Court Opinion

ID: 9564336
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 18:58:15.793497+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:18:21.600736
License: Public Domain

MR. JUSTICE BOTTOMLY, ACTING CHIEF JUSTICE
(dissenting).
I dissent to the majority opinion for the following reasons:
As I view the facts and circumstances in this case, the first question considered by the majority opinion is not the real and actual question presented by the pleadings herein. A city or town has the powers only, that have been expressly granted to them by the law, or which are necessarily implied to make workable the powers so granted.
There is no question but that the legal status of cities or towns in respect to their water systems is as set forth in sections 70-105, 70-103, 11-981, 11-966, subd. (4), R.C.M. 1947. The first question on this appeal as I view this case is, do the above enumerated statutes expressly grant or necessarily imply that cities or towns have the exclusive right or power to tap and make junctions with the city or town water mains, wipe the *118unions and joints, fit the valves and install and adjust the service boxes?
Í find no exclusive • power nor implied exclusive power or authority for a city or town to invest public taxpayers’ funds in a large stock of plumbing supplies and to engage' in the plumbing business. Further I find no statutory authority nor exclusive right nor exclusive power granted to cities and towns to do the plumbing work here complained of with their unlicensed employees in competing with licensed plumbers in doing the skilled craftsman work of a plumber. ■
This controversy arose because the City of Billings, since about July 1, 1956, has taken to itself the exclusive right to dó, and has performed all of the plumbing here in controversy with its own employees and its own plumbing supplies from its own warehouse. The city employees, not licensed plumbers¡ attempt to and do make junctions with the city water mains, wipe the unions and joints, fit the valves, adjust the boxes, cmd install the same. I repeat these city employees are not licensed plumbers. Is this court to hold that the city or town through its unlicensed employees have the exclusive right to do this plumbing ?
The implications inherent in the majority opinion are obviously dangerous. Under the present law may this court grant the city or town the exclusive right to go into the business of plumbing and the trade of plumbing, as well as other businesses, trades or professions in competition with private enterprise? The city and town conducting such plumbing business as the warehousing, furnishing and selling of plumbing supplies and the installation thereof by its own employees is carrying on such business and trade in its proprietary capacity. The city carrying on such a business in its proprietary capacity is as amenable to the laws of the state as any other corporation or person and its employees are amenable to the laws of this state in the same degree as any other corporation’s employees.
While the laws grant the city the power of control, regulation and supervision over its water system, it is my opinion *119that such grant cannot be held to be the basis for an implication that the city has the excltisive right to make connections •with the water mains, nor the right in any event to use unlicensed employees to do the skilled work of plumbers, as complained of here.
The city may control and regulate the manner in which licensed plumbers do this plumbing work in connecting with the city and town’s water system. Such powers as granted within our statutes do not give the exclusive right to do the work, nor the unlawful situation, as here, of doing the work with employees, who in the eyes of the state are unlicensed and thus incompetent.
Our legislature under the sovereign police power has, in order to safeguard life, morals, the public health, and property, enacted legislation covering a great many professions and trades. Our legislature has prescribed who may practice medicine in this state, who may practice architecture, nursing, pharmacy, who may prepare abstracts of title, who may do engineering and surveying, barbering, yes, and who may practice law, as well as who may be a craftsman in plumbing. These laws have been passed for the very purpose of seeing to it that the public be protected and assured that competent persons only may engage in such professions, crafts, trades and businesses. The state requires such persons to demonstrate their fitness and qualification by tests and examinations by a qualified board appointed by the governor, thus the people are protected from the hazards of incompetent persons.
Under the majority opinion, the city or town may hire any unlicensed employee to do its architectural work, its surveying, its engineering. Schools and cities may hire any unlicensed person as a nurse, and any city or town may have an employee attempt to do all their abstract and legal work. In other words, if a city or town may ignore the plumbing law they may ignore any of the other like laws, they are not bound by the applicable statute.
*120Our legislature by enacting chapter 203, Laws of 1949 (R.. C. M. 1947, section 66-2401), has exercised this sovereign power of the state and proclaimed to the people of this state and to this court that: “Any person working at the business of plumbing, in any incorporated city or town in this state containing more than one thousand inhabitants, either as a master plumber or as a journeyman plumber, shall first secure a state license as hereinafter provided.” Emphasis supplied.
And section 66-2402, R. C. M. 1947, is as follows:
“Any such person desiring to work at the business of plumbing in any such city or town shall file his application for a state license with the secretary of the board of plumbing examiners of the. state of Montana, and shall at such time and place as may be designated by the board of examiners of plumbers by the state of Montana, be examined as to his qualifications for working in such business.” Emphasis supplied.
The word “any” as used in the above statutes means, “one or all,” and indicates the maximum of any number. See Webster’s New International Dictionary (2d ed.). Black’s Law Dictionary, (Deluxe Ed.) defines the word “any” as “an indefinite number * # * given the full force of ‘every’ or ‘all’.” Cases cited in Commonwealth v. Dougherty, 156 Pa. Super. 520, 40 A. (2d) 902, 903, and in Warburton-Beacham Supply Co. v. City of Jackson, 151 Miss. 503, 118 So. 606, a “plumber” has been defined as a skilled tradesman, who furnishes, fits, installs, and replaces water pipes, makes the junctions in the water mains and installs other sanitary and fire protection apparatus.
Private enterprise, I hope, may always enter into this field and compete with the city or town, subject of course to its regulations and the laws of the state. If the city does seek to do some of the plumbing work by its own employees and compete with private enterprise there can be no escape in my opinion from the requirements of the law that their employees, just as those plumbers and plumber employees of private enterprises, must be licensed plumbers to engage therein, in accord*121ance with the terms of chapter 203, Laws of 1949, being R. C. M. 1947, sections 66-2401 to 66-2411, inclusive.
The cases cited in the majority opinion as authority therefor have no application to the issues raised in this appeal. It may very well be that a city or town is able to successfully compete with, and supplant, the small businessman or tradesman, where as here, the city uses the taxpayers’ money in doing so, and is thereby enabled to do such plumbing work more economically.