Court Opinion

ID: 9548233
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:00:14.204852+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:18:40.321579
License: Public Domain

ROSSMAN, J.,
specially concurring.
I concur in the result reached by the foregoing decision and, likewise, in the principles of constitutional law which it employs, but I prefer to rest my opinion upon the grounds which I will now state.
Section 6 of the statute under attack (Oregon Laws, 1951, ch 211, ORS 607.405 to 607.435) makes provision for a notice which must be published before the agency begins a roundup. The notice is intended to apprise owners of horses which may be within the area where *459the roundup will occur that, unless they remove their horses from the area, the process contemplated by the statute will take its course. Manifestly, the provision for notice was prompted by a belief that a horse which is trespassing upon the public range should not be forfeited unless the owner was first afforded an opportunity to recover it. Trespass by the horse alone does not suffice, under the challenged statute, to forfeit the owner’s title to his horse.
OES 607.430 (Section 6) follows:
“Before any roundup of horses is held, the agency responsible for the roundup shall cause notices of such fact to be published in a newspaper of general circulation in the area in which the roundup is to be held. The notices shall be published not less than twice, at least 10 days prior to the time the roundup is to begin. The notices shall state:
(1) The date the roundup is to begin.
(2) The place where horses collected in the roundup are to be held.
(3) That persons claiming ownership of any such horses may retake possession of horses collected from the public lands which have been running at large without license or permit of any kind, upon payment of the established roundup charge.”
It will be observed that OES 607.430 requires that the notice shall include these three items of information: (1) “The date the roundup is to begin”; (2) “The place where horses collected in the roundup are to be held”; and (3) “That persons claiming ownership of any such horses may retake possession * * * upon payment of the established roundup charge ’ ’. The statute does not require the notice to include anything else. Presumably, if the notice appeared among the *460classified ads of a newspaper it would meet the statute’s demands.
It will he observed that the statute does not require that the published notice shall state the boundaries of the roundup area. Likewise, it does not demand that the published notice shall indicate’ the period within which the roundup will be conducted, say, three months or a half year, and confine the length of the roundup to that term. In the case at bar, the horses which are mentioned in the complaint were captured about three months after the publication occurred, and the contract afforded the men who conducted the operation one year within which to rid the range of horses.
Let us now consider the significance of the statute’s omission to direct that the published notice shall specify the locale where the roundup will occur. The statute requires the published notice to state “The place where horses collected in the roundup are to be held”. It may be that a designation of the place where the corral is located would afford horse owners an inkling as to the area from which the agency will remove horses. By resort to the notice which was employed in the instance out of which this case developed, we may be able to determine whether mention of the location of the corral gives an impression of the area where the roundup will be conducted.
The published notice began with the word ‘‘Notice’’. Then came a salutation which read as follows: “To the State of Oregon, Malheur County, and all owners of horses running at large on open range lands.” That salutation is so general that it cannot be deemed valid unless a notice which employed no salutation whatever would have been valid. It will be observed that the *461seventh and eighth words of the notice are “Malheur County”. Approximately one half of the area described in the published notice lies in Harney county, which is not mentioned in the notice at all. Hence, horse owners in Harney county could readily have been misled by the notice. We suggested the question a moment ago as to whether mention in the notice of “The place where horses collected in the roundup are to be held” might give an impression of the area where the roundup operations would take place. The notice which was published stated that the horses would be held at “the Craig Cochran ranch south of Rome and the Gene L. Krueger ranch four miles north of Crane.” Rome is a tiny place on the easterly line of the roundup border- and Crane is a small site upon the area’s westerly line. One who knew nothing about the place of the impending roundup except that the latter would use corrals near Crane and Rome would not know whether the operations would be conducted north, south, east or west of those places. Hence, designation in the published notice of “the place where horses collected in the roundup are to be held” would afford inadequate notice. Moreover, the statute does not require that “the place where horses collected in the roundup are to be held” must be located within the roundup area. If the corral is located outside the roundup area, the statute would not be violated, and, of course, mention of such a place would give no indication of the locale of the contemplated roundup.
During the oral argument, counsel stated that Malheur county is approximately the size of the state of Maryland. Harney county is about the same in area as Malheur county. The south boundary line of the roundup area extended one fourth across Harney county and all the way across Malheur county to the *462Idaho line. North and south, the area did not include the entire length of the two counties. Nevertheless, the seat of operations was large, and a year was allotted to the men who, under contract, gathered in the animals. The statute, as we have seen, affords notice to horse owners only through the provisions of ORS 607.430 which require nothing more than that a notice shall be published twice, not less than ten days before the roundup begins. The publication, so the statute reads, is to appear “in a newspaper of general circulation in the area in which the roundup is to be held.” That requirement exacts little and can readily be met. U. S. Mortgage & Trust Co. v. Marquam, 41 Or 391, 69 P 41. The fact that those who drafted the notice included in it more than required (a description of the roundup area) cannot lend validity to the statute. The administrative officials can never round out a defective statute by doing something more than it demands.
I have resorted to the published notice only for the purpose of showing what was done in the case at bar. The small piece of paper which was published ten days before the roundup began was the solitary notice under the statute’s terms to all owners of horses within the vast area covered by the impending roundup that, unless they returned their horses to their own ranches, they might forfeit them to the state. The roundup could have continued for a year, yet the few lines of the published notice would have been the sole means whereby horse owners would have been apprised that unless they brought in their horses the latter might be forever lost. Although, in the instant case, the notice designated the roundup area, the statute did not exact the description. It seems inconceivable that a published notice to horse owners could serve the purposes of this statute unless it included a description *463of the roundup area. Very likely the draftsmen of the statute inadvertently omitted the .requirement.
In determining the validity of the challenged statute, we must bear in mind the fact that it governs, not only the fate of wild horses which are owned by no individual, but also that operations authorized by it may affect adversely horses owned by ranchers. For example, estrays may be included among the animals that are driven into the roundup corral. Possibly the draftsmen of the act did not intend to sweep within its ambit estrays, but the latter can be excepted from the act’s embrace only by resort to unauthorized interpretation. It is clear that the author of the act foresaw that branded horses which are in private ownership may also be included in the roundup. The owners of such horses can obtain their return only by prompt action and the payment of the roundup charge if the horses were not licensed to enter upon the public range. Obviously, the low-flying airplanes which drive the animals toward the corral cannot distinguish between the licensed and the unlicensed horse, and, accordingly, licensed horses may be herded into the corral. It is true that the roundup contractors have no lawful right to include licensed horses in the herd, and that they render themselves liable to the owners whenever they do so, but, nevertheless, the owners are adversely affected whenever a licensed horse is rounded up and put to death. When that occurs the owner, instead of having a horse, has a claim against the contractors who conducted the roundup.
The foregoing indicates that when the act made provision for notice, the legislature must have realized that a notice, adequate to the situation which we have described, should be published. A notice which *464fails to indicate place and time appears to be inadequate.
The statute under attack contemplates that owners should be afforded an opportunity to remove their estrays and other trespassing horses from the public range before a roundup begins. It seems fair to assume that the legislature had in mind a notice which is adequate to its purpose. See Merrill on Notice, § 757, and Mott, Due Process of Law, pages 208-240. By failing to require that the published notice should specify the area, and through the further failure to limit the time for conducting the roundup to some specified period, ORS 607.430, in my opinion, is invalid.