Court Opinion

ID: 9865849
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 22:02:44.276767+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:56:50.307745
License: Public Domain

*620Horton, C. J.:
I dissent from the judgment ordered, not, however, upon the ground of the interstate character of insurance as urged by the attorney for the appellants, but because of my reasons for my dissent in the case of In re Pinkney, 47 Kas. 89. The subject of an act must be clearly expressed in its title. Chapter 257 is penal in its nature. The title thereof should not be extended by construction. Common or popular words are to be understood in a popular sense. In the construction of statutes, a word which has two significations should ordinarily receive that meaning which is generally given to it. Considering the provisions of the constitution concerning titles to bills or acts, and the foregoing cardinal rules of construction, I do not think the word “ trade,” used in the title of said chapter 257, Laws of 1889, indicates or includes, in any public sense or as generally understood, lawyers, doctors, insurance agents, or insurance companies. When I speak of the profession or business of a lawyer, a doctor, or an insurance agent, I do not say he is a trader or tradesman, or is in trade, nor that he is carrying on a trade, or doing well in his trade. I have never heard any person, in referring to the success of a lawyer, a doctor, or an insurance agent, say of either, that he is prosperous in his trade, or that he is doing well in carrying on his trade, or that he is an energetic trader. Indeed, I never have heard insurance agents spoken of as “ in trade.”
I think the decisions referred to in the foregoing opinion, except the one of this court in 47 Kas. 89, all tend to show that insurance is not “trade.” The supreme court of the United States, in the case of Paul v. Virginia, cited, say insurance policies “are not subjects of trade and barter, offered in the market as something having an existence and value independent of the parties to them; they are not commodities to be shipped or forwarded from one state to another and then put up for sale.” (8 Wall. 168.)