207 F. 871 | D.N.J. | 1913
In an action to recover damages for property injured in consequence-of mobs and riots, the case was submitted to the jtiry under special instructions. The jury found, in answer to the questions submitted, that the plaintiff had been damaged $300 in its tangible property and $43,000 in its intangible property—
“5. That whenever any buildings or other real or personal property shall be destroyed or Injured, in consequence of aiiy mob or riot, the city in which the same shall occur, or if not in a city, then the county in which such property was situated, shall be liable to an action, by 'or in behalf of the party whose property was thus destroyed or injured, for the damages sustained by reason thereof.”
“7. jKo person or corporation shall be entitled to recover in any such action if it shall appear upon the trial thereof that such destruction or injury of property was occasioned, or in any manner aided, sanctioned or permitted by the carelessness or negligence of such person or corporation; nor shall any person or corporation be entitled t;o recover any damages for any destruction or injury of property as aforesaid, unless such party shall have used all reasonable diligence to prevent such damage, and shall have notified the mayor of such city, or the sheriff of such county, immediately after being apprised of any threat or attempt to destroy or injure his or their property by any mob or riot of the facts brought to his knowledge; and upon the receipt of such notice it shall be the duty of such officer to take all legal means to protect the property attacked or threatened, and the expenses incurred by said officer in the performance of his duty as aforesaid shall be paid by the county collector of the county in which said, property is situate, upon the approval of the judge of the court of common pleas of said county.”
In section 7 it will be noted that the owner of “the property attacked or threatened” is to give notice to “the mayor of such city or the sheriff of such county” “immediately after being apprised of any threat or attempt to destroy or injure his or their property by any mob or riot.” Such city or county means the city or county referred to in section 5. If the mob which threatened or attempted to injure property located in Jersey City, but on the border of the city of Hoboken, had originated in Hoboken (parts of the same county), would the owner of the menaced property have discharged his statutory duty by simply giving notice to the mayor of Hoboken ? Would not Jersey City have a perfect defense under this section upon proof that it had no knowledge of the existence of the mob in time to prevent the injury, etc., and that the owner, with knowledge of its existence and of its threats and attempts against his property, failed to give the statutory notice to the mayor of Jersey City?
What mayor is here meant “to take all legal means to protect the property attacked or threatened”? Undoubtedly the mayor of any cit}' wdiere a riot occurs is in duty bound to take available steps to suppress the riot; but, with reference to the peace officer here indicated to be notified by the property owner, is it not manifest that only such mayor is to act whose magistracy embraces the territory where the threatened property is located ? What effective legal means could the mayor of any other city take that would protect the particular property threatened? The duty of such other magistrate would be the governmental one to suppress mobs irrespective of their particular destructive purpose; but the duty here enjoined is one to be performed in behalf of particular property; and manifestly only that mayor is intended within whose official territory such property is located. It is in that territory that such property is subject to taxation, and it is from the police authorities having particular charge of that locality that such property is entitled to protection.
Kvery consideration of these sections impels the interpretation that the physical situs of the property and not the place where the mob originated or operated fixes the liability of the city or county.
The English statute (1 George II. St. 2, c. 5), the prototype of the statutes in this country, shifting the loss of property sustained through mob violence from the individual to the whole community, used no general terms in designating the property to be compensated. It specified churchés, buildings, dwelling houses, stables, and outhouses. Had it concluded with tjie general phrase “or other property,” it is clear that under the cases súch words would not have extended beyond subject ejusdem generis. While such canon of interpretation, being but an enlargement of the maxim “noscitur a sociis,” is usually applied to instances where the general words follow several of a limited or restricted character, yet it is applicable where but one of the species is mentioned. Williams v. Golding, L. R. 1 C. P. 69. That many species are mentioned affords stronger evidence that the general words were intended to embrace only the same kind or character than when but one is used is undoubted, but the difference is only of degree. In the New Jersey act the word “building” comprehends all the species enumerated in the English statute. All- of these are limited to corporeal o'r tangible property, and the general phrase following in our act, no more than if it had been similarly employed in the English statute, can be taken as comprising intangible or incorporeal property
The entire phrase, “buildings or other real or personal property,” naturally suggests to the mind tangible and not intangible property. Mr. Endlich, in the cited text-book, under the heads of “Ordinary Meaning Preferred,” section 78, and “Restriction of General Words to Subject-Matter,” section 86, said:
“Ordinary Meaning Preferred.
“ * * * As between two meanings of a word, the ordinary and popular meaning is, in general, to ba preferred and is most frequently in harmony with the subject-matter and object of the enactment.”
“Restriction of General Words to Subject-Matter.
“Rut it is in the interpretation of general words and phrases that the principle of stridly adapting the meaning to the particular subject-matter, in reference to which the words are used, finds its most frequent application. However wide in the abstract, they are more or less elastic and admit of restriction or expansion to suit the subject-matter. While expressing truly enough all that the Legislature intended, they frequently express more, in their literal meaning and natural force; and it is necessary to give them the meaning which best suits the scope and object of the statute without extending to ground foreign io the intention, it is therefore a canon of interpretation that all words, if they be general and not express and precise, are to be restricted to the fitness of the matter. They are to be construed as particular, if the intention be particular; that is, they must be understood as used in reference to the subject-matter in the mind of the Legislature and strictly limited to it.”
In Chicago v. Sturges, 222 U. S. 313, 323, 32 Sup. Ct. 92, 93 (56. L. Ed. 215, Ann. Cas. 1913B, 1349), it was said:
*879 “The policy of imposing liability upon a civil subdivision of government exercising delegated police power is familiar to every student of the common law. We And it recognized in the beginning of the police system of Anglo-Saxon people. Thus ‘The Hundred,’ a very early form of civil subdivision, was held answerable for robberies committed within the division. By a series of statutes, beginning possibly in 1285, in the statutes of Winchester (13 Edw. I, c. 1), coming on down to 27 Elizabeth, c. 13, the Riot Act of George X (1 Geo. I, St. 2), and Act of 8 George II, c. 16, we may And a continuous recognition of the principle that a civil subdivision intrusted with the duty of protecting property in its midst and with police j>ower to discharge the function may be made answerable not only for negligence aliirmatively shown but absolutely as not having afforded a protection adequate to the obligation.”
“Property in its midst” is the expression here used by Mr. Justice Furton. If the property damaged is not in the community’s midst (that is, has not a physical situs in such city) but is of an intangible character consisting of the right to use tangible property in carrying-on business such as that in question, and losses are sustained by the deprivation of such right (as are the losses in question), then, assuming that a saddling upon a community of such losses is not an infraction of the constitutional guaranty “of due process of law,” it is the essence of accepted canons of interpretation of legislative declarations that such a burden can only be imposed by clear and unequivocal language, leaving 'no doubt that such was the legislative purpose.
Furthermore, when a passage is susceptible of more than one meaning, it is important to- consider the effects and consequences which would result from a given construction. Eudlich, § 113. This canon is not to be employed to avoid the clear import of a statute; but where the question is whether a word or phrase is used in its most comprehensive sense, and such sense would produce grave and serious results, such effects and consequences are to be given weighty consideration in arriving at the legislative intention. If ,the plaintiff’s construction should prevail, dire disaster to the municipality might follow in the wake of every mob manifestation, regardless of the want of notice to the city or that it took every possible means to prevent the destruction or injury of property. The facts in the case at bar are sufficiently illustrative of the probable results following a like situation when made applicable to other transportation businesses. The cause of the plaintiff’s business losses was due to a mob’s endeavor to stop the passage of the plaintiff’s horses and wagons to and from its stables. To the mind of the striking employes of another express company doing business in the same territory, a “tie-up” of the entire express business in such localities would be of advantage to them in enforcing the strikers' demands. Acting upon such theory, some of such striking employés, assisted by -outsiders who sympathized with them, sought to induce the employes (drivers and helpers) of the plaintiff to- abandon their horses and wagons. Not succeeding in this to the extent desired, they used force against such employés as continued in the plaintiff’s employ and the “strike breakers” called in by it to help move such wagons; such force being applied indiscriminately to persons and property. With such an object lesson it is not fancy or mere speculation to conceive of a situation in Jersey City, the tide-water terminus of a number of transcontinental railway systems, where the business
“The instructions as’ to damages should'be qualified, by adding ‘so far as such interruption and injury were -the direct and natural results of the' attack of the mob.’ ” .
. Judgment may be entered for the plaintiff only for the sum of $300, with costs.