Court Opinion

ID: 9651662
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 16:30:27.653008+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:37.182386
License: Public Domain

PPIILLIPS, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
Sec. 36-101, N.M.Supp.1938, in part .reads:
“Whenever any person shall die from any injury resulting from, or occasioned by the negligence, unskillfulness or criminal intent of any officer, agent, servant or employee, whilst running, conducting or managing any locomotive, car, or train of cars, or of any driver of any stage coach or other public conveyance, while in charge of the same as driver; * *
It will be observed that the quoted provision embraces two classes of persons — (1) any officer, agent, servant, or employee while running, conducting, or managing any locomotive, car, or train of cars, and (2) any driver of any stage coach or other public conveyance while in charge of the same as driver. The precise question presented, then, is whether the driver of a freight truck which was being operated as a common carrier for hire falls within the phrase “driver of any stage coach or other public conveyance.”
This statute, being in derogation of common law, must be strictly construed.1
Sec. 18, Art. IV, of the New Mexico Constitution provides:
“No law shall be revised or amended, or the provisions thereof extended by reference to its title only; but each section thereof as revised, amended or extended shall be set out in full.”
Where an existing statute is amended and certain portions of the original act áre carried into the amended act, such portions are regarded as a continuation of the existing law and not as a new enactment, and are to be given the same meaning and effect they had before the amendment.2 It follows that the 1931 amendment did not change the meaning and effect of the phrase “driver of any stage coach or other public conveyance.”
I agree that the phrase “other public conveyance” is not limited to conveyances in use at the time the original statute was enacted, but it is my view that it should be limited to conveyances like or analogous to a stage coach.3 A stage coach is a conveyance running regularly from one place to another employed chiefly for the transpor*526tation of passengers, mail and baggage.4 A freight truck is not employed for the carriage of passengers,, mail, or baggage. It is employed to carry heavy freight. It is substantially unlike a stage coach. Had the legislature intended to embrace freight trucks, I think in the 1931 amendment it would have added to the phrase “locomotive, car, or train of cars” apt phraseology, to include “freight trucks.”
If the statute is to be construed as held by the majority, the owner or operator of a freight truck is placed in a special category and his liability for wrongful death is limited to $7,500. On the other hand, a private owner or operator of a truck or an operator of a truck as a private carrier, who negligently causes-a wrongful death, would come within § 36-102, N.M.Stat.Ann. 1929, and would be liable for full compensatory damages which, in most cases of wrongful death, will substantially exceed $7,500. A carrier of passengers by train, stage, or bus might suffer an accident where a large number of passengers would be killed and where the aggregate liability would be very large. There is some reason to limit the liability of such a carrier. No such reason exists with respect to a freight truck which does not carry passengers. Moreover, the public highways belong to the public and their primary and preferred use is for private purposes. Their use for purposes of gain is special and extraordinary.5 It is unreasonable and unjust to prefer the public carrier making use of the public highway for the purposes of gain which is a special and extraordinary use, by limiting his liability for wrongful death to $7,500 and subjecting the private user, for whom the highway is primarily provided, to unlimited liability for wrongful death. I cannot think it was intended by the legislature to subject private operators of trucks on the public highways to unlimited liability in damages for wrongful death and to limit the liability of the public operators of trucks to $7,500. Such a limitation in favor of the public carrier would be manifestly unreasonable and unjust and I do not think an intent so to prefer should be attributed to the legislature in the absence of plain language in the statutory enactment manifesting such intent.
For these reasons, I think the court should have directed a verdict in favor of the defendant on 'the claim for wrongful death.

 El Paso Cattle Loan Co. v. Hunt, 30 N.M. 157, 228 P. 888.

 Thompson v. Mossburg, 103 Ind. 566, 139 N.E. 307, 310, 141 N.E. 241; Huff v. Fetch, 194 Ind. 570, 143 N.E. 705, 707; City of Chicago v. Foley, 335 Ill. 584, 167 N.E. 779, 781; State ex rel. Dean v. Daues, 321 Mo. 1126, 34 S.W.2d 990, 1002; Homnyack v. Prudential Insurance Company, 394 N.Y. 456, 87 N.E. 769, 771; People v. Lloyd, 304 Ill. 23, 136 N.E. 505, 536; People v. W. A. Wiebolt & Co., 357 Ill. 208, 191 N.E. 689, 690, 93 A.L.R. 789.

 See Drolshagen v. Union Depot R. Co., 186 Mo. 258, 85 S.W. 344; Mallory v. Pioneer Southwestern Stages, Inc., 10 Cir., 54 F.2d 559.

 Talcott Mountain Turnpike Co. v. Marshall, 11 Conn. 185, 190-192; Burton v. Monticello & Burnside Turnpike Co., 162 Ky. 787, 173 S.W. 144, 147; Burton v. Monticello & Burnside Turnpike Co., 109 S.W. 319, 33 Ky.Law Rep. 85; Cincinnati, L. & S. Turnpike Co. v. Neil, 9 Ohio 11, 13.

 Stephenson v. Binford, 287 TJ.S. 251, 264, 53 S.Ct. 181, 77 L.Ed. 288, 87 A.L.R. 721; Packard v. Banton, 264 U.S. 140, 144, 44 S.Ct. 257, 68 L.Ed. 596.