Court Opinion

ID: 9742788
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 21:20:22.073281+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:36.656232
License: Public Domain

MORGAN, Justice
(concurring in part, dissenting in part).
I agree that if the State failed to request a change of venue the Seventh Circuit Court for Custer County had jurisdiction to dispose of the matter.
From that point on, I disagree. The 1921 enactment and the 1927 enactment authorized the Custer State Park Board to lease cabin sites on a term basis, the latter prescribing the grounds for cancellation of such leases. 1921 S.D.Sess.Laws ch. 188, § 1; 1927 S.D.S.S.Revised, ch. 12, § 8. These statutes affirmatively set forth a legislative policy, or intent, to encourage the erection of summer cottages or homes. There has been no affirmative expression of a legislative intent to renounce this policy. The majority adopts the State’s argument that the 1966 Legislature impliedly renounced the policy. To require the per-mittees to tear down valuable properties upon the whims and caprice of an administrative agency on such a speculative interpretation, while admitting that the agency can turn around and issue other cabin permits in the future, eschews all common sense.
Even assuming the legislative intent, which I do not for one moment, the trial court determined that Kenneth Harrold holds a 99-year lease. The legislature cannot constitutionally impair that contract. S.D. Const., art. VI, § 12; Lee v. Clark Implement Co., 31 S.D. 581, 141 N.W. 986 (1913); State ex rel. Waldo v. Fylpaa, 3 S.D. 586, 54 N.W. 599 (1893). The majority butters this over with the theory that the permittees “voluntarily” waived their right to complain when they signed permits with fixed termination dates. In the first place, this theory was never proposed to the trial court, nor to this court on appeal, and in the second place, it flies in the face of the record. The record contains the affidavits *410of permittees which allege and evidence that they were coerced to either sign restrictive permits or move off.
It appears to me that the trial court erred in granting the summary judgment in this case because there are material issues of fact with respect to the possibility of 99-year leases and the right of succession of the present permittees, as the State suggests.