Court Opinion

ID: 9586902
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:16:19.513474+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:55.474787
License: Public Domain

Duckworth, C. J.,
dissenting. Although fully realizing that a reversal would likely cause those having rights under judgments -in that county to feel insecure and to wonder if siich rights are impaired, and, also, being familiar with the authorities upon which the opinion is based, nevertheless, these undesirable consequences of a reversal are infinitely less important than the upholding and preservation of provisions of our official Code which was enacted into law by the legislature. To repudiate plain and *238unambiguous provisions of that Code upon the sole ground that an act of the legislature which was approved eight years before the act adopting the Code, as is done here by the majority, destroys the reliability of the Code and causes laymen, lawyers, judges, and the Justices of this Court to hesitate to rely upon our Code for fear that there is some unknown act, antedating the Code, which conflicts with its provisions. This chaotic condition is created despite the uniform decisions to the effect that the action of the legislature in adopting the Code is the same as all other enactments, and, by it, the Code is enacted as one law; and the equally well-established rule that, when there is irreconcilable conflict in enactments, the latest act controls. Application of these rules demands a holding that the Code, enacted in 1935, controls over a conflicting act of 1927.
' I am authorized by Mr. Justice Hawkins to state that he concurs in this dissent.