Court Opinion

ID: 9632128
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 11:03:54.560728+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:08:08.972697
License: Public Domain

RABINOWITZ, Justice,
(dissenting in part).
I disagree with the majority’s holding that materiality is not an essential element of the crime of perjury under Alaska law. In reaching this conclusion, the majority has departed from the rule of statutory construction which was adopted in City of Fairbanks v. Schaible.1 There, in regard to a municipality’s liability for torts, we said:
It then became the law in Alaska by reason of the well established rule that a statute adopted from another state, which has been construed by that state’s highest court, is presumed to be adopted with the construction thus placed upon it.
By the act of June 6, 1900, Congress made further provision for a civil government for Alaska. This was a far more comprehensive statute than the act of 1884. It did not merely incorporate by reference the general laws of Oregon. It spelled out the law in detail in a criminal code, a code of criminal procedure, a political code, a code of civil procedure, and a civil code. According to Thomas Carter, who compiled and annotated these laws in 1900, ‘The codes were mainly copied from the statutes of the State of Oregon, and to the end that adjudications by the Supreme Court of that state might remain as directly in point as possible, changes were sparingly made in the text of sections.’
The portion of the 1900 act which is pertinent here is section 334. It provided that an action may be maintained against any incorporated town, school district, or other public corporation of like character in the district of Alaska, in its corporate character, and within the scope of its authority, ‘or for an injury to the rights of the plaintiff arising from some act or omission of such public corporation.’ Except for lack of reference to a ‘county’ (there being no county form of government in Alaska), the quoted language was almost identical with the like provision in the Oregon statute of 1862. Having been taken from Oregon laws, it is presumed that it was adopted with the interpretation that had been placed upon it by the Oregon Supreme Court prior to 1900. And since this language has never been changed in Alaska and was part of the law existing at the time of Mrs. Schaible’s death, it is logical to hold that it had the same meaning then that it had when construed by decisions of the Oregon Supreme Court between 1869 and 1886.
*61In my opinion Schaible is dispositive of the materiality issue in the case at bar. Here the perjury section of the 1899 Act of Congress “was almost identical with the like provision” in the laws of Oregon.2 Prior to the 1899 congressional enactment, the Supreme Court of Oregon had consistently construed the Oregon perjury statute as requiring the element of materiality.3 To my knowledge, this same construction had been accorded Alaska’s perjury statute by Alaska’s territorial courts and state trial courts until the superior court’s ruling in the case at bar. Before holding that AS 11.30.010(a), with its severe penalty, is a false swearing statute, I believe a stronger showing should have been made that the Schaible canon of statutory construction is inapplicable. I concur in all other aspects of the court’s opinion.

. 375 P.2d 201, 207-208 (Alaska 1962) (footnotes omitted).

. Law of Oct. 19, 1864 § 598; Hill’s Ann. Laws of Oregon § 825 (1892).

.State v. Witham, 6 Or. 366, 367 (1877).