Court Opinion

ID: 9629017
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 09:35:51.712703+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:07:14.447119
License: Public Domain

MR. JUSTICE ANDERSON:
(dissenting).
Less than two years ago this court said that the constitutional prohibition against lotteries meant that the legislature could not authorize “widespread pestilent lotteries.” State ex rel. Harrison v. Deniff, 127 Mont. 109, 245 Pac. (2d) 140.
In the case now before it, this court announces the rule to be that "the better view is to condemn the lottery as such regardless of its widespread distribution or pestilence. ’ ’
The defendant, Mr. Michael Tursich, admitted by the state to be an attendant at a Veterans of Foreign Wars Club in East Helena, Montana, had a right to rely upon the ruling made by this court in the earlier case because there is no pleading which suggests a widespread distribution or pestilence.
How it could be expected of Mr. Tursich to know what this court now thinks the constitutional framers meant when apparently the judges themselves did not know until the ruling was made in the instant case is somewhat beyond ordinary comprehension. Anyone, including the defendant, had a right to proceed under the former ruling.
Here the defendant, in effect, was charged with a crime apparently under a prior ruling of this court and now is forced to proceed to trial under an entirely different one. This practice *515seems to me to suggest a violation of the spirit, if not the letter, of both the Constitution of the United States and the State of Montana which provide that no ex post factor law shall be passed.
I think under the doctrine of stare decisis the lower court was right in sustaining the demurrer and entering judgment of dismissal insofar as the defendant is concerned.