Court Opinion

ID: 9706325
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 01:40:31.18167+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:21.614935
License: Public Domain

*607HARRELL, Judge,
Concurring, joined by RAKER and BATTAGLIA, JJ.
I concur in the Court’s opinion and judgment. I write separately to comment on the appropriateness of relying on newspaper articles as sources for divining legislative intent. (See op. at 602 n. 3, and 604). Generally, it is unwise for courts to rely on the fruit of the Fourth Estate1 in such endeavors. As apparent justification for recourse to such in the present case, Judge Wilner notes that, at the time of the enactment of the 1970 law, “[t]he Maryland legislature had not yet begun [regularly] to preserve committee files or to require written committee reports, so there is no official legislative history” of the 1970 version of the statute at issue here. For that reason, the present situation may well be one of the rare occasions when it is appropriate for a court to consider, to some degree, relatively contemporaneous relevant newspaper articles in ascertaining the legislative intent of an enactment of comparable vintage. Nonetheless, even when appropriate to do so, the use of newspaper accounts should be approached with caution and selectivity.
I subscribe generally to what Judge Cole stated in 1983 in his dissent in Hornbeck v. Somerset County Bd. of Ed., 295 Md. 597, 458 A.2d 758 (1983), where, in response to the majority’s reliance on newspaper accounts of the Maryland Constitutional Convention of 1867 in interpreting a provision of the Maryland Constitution (Hornbeck, 295 Md. at 626-28, 458 A.2d at 773-74), he wrote: “Newspaper articles [] are hardly the most reliable sources for extrapolating legislative intent; they certainly are not adequate substitutes for cogent *608analysis of the purpose of a provision as discerned from its historical context and basic goals.” Hornbeck, 295 Md. at 661, 458 A.2d at 792 (emphasis in original). Judge Cole and I are not alone in our skepticism.
Jack Schwartz and Amanda Conn, in their article The Court of Appeals at the Cocktail Party: The Use and Misuse of Legislative History, 54 Md. L.Rev. 432, 437 (1995), warned generally that:
The Court of Appeals has gone awry by failing to make clear that not all legislative history has equal value in the court’s exercise of assigning probabilities to various statutory readings. Too often the court has not differentiated the reliable from the unreliable, evidence that genuinely might reflect the legislative purpose underlying the enacted bill from evidence that reflects little more than someone’s effort to gain leverage in the process. By indiscriminately assigning essentially the same weight to each form of legislative history, the court makes an error of the same type as affording legislative history too much or too little weight altogether.
Id. at 437. They concluded that, in order “to be the faithful investigator of legislative purpose that it claims to be, the [C]ourt should discard its fascination with potentially misleading scraps in the legislative history and focus instead on the clues that matter.” Id. at 465.
A major treatise writer on the subject of statutory construction cautions against the use of unofficial sources in aid of ascertaining legislative intent. “Statements from nonofficial sources having no special connection with the preparation and proposal of a bill are not generally considered for interpretation purposes.” Sutherland Stat. Const. § 48.11 (5th Ed.). Sutherland points out that “interpretations of legislation made by those lacking statutory authority to do so are given less weight.” Id. § 49.06. Nonetheless, he concedes that “the meaning attached by people affected by an act may have an important bearing on how it is construed.” Id.
*609A number of courts have disparaged reliance on newspaper articles in similar contexts. In Hulcher v. Commonwealth, 39 Va.App. 601, 575 S.E.2d 579, 583, n. 3 (2003), the Virginia Court of Appeals declined “appellant’s invitation to consider newspaper and journal articles written contemporaneously with the passage of the [ ] statute as an appropriate source of ‘legislative history’.” The Kansas Court of Appeals, in Mitchell v. Rayl, 8 Kan.App.2d 690, 665 P.2d 1117, 1119 (1983), expressed its unwillingness “to accept a newspaper article as conclusive proof of legislative intent.” The Supreme Court of Wisconsin opined “we do not find persuasive the after-the-fact media reports upon which the dissent relies.... Just as ex post facto explanations from legislators cannot be relied upon to determine legislative intent, ex post facto newspaper articles cannot provide guidance as to legislative intent.” R.U.R.A.L. v. Public Service Comm’n of Wisconsin, 239 Wis.2d 660, 619 N.W.2d 888, 904, n. 20 (2000). The Supreme Court of Vermont expressed a similar view, stating that “comments made by an attorney for the Department of Public Service to a newspaper reporter after the legislation passed are in no way relevant to the question of legislative intent.” In re Pet. of Quechee Serv. Co., Inc., 166 Vt. 50, 690 A.2d 354, 366, n. 7 (1996). The Supreme Court of California stated that “articles in newspapers or other unofficial publications cannot be considered as statements of legislative intent.” Takahashi v. Fish & Game Comm’n, 30 Cal.2d 719, 185 P.2d 805, 813 (1947). The Minnesota Tax Court recently held that newspaper articles are not evidence of legislative intent because “none of the individuals were involved in the drafting or passage of the legislation, their statements were not made contemporaneously with the passage of the act, and the statements do not indicate that the individuals had any responsibility for the law’s enactment.” ILHC of Eagan, LLC v. County of Dakota, 2003 WL 21108385 at *4, 2003 Minn. Tax Lexis 22 at *11-12 (Minn.Tax 2003).
Courts that have employed news accounts in their search for legislative intent are mindful of the inherent pitfalls and parse narrowly the appropriateness of the circumstances in *610which they consider the articles. Certain federal courts have accepted newspaper articles as evidence bearing on legislative intent only when the relevant legislative body or bodies did not maintain records of official legislative history. See May v. Cooperman, 572 F.Supp. 1561, 1564 (D.N.J.1983), but see dissent in May v. Cooperman, 780 F.2d 240, 264 (3d Cir.1985) (commenting on the use of newspaper articles, Judge Becker observed that “the opinions and perceptions of the community are shaped by many factors____ Such perceptions are thus unreliable indicators of what the legislative purpose of the statute in fact was”); Loewen v. Turnipseed, 488 F.Supp. 1138, 1149 (N.D.Miss.1980). Another federal court admitted newspaper articles not for the truth of the information contained in them, but solely for the purpose of showing that they were published. U.S. v. Halifax County Bd. of Ed., 314 F.Supp. 65, 75 (E.D.N.C.1970).
A number of State courts have treated newspaper articles similarly. In Fox v. Bd. of Ed. of the Township of West Milford, 93 N.J.Super. 544, 226 A.2d 471 (Law Div.1967), the court stated that “the legislative language is undoubtedly ambiguous, and requires resort to legislative history, contemporaneous construction and administrative interpretation to shed light on the true meaning and intent of the statute.” 226 A.2d at 480 (citing favorably to a newspaper article issued contemporaneous to the statute in question). The Supreme Court of Arizona, after determining that the plain meaning rule of statutory interpretation was inapplicable, opined that “to find legislative intent, we consider the context of the statute, the language used, the subject matter, the historical background, the effects and consequences, and the spirit and purpose of the law.” Arizona Newspapers Ass’n v. Superior Court, 143 Ariz. 560, 694 P.2d 1174, 1176 (1985) (relying on newspaper accounts to show information was published).
Where, as in the present case, there was no formal documentation of the legislative history maintained by the Maryland General Assembly or Governor at the time, I can accept the Court’s careful and thoughtful recourse to relatively contemporaneous newspaper accounts of relevance to the legisla*611tion when it was under consideration and when it was enacted. Moreover, Judge Wilner’s use of the articles he refers to serves only as context in the Court’s analysis. Understanding the public crisis that animated the legislative initiative in 1970 (see op. at 602 n. 3) appears to be legitimate background information. The Court’s analysis does not depend solely on these accounts in assigning to the statute the meaning it does. The bulk of the Court’s analysis, apart from the newspaper accounts, represents the type of “cogent analysis of the purpose of a provision as discerned from its historical context and basic goals,” as envisioned by Judge Cole in his Iiombeck dissent.
Judge RAKER and Judge BATTAGLIA join in this concurring opinion.

. The "Fourth Estate” is the press, or journalists in general. The term is commonly attributed to the historian Thomas Carlyle:
[Edmund] Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters’ Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all.... Printing ... is equivalent to Democracy.... Whoever can speak, speaking now to the whole nation, becomes a power, a branch of government, with inalienable weight in lawmaking, in all acts of authority.
Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-worship, And The Heroic In History (Lecture V, 1840), available at http://gutenberg.net/(Project Gutenberg).