Court Opinion

ID: 9669860
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 03:10:07.775345+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:00.677375
License: Public Domain

McGehee, C. J.,
(concurring).
I am unable to agree with the dissenting view that the sum of $741,000 is the proper basis for determining *498whether or not the State is to receive a substantially adequate consideration in return for the funds allocated by the Mississippi Commission on Hospital Care to the Mercy Hospital — Street Memorial, or rather for determining whether the consideration to be received by the State is so grossly inadequate as to amount to a donation. The amount of state funds allocated by the Commission in this case is $214,000 and not $741,000, the sum of $527,000 of the total amount being federal funds, as shown by all the proof in the record.
As to the opinions written by me on behalf of the Court in the cases of State ex rel. McCullen, Land Commissioner, v. Adams, 185 Miss. 606, 188 So. 551, wherein it was held that a consideration of $160 paid for state lands worth $1,600 was so grossly inadequate as to “virtually” amount to a donation; in Koonce v. Board of Sup’rs. of Grenada County, 202 Miss. 473, 37 So. (2d) 264, 456, wherein we held the same thing as to the sum of $300 paid for timber worth some $4,000 to $5,000; and in State ex rel. Kyle, Attorney General v. Dear, Miss., 46 So. (2d) 100, not yet recorded in State Reports, wherein a consideration of $500 was paid for sixteenth section timber which soon thereafter sold for $4,000, and which were all sales for grossly inadequate considerations and therefore void, I deem it sufficient to say that the philosophy of those decisions is that if a purchaser is permitted to obtain public lands, or sixteenth section timber, for such grossly inadequate considerations it would amount to either a legal or an actual fraud, whereas in the case now before us there is' no contention whatever made by the appellant that the obtaining of an allocation by the appellee hospital of $214,000 in consideration of the benefits to be received by the State in the care of the indigent sick would amount to either a legal or an actual-fraud, but, on the other hand, the proof discloses that the considerations to be received in the treatment of charity patients, training of internes, etc., in return for the $214,000 over a period of twenty years is not grossly *499inadequate, but is fully adequate; and there is no issue of legal or actual fraud involved.
I reaffirm my faith in the correctness of the decisions hereinbefore mentioned, which are discussed in the dissenting opinion, and maintain that there is no departure being taken in the controlling opinions in the present case from the rule announced by the Court in those cases.
It is to be conceded that prior to the enactment of Chap. 430, Laws 1948, under which this allocation of funds was made, the Legislature had defined a nonprofit corporation in the manner stated in the dissenting opinion on this Suggestion of Error, and also that such a corporation had been likewise defined in numerous decisions of various courts, as pointed out and discussed at length in the dissenting opinion now being rendered, but it is pertinent to observe that in the enactment of Chap. 430, Laws 1948, the Legislature had full power and- authority to define a nonprofit hospital within the meaning of that Act in such language as the Legislature saw fit to define it. It so happened that the Legislature did define the privately owned hospitals that were entitled to participate in the hospital program as being “those nonprofit institutions owned and operated by a corporation or association no part of the net earnings of which inures, or may lawfully inure, to the benefit of any private shareholder, group or individual.” (Emphasis supplied.)
In my opinion, the proof discloses without dispute that the hospital involved in the case now before us comes fully and completely within the above definition, which is the same definition given under the Federal Act, 42 U. S. C. A. Section 291 et seq., to nonprofit hospitals that are to participate in the nation-wide hospital program. The rule that the Legislature has the power to define terms which it uses in a statute is, in my opinion, too well-settled in this State to require the citation of authorities to support it. We have repeatedly recognized this right of the Legislature in our construction of the State Sales *500Tax Law and various other statutes involved in decisions rendered by us too numerous to be here enumerated.
I fully concur in the view that none of the new points raised for the first time in the Suggestion of Error in this ease are well taken.
I shall not write more than what is above stated, for the reason that my views are fully stated in the controlling opinion written by me for the Court on April 24, 1950, and reported in Miss., 45 So. (2d) 809, and which opinion could have well ended at the conclusion of paragraph twenty-six thereof, since the remainder of the same is therein acknowledged to be mere dicta written only for the purpose of discussing the other matters particularly emphasized in the dissenting opinion then written.