Court Opinion

ID: 9773529
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 17:48:19.394056+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:54.636250
License: Public Domain

Minor W. Millwee, Justice, dissenting. The majority opinion takes as its touchstone rule of construction the axiom that tax exemptions are never presumed, and that a grant of an exemption must be made out beyond a reasonable doubt. This is undoubtedly true, but, while exemption clauses are to be construed most strongly against the taxpayer, they are not to be so strictly construed as to defeat or destroy the intent and purpose of the enactment, and no strained construction will be given them that will effect that end. State v. Wertheimer Bag Co., 253 Ala. 124, 127, 43 So. 2d 824. It has been said that “If the act expresses the intent to exempt certain property, judicial construction is not appropriate. to defeat the exemption.” In re Bendheim’s Estate, 100 Cal. App. 2d 398, 223 P. 2d 874. The ultimate consideration in all cases of statutory interpretation is the intention of the legislature, and this intention must primarily be determined from the language of the statute itself. McKinley, Commissioner of Labor, v. R. L. Payne & Son Lumber Company, 200 Ark. 1114, 143 S. W. 2d 38. The majority opinion relies strongly upon the much cited case of Georgia Warehouse Co. v. Jolley, 172 Ga. 172, 157 S. E. 276, in which the court said: “The term 'cotton’ is universally recognized as referring to something which can be manufactured so as to be of use to a civilized man. So we are of the opinion the word 'processing’ means a process in manufacturing cotton after it has been put in a marketable form by ginning, which is merely the separation of the cotton from its seed, and seed cotton is not referred to in the constitutional amendment.” It is difficult to see how the Georgia court can thus arbitrarily draw a line in the chain of evolution from the boll to the bolt of cloth by saying that before a certain point the cotton is only being prepared to be processed rather than undergoing a processing. Perhaps the reasoning of the case can be explained by the court’s express statement that the purpose of the Constitutional amendment under consideration in that case was to encourage manufacturing; the opinion considers the word “processing” in the light of “manufacturing” rather than ascribing to it any meaning of its own. In this case, appellee argues that the word “or” separating “manufacturing” and “processing” gives each word meaning uncolored by the connotations of the other. But even accepting the rationale of the Georgia Warehouse case, still it seems undeniable that “processing” is a far less inclusive term and need not embrace near tbe scope of activity of “manufacturing”, and tbe Georgia court’s bolding, in effect, that tbe terms are synonymous seems strained indeed. Tbe problem of tbe construction of this statute is a difficult one, for as is said in Kennedy v. State Board of Assessment and Review, 224 Ia. 405, 276 N. W. 25: “Technically speaking any change, chemical or otherwise is a process . . .”, and almost certainly the legislature did not intend to exempt from taxation every facility in the steps from seed to end product. Under such a theory, ridiculous results could be reached, for water, fertilizer, farm implements, etc., all play a part in the early development of crops which are eventually used by manufacturers and processors. In the Kennedy case, supra, the court recognizes this problem, and goes on to say: “ . . . but I do not believe the legislature intended so strained a construction as to call the developing of crops by means of fertilizer a processing. . . The growing of the article is not in the common use of the term a processing, but some change in the article after it is grown by means of special treatment is a processing.” This would seem a much more logical place to draw the line than that set forth in the Georgia Warehouse case, supra. In Assessors of Boston v. Commissioner of Corporations and Taxation et al., 323 Mass. 730, 747, 84 N. E. 2d 129, cited in the majority opinion, in discussing a wool scouring company’s nature as a manufactory, the court said: “If the scouring were done by a textile manufacturer in his own factory, it would be difficult to say that those employed in the scouring department were not engaged in manufacturing. If the manufacturer let the work in that department out to an independent contractor to be performed in the manufacturer’s factory, the insurer of the manufacturer could not avoid the payment of workmen’s compensation to an employee of the independent contractor injured while performing a part of or a process in the trade or business of the manufacturer. In other words, the scouring of the wool is an essential and integral part of the manufacturing of textiles. The scouring does more than merely remove foreign matter from the wool. It removes a portion of the natural elements contained in the fibers. To say that manufacturing does not start until after the wool has been scoured does not seem to be a realistic view of the situation. It would be more accurate to say that scouring is the first step in transforming the wool into a new finished product. We think manufacturing begins with the scouring.” The rationale of this case might very well be applied to cotton ginning in holding that it is manufacturing, for there were experts who testified that the cotton cannot be used for manufacturing until it has been ginned, and certainly ginning “removes a portion of the natural elements contained in the fibers.” But our statute would not seem to necessitate that this court go that far in order to uphold the award to appellee, for even viewing “processing” in the light of “manufacturing”, still the terms are not synonymous; indeed, to hold them so would b¿ to render “processing” a meaningless redundancy. To the contrary, our exemption would seem to be satisfied with something less than manufacturing; what this “something less” is, is the only remaining problem for consideration. It would seem to the writer that a common sense point of distinction between “manufacturing” and “processing”, viewing the latter in the light of the former, is that manufacturing is composed of various processes, but that other operations are composed of processes also, and that the legislature intended to exempt the activity which is a process in manufacture and not to exempt the processes in other forms of operation. Under this construction, cotton ginning is clearly a process in manufacturing. In this connection it would naturally be supposed that the members of the industry would have a fair notion as to what they were engaged in. As stated previously, expert witnesses testified that cotton can only be used for manufacturing after ginning. Appellee introduced into evidence many trade journals, bulletins and pamphlets dealing with cotton culture which show that the words “process” and “processing” are commonly used in reference to the ginning of cotton by cotton men. Indeed, it is difficult for anyone to discuss the activity under consideration without the repeated use of these words. Thus the intention of the legislature, determined from a reasonable interpretation of the words of the exempting statute, would seem to be to exempt from taxation machinery • used in cotton ginning. Such was the interpretation placed on the statute by the appellant until the instant controversy arose. Of course, the wisdom of the exemption was a matter for the Legislature — and not this court. In the final paragraph of the opinion, the majority hold that “ginning is not processing or manufacturing”, leaving this writer to speculate as to just what ginning possibly could be and also what processing and manufacturing are. Prom this holding, I respectfully dissent. Justices McPaddin and Robinson join in this dissent.