Court Opinion

ID: 9716002
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 06:23:11.886202+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:40.720400
License: Public Domain

Hammond, J.,
delivered the following dissenting opinion in which Bruñe, C. J., concurred.
I concur in all that was decided by the majority opinion except the holding that all the requirements and penalties of the statute continued in effect after the repeal and reenactment of 1953. The majority said, in referring to the change made by the 1953 Legislature, which was to become operative with the next oyster season: “If the change in the instant case is to be applied prospectively, it should not be construed as a repeal of the previous requirements, for this would create a hiatus and break the continuity of the license system and the long-range conservation plan. We think the clear intention, drawn from the intrinsic evidence of the statute itself, is that the old requirements should remain until the new ones come into operation.” The court felt that it was necessary to uphold the indictments on this ground because the general clause in the Code (1951), Art. 1, Sec. 3, saves, as continuing, only penalties, forfeitures or liabilities “which shall have been incurred” during the time , the statute or part thereof which has been *421repealed, or repealed and reenacted, was in effect. The 1953 act, by its terms, took effect June 1, 1953, and the indictment charges an offense on August 21, 1953. If the general saving clause could not continue in force, after June 1, the provisions of the law affecting the current oyster season (and the Court obviously so thought) then a perception that the Legislature intended that the statute should remain in force, revealed by “the intrinsic evidence of the statute itself”, requires a clairvoyance which I do not possess. There is absolutely no evidence other than a feeling that the Legislature must have so intended, or a belief that it should have, to sustain the theory of the majority. I find it far more reasonable to believe that the Legislature felt either that all the oyster shells which the State wished to use could be taken over between March 31, 1953, the date the act was approved and became law, and June 1, 1953, the date it took effect and became operative, or, as may well be the case, vaguely banked on the saving clause, or did not realize that there would be a hiatus.
The only authority cited for the Court’s holding that the “old requirements should remain until the new ones come into operation” is Sutherland, Statutory Construction, 3rd Ed., and two cases to which I will advert. The language of Sutherland, relied on in the section cited— Sec. 1605 — , is this: “A repealing clause of a statute which is to take effect in the future will not be effective until the statute itself is in operation.” No quarrel can be had with this as a general proposition of law. Its application to the instant case is another matter. The 1953 act, according to its terms, took effect June 1 next after its passage, and if it had not so provided, it would have taken effect that day under the provisions of Art. 3, Sec. 31, of the Constitution of Maryland. The statute was in effect and operation from June 1, and after that date, the old provisions were no longer law. The case of Spaulding v. Inhabitants of Alford, (Mass.), 1 Pickering’s Reports 33, held merely that a later act which repealed all clauses and matters in a former act “which *422are contrary to the provisions of this act” did not cover a specific matter in the earlier act as to which there was no inconsistency. The case of Thiel v. City of Philadelphia, 245 Pa. 406, 91 A. 490, held that a general enabling act did not take effect automatically but, under its terms, required definite action on the part of various city councils to make it effective in each area, and, therefore, its repealing clause did not come into effect until it became operative. Undoubtedly, a law, or parts thereof, may be made, by specific directions, to take effect upon the happening of a future contingency or the action of another legislative body, but that is not the case at hand. Further, the Pennsylvania case relied on authority which held — to make it analagous to the Maryland act — that an act which becomes law at the time it is signed — in this case, March 31, 1953, — does not repeal a prior law until the date the later act becomes effective — in this case, June 1, 1953. Again, there can be no quarrel with this rulé of law, but again it is not the case which is to be decided. Here the entire act took effect June 1, 1953, to apply prospectively to the ensuing oyster season. It repealed specifically the provisions as to the past oyster season, and as to them June 1, 1953, was the deadline. As the Court said in State v. Clifton, 177 Md. 572: “It is a general rule of the common law that after a statute creating a crime has been repealed no punishment can be imposed for any violation of it committed while it was in force.” I think that after June 1, 1953, there was no statute applicable to the oyster season which had ended several months before, and that the appellants could not be charged with an offense alleged to have been committed after that date. The indictment should have been quashed.
I am authorized by Chief Judge Bruñe to say that he concurs in these views.