Court Opinion

ID: 9812899
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 22:51:19.986483+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:27:08.886887
License: Public Domain

Stacy, C. J.,
dissenting: I regret to disagree with my brethren on a question of statutory construction, and would not do so, if the decision affected only the immediate parties or would not serve as a precedent in future cases, but after testing C. S., 4103, by all the known rules of interpretation, I am unable to determine, with any reasonable degree of certainty, its meaning or what the Legislature intended to accomplish by its enactment. S. v. Diamond, 202 Pac. (N. M.), 988, 20 A. L. R., 1527.
It is the declared law of this jurisdiction that “a statute must be capable of construction and interpretation; otherwise it will be inoperative and void. The Court must use every authorized means to ascertain and give it an intelligible meaning; but if after such effort it is found to be impossible to solve the doubt and dispel the obscurity, if no- judicial *653certainty can be settled upon as to the meaning, the Court is not at liberty to supply — to make one. The Court may not allow ‘conjectural interpretation to usurp the place of judicial exposition.’ There must be a competent and efficient expression of the legislative will.” S. v. Partlow, 91 N. C., 550.
Speaking to the same question in Drake v. Drake, 15 N. C., 110, Ruffin, C. J., delivering the opinion of the Court, said: “Whether a statute be .a public or a private one, if the terms in which it is couched be so vague as to convey no definite meaning to those whose duty it is to execute it, either ministerially or judicially, it is necessarily inoperative. The law must remain as it was, unless that which professes to change it be itself intelligible.”
And such is the substance of the law as declared by the Supreme Court of the United States in Yu Cong Eng v. Trinidad, 271 U. S., 500; Connally v. General Const. Co., 269 U. S., 385; U. S. v. Cohen Grocery Co., 255 U. S., 81; Collins v. Kentucky, 234 U. S., 634, and International Harvester Co. v. Kentucky, 234 U. S., 216.
To like effect, also, is the law in other jurisdictions. Wilkerson, District Judge, in Re. Di Torio, 8 F. (2nd), 279, states the general rule as follows: “An act which is so uncertain that its meaning cannot be determined by any known rules of construction cannot be enforced. If no judicial certainty can be settled upon as to the meaning of a statute, the courts are not at liberty to supply one. It must be capable of construction and an interpretation; otherwise it will be inoperative and void. An act is void where its language appears on its face to have a meaning, but it is impossible to give it any precise or intelligible application in the circumstances under which it was intended to operate,” citing as authority for the position: People v. Sweitzer, 266 Ill., 459, 107 N. E., 902, Ann. Cas., 1916B, 586; People v. Briggs, 193 N. Y., 457, 86 N. E., 522; S. v. Partlow, 91 N. C., 550, 49 Am. Rep., 652; S. v. West Side Street Ry. Co., 146 Mo., 155, 47 S. W., 959; 25 R. C. L., 811.
Nor is it necessary to look beyond the Court’s own opinion in the instant case to demonstrate the ambiguity and uncertainty, and I think invalidity, of the statute.
It is said, in the first place, that the deed of the husband for the undetermined and undefined home site, without the voluntary signature and assent of his wife, is “not valid, under the provisions of the statute, to pass possession or title during the lifetime of the wife, and was without any effect as to her so long as she shall live.”
Eealizing, however, that the statute gives the wife no estate or interest in the home site as such, and that the possession and title thereto, when conveyed by the husband without the voluntary signature and assent of *654his wife, would, under the above statement, be in nubibus during her widowhood, it is said that “Both the right to possession and the title are postponed until the death of the husband. The title conveyed by the deed, with the right of possession under such title, then passes to the grantee, subject only to the dower right of the wife, if she survives her husband.”
Again, it is stated that “at the death of the husband, intestate, the wife surviving him, upon which event her inchoate right of dower becomes consummate,” the purpose of the statute is “to protect her from controversies and litigation with respect to the allotment of her dower in the lands of which the husband was seized and possessed during cover-ture, and which but for the statute he could have conveyed, passing title and possession by his deed, immediately upon its delivery, subject to her dower.”
Thus, it is declared that the deed of the husband for the undetermined and undefined home site, without the voluntary signature and assent of his wife, is invalid to pass possession or title thereto :
1. During the lifetime of the wife or so long as she shall live.
2. Until the death of the husband.
3. Until the widow can have her dower allotted.
These three interpretations are all variant, and the question still remains: "What is the real meaning of the statute ? I am not criticising the Court’s opinion. It is the result of an earnest effort to find a rational interpretation and to give clarity to cloudiness. A majority of the Court considers that this has been done; I think otherwise; and from this difference, springs our divergence of opinion.
Other objections to the workableness of the statute readily suggest themselves:
Is the statute self-executing, or must the home site be claimed, and, if so, by whom ?
Who is to determine what the home site shall include, and what not ? Is this a, question of law for the court or a question of fact for a jury?
Was it intended to be in addition to, or included within, the homestead right ?
Is it limited or unlimited in extent and value?
Having once conveyed the home site, without the wife’s signature, could it later be taken under execution against the husband, or sold by the husband and the wife, and, if so, for what length of time?
Would a subsequent deed by the husband and wife defeat the husband’s prior grantee of all rights in the premises ?
What effect would a prior or subsequent separation or divorce have upon the deed executed by the husband without the wife’s proper joinder?
*655On all these matters the statute is silent, and it would require considerable amendment, by way of judicial legislation, to answer them. But this is not tbe province of tbe Court. It is ours only to declare the law, not to make it. Moore v. Jones, 76 N. C., 187.
It is not possible to weld a pewter handle to a wooden spoon, and, in my opinion, the statute falls within the rule of law, stated in 25 R. C. L., 810, as follows:
“Where an act of the Legislature is so vague, indefinite and uncertain that the courts are unable to determine, with any reasonable degree of certainty, what the Legislature intended, or is so incomplete or is so conflicting and inconsistent in its provisions that it cannot be executed, it will be declared to be inoperative and void.”