Court Opinion

ID: 9851646
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:16:42.41843+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:22:09.642451
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
Carlisle, J.
We have been forcefully impressed with the earnestness and vigor with which counsel for the defendant endeavor to sustain, as the true legislative intent, their interpretation and construction of the act of 1951; and, as there seems to be some disparity of understanding between the court and counsel of the primary physical laws applicable in the case, and, as there is much insistence that, had the court adverted to the rules and regulations of the Commissioner of Revenue in its determination of the legislative intent, the result would have been different'—the court will undertake to elaborate upon and to clarify the original decision, and to answer some of the objections lodged against it in the motion for rehearing.
*245We think that we hardly need say that the court, when it has before it the question of the legislative intent in passing a given statute, is not restricted in its determination of that intent to a choice between the respective theories of the parties. If such were the case, the legislative intent in passing any given statute might well be held to be different in every case, depending, as it were, upon the theories urged by the respective parties in a case. We canhot believe that counsel intend to urge such a complaint seriously.
That counsel did or did not concede “that electricity which is used for mechanical energy or motive power, and gas and other fuels which are used to generate mechanical energy or motive power, are indirectly rather than directly used in the manufacturing process and are, therefore, not exempt from taxation,” would have in neither event varied the result reached by the court in this case. We would like, however, in view of the denial of the concession, to suggest that counsel has, no doubt, forgotten that, upon oral argument of the case before this court and in reply to questions posed by the court at that time, counsel readily conceded that electricity used to operate cotton-mill machinery in the manufacture of cloth was an indirect and taxable use of electricity, and that the same would be true of other fuels used in that manner. The court readily understands how in the heat of debate such minor concessions may be forgotten.
The use of the rules and regulations of the Commissioner of Revenue, as counsel insists we must use in arriving at the legislative intent, results only in hoisting the defendant upon its own petard. Regulation 15, entitled “industrial materials,” provides: “Exempt industrial materals are divided into three categories: [The second category is Regulation 15 (2) ]: Industrial materials (other than machinery and machinery repair parts) that are consumed directly in the fabricating, converting or processing of articles of tangible personal property or parts thereof for resale. This category includes essential materials in the manufacturing process which are in direct contact with and are in such relation to the goods in process of manufacture that there is no intervention of any person or thing, yet they do not become a component part of the finished product. This category does not include materials and supplies which are incidental to the *246process. Examples of materials exempt in this category are: compounding oils, chemicals, solvents, dyes, anodes, catalysts, filtering materials and other similar items.” (Italics added.) We can demonstrate at once by one simple illustration that giving effect to this regulation will not bring the gas used in this case in firing the brick within the meaning of the statutory exemption. We think that it is beyond question that the defendant purchased gas and not flaming gas. We think it beyond question that the tax is upon the sale, use, and consumption of gas, not flaming gas. The defendant does not allege that the gas, in the state in which it necessarily is delivered to it, is used and consumed in direct contact with the brick in the manufacturing process, but alleges that flaming gas is so used. We think it ineluctable that the ignition of the gas, the combustion, the fire, intervene, and Regulation 15 says that, to come within its classification as an industrial material exempt from the tax, there must be no intervention of any person or thing. It is not the gas in its quiescent state which serves as the chemical or catalyst in the process of manufacturing brick. It is the heat from the flaming gas which performs that function. While it may be true as counsel suggest that no human agency can prevent flaming gas from baking clay into brick if it is in contact with the clay, the argument is only a negative aspect of the problem and beside the point, and we think that we may reply to the argument with considerably more logic and bearing on the question that we know of no process by which gas in its quiescent state, although in contact with the clay, will convert the clay into brick without the intervention of the spark, the combustion, the flame, the heat. Does the gasoline drive the automobile without more? Indeed not. There must be the conversion of it into spray or vapor, its ignition, its combustion, expansion, and conversion into mechanical energy and motive power.
Counsel seem to think that we have committed fundamental and egregious error in separating the flame and the heat. To do otherwise would be to ignore what we take to be well known laws of nature, the principles of heat transference by radiation, convection, and conduction, and, moreover, it was not so much our intention to separate the heat from the flame—though they are separable—as to separate the gas from the heat. The flame *247is the intervenor, or converter. Furthermore, though the principles of thermodynamics may be Greek to those of us who are not versed in the field, it is well known to all that rubbing two pieces of metal together, or other objects, will produce heat in the total absence of flame or fire. The court was fully aware of these “primary physical laws,” and we think applied them correctly, and we will not presume an ignorance of these laws on the part of the legislature, in passing the act of 1951, greater than ours.
Counsel suggest that from the original pleadings in the case of Phillips & Buttorff Mfg. Co. v. Carson, supra, which were not set forth in the opinion of the Supreme Court of Tennessee, it is apparent that the Commissioner of Revenue of Tennessee admitted that wood and coke, used to fire the manufacturer’s blast furnace, and welding gases and rods, which come in direct and immediate contact with the product being manufactured, were exempt from taxation, and that the chancellor ruled in conformity with that admission, and the Supreme Court of Tennessee affirmed that ruling by the following language: “We deem it unnecessary to make any further reference to these items [the items mentioned above conceded to be exempt from taxation by the Commissioner of Revenue of Tennessee], or the reasons for adjudging them to be exempt other than to agree with the conclusion reached.” Assuming the appellate procedure of Tennessee to be the same as ours in the absence of knowledge to the contrary, the language of the court quoted above is pure obiter dictum. The assignments of error on appeal were three, and the question of whether coke, wood, welding gases, and welding rods were taxable or exempt from taxation was not raised by any of the three assignments of error, as is clear from the reported decision. It is also clear that the Supreme Court of Tennessee recognized that its comment on those items was obiter, as the language quoted above is immediately preceded by this: “Before giving consideration to the assignments of error [of which there were only three] it is proper to observe that the Commissioner in the lower court conceded that some of the materials upon which the tax had been collected were exempt.” (Italics and brackets added.) If, however, we may indulge in conjecture, as we do not know what reasons were assigned by the *248commissioner of revenue or the chancellor in the lower court for exempting the items in question from taxation, and assume, for the sake of argument, that this obiter is indicative that the Supreme Court of Tennessee held the coal and fuel oil used to maintain the enameling solutions at uniform temperatures to be taxable, as an indirect use of them, simply because the container in which the solution was heated constituted the “intervening thing,” then that court has failed to perceive, as do we, that fire is a thing in that it is perceptible to the senses.
Having given full and thorough consideration to all of the arguments presented by the motion for rehearing, none of which causes us to waver from our original interpretation of the act of 1951, we adhere to the original judgment entered in this case.

Rehearing denied.

Sutton, C. J., Gardner, P. J., Felton, Townsend, and Quillian, JJ., concur.