Court Opinion

ID: 9810201
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 21:43:25.511299+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:39:28.772388
License: Public Domain

OlaRK, C. J.,
dissenting: C. S., 5374, establishes a system of supervision and reports required from "all drainage districts.” The language of C. S., 5374, is: “It shall be the duty of the commissioners of all drainage districts in the State of North Carolina, organized under the provisions of the laws thereof, to file with the clerk of the Superior Court in the county where such district is organized a monthly statement of account,” etc.; and 5375 requires the same duty from “the board of commissioners of all drainage districts, in the State of North Carolina,” to file an annual report; and 5376 provides an indictment and penalty “for any board of commissioners for any drainage district in this State for failure to file such statement.”
The defendants are indicted for failure to obey this general law. The defense set up is that the defendants, commissioners of the Muddy Creek Drainage Commission, were incorporated under the Public-Local Laws 1913, ch. 348, but it will be seen that the act above cited applies to “all drainage districts.” The defendants contend, however, that they are exempt because C. S., 5381, provides: “This subchapter shall not repeal or change local drainage laws already enacted”; but these provisions, *584C. S., 5374, 5375, 5376, providing for supervision, control, and publicity as to drainage districts in requiring reports formulate a state-wide measure applying to “all drainage districts in the State,” and, moreover, tbey do nut repeal or change in any way the charter of the defendant, which was enacted in 1913. If the act of 1913 had provided specially that it should be exempted from this general police regulation, statewide in its nature, then it might have been contended tha.t this general act repealed or modified the special act; but it did not do so for the reason that it repealed or changed nothing in the charter of the defendant company, but merely extended to it the supervision of the general police regulation applying to .all drainage districts in the State without any exception. There is no indication of any intention to exempt any drainage district from this general statute, and there appears no reason why this defendant should be exempted. The terms of the statute are broad enough to include every drainage district in the State, whether organized under general law or special law, nor can we attach any importance to the fact that the statute of 1917, now C. S., 5374, et sequitu-r, is placed in the chapter entitled “Drainage.” The commission to revise the laws was authorized to “distribute the various statutes under such titles and divisions as may to them seem proper,” and the location by them of any statute could not possibly affect its meaning or limit its scope.
' Nor is there any force in the other grounds urged by the defendant. The statute itself makes the failure to file these reports a misdemeanor, punishable in the discretion of the court which places it within the jurisdiction of the Superior Court. This was enacted four years after the incorporation of the defendant, Muddy Creek Drainage District.
The plain requirement of the law and its evident intention were uniformity and the application of the requirement to “all drainage districts in the State”; and the motion to quash should have been denied.
Stacy, J., concurs in dissent.