Court Opinion

ID: 9655778
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 19:21:37.013242+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:13:21.834035
License: Public Domain

Morris, Ch. J.
On. Petition for Rehearing. In our original opinion we compared Section 30-2605 NDRC 1943 with its predecessor, Section 8603 Compiled Laws of North Dakota, 1913, and reached the conclusion that “The change that was made was not intended to and does not change the effect of the statute.” In a petition for rehearing the respondent challenges our conclusion by asking: “If it was intended not to change the effect of this section, then why.was it re-written when the 1943 Revised Code NDRC was made?” That question can be best answered by quoting the reviser’s note of the code commission which was presented to the legislature at the time the code was presented for adoption. “REVISER’S NOTE: This section has been revised by transposition for clarity. ‘In county court’ was added after ‘any proceeding’ to express the meaning given to the. section by the supreme court in Richardson v. Campbell, 9 ND 100, 81 NW 31.” It is clear from this note that while the revisers made a change in wording there was no intent on the part of *852either the revisers or the legislature to change the meaning or effect of the section.
Under either version of this section the provision excusing the executor, administrator, or. guardian from giving an appeal bond applies only to proceedings in the case in which the official bond was given. In the instant litigation that case is the Estate of Paul G. Doll, incompetent. The Estate of Joseph J. Stahl, deceased, is another case. The bond that was given as an official bond by the guardian in the Doll estate would stand in place of an undertaking on appeal by the guardian in the case of the Doll estate but is not effective for any purpose in connection with the probate of the estate of Joseph J. Stahl, deceased, which is wholly a different case.
In State ex rel. Johnson v. Broderick, 75 ND 340, 27 NW2d 849, paragraph 15 of the syllabus, this court said:
“In the codification of statutes the general presumption obtains that the codifiers did not intend to change the law; and mere changes of phraseology or punctuation, or the addition or omission of words, or the rearrangement of sections or parts of a statute, or the placing of portions of what formerly was a single section in separate sections, does not operate to change the operation, effect or meaning of the statute unless the changes are of such nature as to manifest clearly and unmistakably a legislative intent to change the former law.”
Rehearing denied.
Burke, Crimson, Christianson and Sathre, JJ., concur.