oxford English Dictionary, Vol. XI, 1961.