Court Opinion

ID: 9680314
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 07:29:08.947424+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:27.729407
License: Public Domain

MONTGOMERY, Judge
(dissenting).
The effect of the majority opinion is to hold that KRS 382,270 and 382.330 have been repealed as to liens in the motor vehicle branch of the personal property financing field. The point of this dissent is that it is not believed that such repeal was ever contemplated or intended by the Legislature.
It is pointed out in the majority opinion that the Act adopting the Uniform Commercial Code “repealed several chapters and sections of the Kentucky Revised Statutes by specific reference.” Specifically, KRS 382.680, 690, 700, 710, and 720 of Kentucky Revised Statutes Chapter 382, of which KRS 382.270 and 382.330 are a part, were repealed. It is hard to believe that the drafters of the Uniform Commercial Code legislation would have overlooked the two sections mentioned if it had been intended that they should be repealed.
The usual catch-all repeal section was omitted. Thus, there is no repeal of the two sections by specific provisions of the Act. This leaves repeal by implication as the only possibility.
Repeal by implication is not favored. Jefferson County Fiscal Court v. Grauman, 281 Ky. 608, 136 S.W.2d 1102. An act will not be construed as repealing a prior act unless such an intention clearly appears or unless the repugnancy is so clear as to admit of no other reasonable construction. Demunbrun v. Browning, 311 Ky. 71, 223 S.W. 2d 372; Benjamin v. Goff, 314 Ky. 639, 236 S.W.2d 905. The rule is that a general statute is not to be construed as repealing a prior particular statute unless there is some express reference to the previous statute on the subject or unless the two statutes are necessarily inconsistent. Commonwealth v. Cain, 14 Bush. 525, 77 Ky. 525; City of Louisville v. Louisville Water Company, 105 Ky. 754, 49 S.W. 766, 20 Ky. Law Rep. 1529; Mauget v. Plummer, 107 Ky. 41, 52 S.W. 844, 21 Ky.Law Rep. 641; Raubold v. Commonwealth, 54 S.W. 17, 21 Ky.Law Rep. 1125. Under the principles embodied in these decisions, KRS 382.270 and 382.330 cannot be considered as having been repealed and should be held to be in full force and effect.
I am fortified in this conclusion by the realization that the worthy purposes of these two statutes are rendered no less worthy by the enactment of the Uniform Commercial Code. Further, the execution by acknowledgement requirement in similar instruments has been retained by enactments of the 1958 and 1960 General Assemblies which evidence legislative recognition of its worthwhile purpose. See KRS 186.195(4) (a) and 382.340. The first named statute was enacted by the same General Assembly that enacted the Uniform Commercial Code and was re-enacted by the succeeding General Assembly, thus showing a legislative intent, if there be such .a thing, that it is not repugnant to the provisions of the Uniform Commercial Code. It is concluded, therefore, that the worthy purposes *389of KRS 382.270 and 382.330 are not repugnant to the provisions of the Uniform Commercial Code, that the statutes are in harmony with the provisions of the Code, and that the benefit derived by a small segment of our society does not justify their repeal.