Court Opinion

ID: 9700162
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 21:14:39.253205+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:07:56.965668
License: Public Domain

Levine, J,

dissenting:

With the exception of the concluding paragraph, I am in agreement with the opinion of the majority. But since I cannot join in the ultimate conclusion and the mandate of the Court, I respectfully dissent.
It may well be that I simply do not fully understand the majority opinion, but as I read it this much is clear. As the majority itself postulates, “[t]he question with which we are confronted in this case is whether Maryland’s present mechanics’ lien law is compatible with the due process clauses of Article 23 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution.” The majority concludes that “in light of the effect a Maryland mechanics’ lien has on property, ... an owner is deprived of a ‘significant property interest’ when a lien is imposed and thus, the limitations of due process are applicable.” The majority then finds that since the statute deprives Maryland property owners of this significant property interest “without notice, a prior hearing or other sufficient safeguards, and cannot be justified under the extraordinary circumstances exception,” it is “incompatible with the due process clauses of Article 23 and the Fourteenth Amendment.”
For these reasons, the majority “conclude[s] that Maryland’s mechanics’ lien law cannot stand in its present form[.]” It thereupon proceeds to excise “that portion of the statute which purports to create a lien from the time work is performed or materials furnished to the time a lien is established by judicial determination in a proceeding sufficient with respect to due process.” The majority then *40holds “that under the current statute there can be no existing lien on property until and unless the claimant prevails either in a suit to enforce the claimed lien or in some other appropriate proceeding providing notice and a hearing (i.e., a declaratory judgment action).” (emphasis added).
I submit, as footnote 12 of the majority opinion confirms, that all this amounts to a clear-cut holding that the statute is facially unconstitutional, and with that conclusion I am in full accord. But I part company from the majority when, having found the statute facially unconstitutional, it then somehow decides in the final paragraph that the statute is constitutional as applied in this case. I am simply unable to fathom how a law, if facially violative of the Fourteenth Amendment, can be applied, in the very case requiring the determination of unconstitutionality. If all property owners are deprived of due process by the statute, how can it be said that appellant is not?
If this particular owner has not been deprived of its property without due process by reason of the hearing which it was ultimately afforded, a hearing which is available to all property owners, why then is the statute not facially constitutional? Alternatively, is not the purported holding of unconstitutionality merely dicta, an advisory opinion, in light of the ultimate holding that this appellant did not suffer a denial of due process?
The majority answers these questions with its own brand of wizardry: it reasons that although the statute is facially unconstitutional, the part which makes it so may be excised by holding that a lien does not arise until a determination of validity is made in an enforcement proceeding. Since appellant has been afforded such a proceeding, therefore, its constitutional rights have not been violated. In sum, reasons the majority, the statute is facially unconstitutional since it permits, as occurred here, a significant deprivation of property prior to notice and hearing; but because such a procedure is unconstitutional, there could be no valid lien; and since there was no lien, appellant suffered no deprivation.
*41The flaw in the majority’s syllogism is that appellant suffered the deprivation of a significant property interest, as found by the majority itself. Otherwise, of course, the statute could not have been deemed facially unconstitutional in the first instance. Appellant was either deprived of due process or he was not, and if he was, the deprivation cannot be rectified by acknowledging it on the one hand and ignoring it on the other. If it is the view of the majority that appellant suffered no denial of due process, that holding is dispositive of the case and this Court has no business in purporting to hold the lien statute facially unconstitutional.
Since I believe that the statute is facially unconstitutional for the reasons so thoroughly expounded by the majority, I would reverse the decree of the circuit court.
Judge Eldridge authorizes me to state that he concurs in the views herein expressed.