Court Opinion

ID: 9552234
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 19:06:53.507582+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:25:51.408331
License: Public Domain

Hale, J.
(dissenting) — The court, I think, has read into the abandoned property law a statute of limitations where none existed nor was intended. The legislature omitted from the Uniform Disposition of Unclaimed Property Act, RCW 63.28, a section on time limitations, Uniform Disposition of Unclaimed Property Act, § 16, 9A U.L.A. 435 (1965), for the obvious reason that it did not deem it necessary to *968restate applicable law. Legislative policy relieving the state from statutes of limitation has already been declared, for by express statute claims or actions by the state generally are not to be rendered unenforceable solely by lapse of time. RCW 4.16.160.2 To include section 16 would thus be superfluous. The courts should not require the legislature to affirmatively negate a statute of limitations in order to be sure that none will be applied. In finding a statute of limitations here, the court, I suspect has violated a cardinal principle of statutory construction that a court cannot read into a statute something which it may conceive the legislature unintentionally left out. Department of Labor & Indus. v. Cook, 44 Wn.2d 671, 269 P.2d 962 (1954).
The legislature is presumed to be familiar with existing statutes and with court decisions construing them. Graffell v. Honeysuckle, 30 Wn.2d 390, 191 P.2d 858 (1948); Ropo, Inc. v. Seattle, 67 Wn.2d 574, 409 P.2d 148 (1965). It was thus aware of RCW 4.16.160 which declares that the state is not subject to a statute of limitations. A statute should be read as a whole and with a purpose to ascertain the legislative intent; strained and absurd consequences are to be avoided. Martin v. Department of Social Sec., 12 Wn.2d 329, 121 P.2d 394 (1942). The law presumes that the legislature does not enact vain or useless legislation. Guinness v. State, 40 Wn.2d 677, 246 P.2d 433 (1952). And, in applying a statute, the courts should keep an eye out for its spirit or purpose, too. State ex rel. Thorp v. Devin, 26 Wn.2d 333, 173 P.2d 994 (1946).
So clearly stated and straightforward a statute as this *969one needs no extrinsic interpretive aids. Thus, the court should read the whole statute as written and avoid making crucial inferences from what was not enacted. When the entire Uniform Disposition of Unclaimed Property Act (RCW 63.28) is read in this fashion, unclouded and untrammeled by the application of interpretive devices, the legislative intent is apparent. The statute definitively declares that every holder of abandoned property must report to the Department of Revenue all of the property held; and supply other pertinent and detailed information to the department. RCW 63.28.170. Reporting and delivery are mandatory upon the holder (RCW 63.28.190), and the department as an agency of the state thereafter holds the property for the true owner. The department is not required to serve a demand upon the holder to evoke any of the holder’s duties, but full responsibility for compliance with the statute falls automatically on him.
That the legislature did not limit the time within which the claims of the state or owner against the holder would expire or be defeated nor adopt what is further described as section 16 of the Uniform Disposition of Unclaimed Property Act means only that it did not intend to do so. The omission — if it is to be so regarded — should be deemed intentional, and shows, if anything, a purpose to place no limitation upon the time in which the state and true owner may enforce their respective rights in unclaimed and abandoned property. Thus, the legislative intent must be ascertained from what the statute says, not from what it might have said.
The court, however, has made an assumption that the legislature could or might have done something else and given that assumption overriding significance; it has taken nonlaw and treated it as the controlling interpretive key to the law as enacted. This method of statutory construction, I fear, does not bode well for other enactments. How will future legislatures and their codifiers preserve for us the nonlaw, the imaginary sections of statutes which could have been but were never enacted? How lay to rest the ghosts of laws never passed?
*970• In enacting RCW 63.28, the legislature recognized that abandoned and unclaimed property should, as a matter of public policy, be brought under the control, safekeeping and interim use of the sovereign state for possible eventual return to its true owner. It adopted a comprehensive legislative scheme to carry out this policy applicable in this case to legal entities which, in the ordinary course of doing business, inevitably accumulate in their custody and control substantial property of others in money or money’s worth. Pacific Northwest Bell; Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific; Great Northern; Northern Pacific; Spokane, Portland & Seattle; and Union Pacific all receive on deposit or have left with them by their customers and clients substantial quantities of money and property which ultimately never are claimed by their true owners. The statute generally, in addition, covers banking organizations, savings and loan corporations, credit unions, financial organizations, life insurance companies, decedent estates and trusts, public authorities, industrial loan companies, public utilities, transportation and storage companies — in short, nearly every kind and type of business or enterprise that in the ordinary course of doing business holds the money or property of another either as a depositary, bailee, trustee, fiduciary or agent. RCW 63.28.070. Not only is this a comprehensive statute, but one designed to operate equitably. It accomplishes, I think, precisely what the legislature intended, i.e., to deal fairly and effectively with property received in the course of business and later abandoned or left unclaimed. Taken as written, the statute preserves the rights of the true owner, gives the state on behalf of all of the people the use of and benefit of the property until the true owner appears and establishes his claim to it, and relieves the custodian or holder of liability for its further preservation and protection. It contains no escape clause by which one who has acquired possession or control over the abandoned and unclaimed property of another may succeed to ownership solely by lapse of time.
But the majority view, reading a statute of limitations into the act, defeats these obvious legislative intentions. *971Under the court’s interpretation, many owners will lose their property solely by lapse of time; the state will lose the use and benefit of the abandoned property; and the holders will achieve a substantial unearned enrichment.
Among other results, the court has, I think, vitiated the legislature’s intent to remedy some noticeable defects in the common law. Obviously, the legislature has concluded that the common-law rules governing abandoned property failed to give adequate protection to the true owner and fostered unjust and unearned enrichments in the holder, and at the same time left the holder or bailee doubtful and uncertain concerning his liability for preservation of the property and duty to the owner. Accordingly, Laws of 1955, ch. 385, p. 1619, RCW 63.28, was intended, among other things, to modify the common-law rules governing the disposition of such property and, so far as the law can do it, remedy their inadequacies.
Read as written, without judicial embellishment, the enactment admirably corrects the deficiencies of the common law. It provides that abandoned and unclaimed property must be turned over to the state; the state receives the property, not as an owner but primarily as trustee for the true owner and secondarily for the use 'and benefit of all the people. As trustee under the statute, the state has the use of the property until such time as the true owner finally proves his claim to it. All people, through the state as common trustee, thus will have the use and benefit of the abandoned property until the owner elects to claim it. Instead of suffering a forfeiture generated by lapse of time, inadvertence, incompetence or ignorance, as is likely to happen under the common law, the true owner’s rights in the property may ultimately be asserted and when he claims his property it will be restored to him. I doubt that the courts could devise a fairer or more effective set of remedies and duties.
The particular segment of proposed legislation described in the court’s opinion as section 16 of the Uniform Disposition of Unclaimed Property Act,3 while possibly recom*972mended for adoption by an advisory but nonlegislative or nonjudicial body, in my opinion, was unnecessary to accomplish the legislative intent, and had it been enacted would amount to no more than a redundancy. That the Department of Revenue in rule UCP 1 saw fit to incorporate this suggested section in its departmental regulation is neither here nor there for the legislature has included in its regular statute of limitations (RCW 4.16.040, et seq.) a provision that the state is not subject to a statute of limitations, reading:
[T]here shall be no limitation to actions brought in the name or for the benefit of the state, and no claim of right predicated upon the lapse of time shall ever he asserted against the state . . .
(Italics mine.) RCW 4.16.160.
Accordingly, for the recovery of abandoned and unclaimed property, no lapse of time gives the holder of unclaimed property any rights in that property superior to the rights of the state. RCW 4.16.160. The time intervals set forth in the unclaimed and abandoned property statute (RCW 63.28.080-.150) are designed not to set up or alter limitations upon the time within which actions to acquire possession of abandoned property must be brought but rather to fix with reasonable certainty the minimum period of time within which property shall be deemed abandoned and thus, without exception, to be delivered over to the State of Washington for further safekeeping or deposit. Although the statute places no limit whatever upon the time within which the state may require delivery and demand custody, it does prescribe precise periods after which the bailee or depositary must deliver the property over to the state. Property under the statutes must now be turned over to the state as abandoned property, but *973without fear of successful legal reprisal from the true owner, as follows: RCW 63.28.080, property held by banking and financial organizations, 12 years; RCW 63.28.090, property held by life insurance companies, 7 years; RCW 63.28.100, property held by utilities, 7 years; RCW 63.28.110, property held by business associations, 7 years; RCW 63.28.120, property held in course of dissolution of business association, 2 years after date of final distribution; RCW 63.28.130, property held by fiduciaries, 7 years; RCW 63.28 .140, property held by a court or public officer, 7 years; and RCW 63.28.150, all property not specifically covered, 7 years.
To protect the true owner against forfeitures, the act creates a defeasible but beneficial right in the state requiring that every holder who, according to statute, delivers property into the hands of the Department of Revenue must retain records concerning his transactions with the owner or bailor for a period of time from the date the property is delivered to the department. RCW 63.28.210. After such delivery, the true owner will receive no income or increments from the property, and the original holder and the state will not be liable for either. RCW 63.28.220. All property shall be converted to money by sale by the Department of Revenue in such a way as to bring an optimum price (RCW 63.28.230) and then funds sufficient to meet all claims go into a state controlled trust fund (RCW 63.28.240) to be available for use by the state until reclaimed by the true owner. RCW 63.28.250. Only when it is shown that the owner “has died and that no other person is entitled to it” does it escheat. RCW 63.28.280. Thus, the statute as drafted is nicely designed to preserve the true owner’s rights, obviate forfeitures and prevent unjust enrichment.
Rule 16, adopted by the Department of Revenue, is thus surplusage and not essential to maintain the state’s claim as trustee to abandoned property. As with so many other regulations promulgated by administrative agencies, it is a rule designed largely to leave the department’s official position free from doubt; doing no more than restate what a statute declares — that there shall be no time limit within *974which the state’s claims become inferior to the claims of property holders.
The holder’s duties are made doubly clear for the statute not only categorically places all holders of abandoned property under an affirmative duty of reporting and .delivering such property to the state, but makes it a criminal offense to fail to do either. RCW 63.28.310. A statute of limitations incorporated into the statute enables a wily bailee to profit by his offense, or secure a windfall — two eventualities the abandoned property act as written was, I think, designed to avoid. If by one means or another the holder can manage to keep the property until the statute of limitations has run against the true owner’s claim, it will, under the court’s interpretation, be his — a result, I think, the statute was intended to prevent.
I would, therefore, reverse.
Hamilton, C.J., and Hunter, J., concur with Halé, J.
May 24, 1971. Petition for rehearing denied.

“The limitations prescribed in this chapter shall apply to actions brought in the name or for the benefit of any county or other municipality or quasimunicipality of the state, in the same manner as to actions brought by private parties: Provided, That there shall be no limitation to actions brought in the name or for the benefit of the state, and no claim of right predicated upon the lapse of time shall ever be asserted against the state: And further provided, That no previously existing statute of limitations shall be interposed as a defense to any action brought in the name or for the benefit of the state, although such statute may have rim and become fully operative as a defense prior to February 27, 1903, nor shall any cause of action against the state be predicated upon such a statute.” RCW 4.16.160.

“The expiration oí any period of time specified by statute or court *972order, during which an action or proceeding may be commenced or enforced to obtain payment of a claim for money or recovery of property, shall not prevent the money or property from being presumed abandoned property, nor affect any duty to file a report required by this act or to pay or deliver abandoned property to the [State Treasurer].” Uniform Disposition of Unclaimed Property Act, § 16, 9A U.L.A. 435 (1965).