Court Opinion

ID: 9808661
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 20:46:03.354141+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:16:44.431085
License: Public Domain

MebkimoN, J.
(dissenting)., I do not concurin the opinion of the Court, and will briefly/ state some of the grounds of my dissent:
That part of the statute (.The Code, § 291) material to be here recited prescribes that “ the defendant may be arrested as hereinafter prescribed, in the following (among other) cases: * * * for injuring or for wrongfully taking, detaining, or converting property.” It is said that the word property, thus employed, is used in a restricted sen,se — that it embraces only personal property. It seems to me clearly otherwise. In the ordinary legal acceptation of that term, *91it implies and embraces both real and personal property, and the one kind as certainly as the other, in the absence of qualification in some way reasonably appearing. Here such qualification does not appear. The term “ injuring ” applies to real as readily and as reasonably as to personal property, and there exists the same reason why a person injuring real property should besubjectto arrest as in case he had done injury to personal property. Why should aman, if he injures a horse, an ox, a machine, a vehicle, or other thing personal, be subject to arrest, and befreefromit if he burns one’s house, his barn, his stable, or cuts down his fruit trees, or pulls down his fences, or cuts the roots of and thus kills his vines, digs dangerous pits in his land, sows thistle seed on it, or cuts his turf? He is in both cases chargeable with injuring property, and as certainly in one case as the other. I cannot conceive of any substantial^ just reason for such distinction.
And so, also, a person may, in a not unreasonable: sense, be chargeable with “wrongfully taking” part of the real property, as when he unlawfully takes marl, muck, coal, minerals and the like, before the same shall be severed or taken out of or from the land. And so, also, he may be chargeable with detaining or converting real property, as when he detains the possession of a field, a house, a mill, or the like. In the strict technical sense of some of the words mentioned as used in the common law method of procedure, they might not be aptly applied as suggested, but it is otherwise in the untechnical use of such words in The Code method of procedure. But, granting that the words “ wrongfully taking, detaining or converting ” property, do not well apply to real property, the term “ injuring” certainly does, in the way already indicated.
It cannot be said properly that the words “ for injuring, or for wrongfully taking, detaining or converting,” apply to but one particular cause of action of one class of actions. It will be observed that the words are used *92disjunctively, and they designate four distinct causes of áction, for which the person- chargeable therewith may be arrested; he may be arrested, first, for injuring property, real or personal; secondly, for wrongfully taking-property ; thirdly, for detaining it; fourthly, for converting it. There is a total absence of words or provisions in the section of the statute cited, or elsewhere, showing that the word “ property ” is used in a limited sense. On the contrary, paragraph 3 of this section prescribes that, “in an action to recover the possession of personal property,” under circumstances prescribed, a person may be arrested. If the word “property,” as used in the clause recited, was intended to embrace only “ personal ” property, why was th'e term “ personal” used in the connection last mentioned? It was useless and misleading in that case.
But if there could be any reasonable doubt as to the meaning of the word “ property,” as used in the clause of the statute under consideration, it would seem that the statute (The Code, § 3765, par. 6), would remove all question and dispel all such doubt. It, among other things, prescribes that “ in the construction of all statutes, the following rules shall be observed, unless such construction would be inconsistent with the manifest intent of the General Assembly,” repugnant to the context of the same statute — that is to say * * * “the word‘property’ shall include all property, both real and personal.”
It seems to me very clear, that it is not inconsistent with the manifest intent of the General Assembly, nor repugnant to the context of the statute, to say that the word “property,” as used in the clause of the statute recited, embraces both real and personal property. I can discover nothing that gives the term a restricted meaning. It embraces real property, and the clause of the statute embraces all actions for injuries to such property, but not all kinds of actions concerning it.
It is said, however, that the statute cited above is an exact opy of a like statute that at one time prevailed in the State of *93New York, and that the Court of Appeals in that State held, in Merritt v. Carpenter, 3 Keys, 142, that the word “ property”' did not embrace real property. This, I am sure, is a misapprehension of that case. It simply decided that an action to recover possession of real property and damages for the unlawful detention of the same, was not an action for injuring or for unlawfully taking, detaining or converting property, within the meaning of the statute. 'It did not decide that an action for injuring real property did not come within its meaning. It might well be that an action to recover possession of land did not. The Court of Appeals said that such an action could not fairly be deemed an action for injuring land. Moreover, the case just cited was decided by a Court divided in opinion, and it reversed the unanimous decision in that case, directly to the contrary, of the Supreme Court. Merritt v. Carpenter, 80 Barb., 61.
What the Court of Appeals would have decided, if an action for injuries to real estate had come before it, cannot certainly be known, but it seems to me that it would have been compelled to hold that it came within the meaning of the statute. James v. Beasley, 14 Hun., 520.
There is, perhaps, another ground on which the judgment of this Court properly rests, but I need not advert to its, merits.