Court Opinion

ID: 3298189
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2016-07-05 17:15:18.619281+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:24:47.291217
License: Public Domain

I concur in the judgment, on the ground first discussed in the opinion of Justice McFarland. The act of 1901 is certainly a revision of the Code of Civil Procedure, and, as such, required to be re-enacted and republished at length, in order to satisfy the mandate of the constitution, but, in my opinion, it does not embrace more than one subject, and that subject is clearly expressed in its title. *Page 300 
The rules of procedure in civil cases constitute but a single and well-defined subject, and our present code, as adopted in 1872, with its subsequent amendments, embraces but few provisions not strictly germane to that subject. If it had been enacted since the adoption of our present constitution, it would have been entirely valid, except as to those few provisions. But it was valid in all particulars at the time of its enactment, and was not invalidated by the adoption of the new constitution, even as to such of its provisions as did not relate to the procedure in civil cases. The code itself therefore became and remains a subject, and a single subject, of legislation. An act to amend it or revise it deals with a single subject, and the title of such an act expresses the subject when it announces the purpose of the legislature to amend or revise the code. The authorities cited in the briefs of counsel fully sustain the proposition that an act entitled an act to amend any valid existing statute described by its title is sufficiently descriptive of the subject, and of the whole subject, embraced in such statute.
But conceding that an act to revise or amend our existing code would be invalid as to any particular provisions not germane to the subject of procedure in civil cases, the act would be in other respects free from objection; and no provisions of the act of 1901 have been called to our attention which deal with other subjects, and certainly the particular provision here in question does not.
For these reasons, thus briefly indicated, I dissent from the views of the court respecting the second objection to the act.
Rehearing denied. *Page 301