Anderson v. Great Northern Railway Co.

138 P. 127, 25 Idaho 433, 1914 Ida. LEXIS 3
CourtIdaho Supreme Court
DecidedJanuary 19, 1914
StatusPublished
Cited by23 cases

This text of 138 P. 127 (Anderson v. Great Northern Railway Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Idaho Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Anderson v. Great Northern Railway Co., 138 P. 127, 25 Idaho 433, 1914 Ida. LEXIS 3 (Idaho 1914).

Opinions

AILSHIE, C. J.

The appellant commenced this suit on six alleged causes of action which had been assigned to him, and on a seventh in his own favor. A demurrer was sustained to each cause of action and judgment of dismissal was entered, and this appeal was thereupon prosecuted.

One Lee Decker was employed by respondent to take 13,655 railroad ties from where they were stacked on respondent’s right of way and remove them a few hundred feet and load them on to respondent’s cars. In doing the work involved in this contract, Decker employed six men and secured groceries and supplies from appellant for the use of himself and men while doing this work. Decker appears to have failed to pay his men. The men thereupon and within the statutory time filed liens under the provisions of sec. 5125 of the Revised Codes. Respondent contends, and the trial court agreed with it, that this statute does not contemplate or provide a lien of the kind here sought to be enforced.

Section 5125 provides as follows: “Every person performing labor upon, or who shall assist in obtaining or securing, saw-logs, spars, piles, cordwood, or other timber, has a lien upon the same for the work or labor done upon, or in obtaining or securing the same, whether such work or labor was done at the instance of the owner of the same or his agent. The cook shall be regarded as a person who assists in obtaining or securing the timber herein mentioned. ’ ’

It must be remembered that this statute is written in the disjunctive and that the lien contemplated is given to “every person performing labor upon .... saw-logs, spars, piles, cordwood, or other timber” as well as to “every person .... [441]*441who shall assist in obtaining or securing” any of the property mentioned. In other words, the same lien is given to one for “'performing work upon” any of the property enumerated as is given to one who “assists in obtaining or securing” any such property. This court adopted this same course of reasoning in construing see. 5110, Rev. Codes, in Mill v. Twin Falls Land & Water Co., 22 Ida. 274, 125 Pac. 204. This work was undoubtedly done upon these ties in removing and loading them; it was work done about, concerning, in respect to, or with reference to these ties. There is little room for doubt but that railroad ties are timber and fall within the enumeration of “other timber” as used in see. 5125, supra. As authority in point and supporting this view, see Forsberg v. Lundgren, 64 Wash. 427, 117 Pac. 244.

We think the word “timber” as here used refers to any kind of timber as it may be taken from the forest, whether in a prepared state for the use to which it is to be applied or in the natural and unfinished condition. For example, cord-wood is enumerated preceding the use of the words ‘ ‘ or other timber, ’ ’ and yet cordwood is not a manufactured article. On the other hand, “spars and piles” are enumerated and signify specially prepared pieces of timber for definite purposes. It would be extremely technical and strict to construe the statute as not giving a lien for work upon or in securing ties.

In this case it is alleged that after the ties were loaded on the cars the railroad company eloigned them and scattered them along its right of way in the states of Washington, Idaho and Montana and rendered it impossible for the claimants to identify them or foreclose their lien thereon, and appellants seek personal judgments against the company for damages under the provisions of see. 5140, Rev. Codes. That section provides as follows:

“Any person who shall injure, impair, or destroy, or who shall render difficult, uncertain or impossible of identification, any saw-logs, spars, piles, cordwood, or other timber, upon which there is a lien as herein provided, without the express consent of the person entitled to such lien, shall be liable to the lienholder for the damages to the amount secured by his [442]*442lien, which may be recovered by civil action against such person.”

It will be observed that the foregoing section 5140 applies to any person who shall injure, impair or destroy or shall render uncertain, difficult, or impossible of identification any of the property on which a lien exists under sec. 5125. The objection that sec. 5140 of the Rev. Codes, as originally enacted and found in the 1899 Sess. Laws, p. 188, is unconstitutional and in violation of sec. 16, art. 3 of the state constitution, is without merit, for the reason that this section was subsequently incorporated in the Revised Codes and was adopted as a part of the entire body of the reyised statutes and as a part of the complete code of laws of the state. It is now too late to raise the sufficiency of the title to a statute originally adopted prior to the date of the adoption of the Revised Codes, where such statute has been incorporated in the general code of laws. (36 Cyc. 1068; Central of Georgia Ry. Co. v. State, 104 Ga. 831, 31 S. E. 531, 42 L. R. A. 518; Kennedy v. Meara, 127 Ga. 68, 56 S. E. 243, 9 Ann. Cas. 396; Christopher v. Mungen, 61 Fla. 513, 55 So. 273.)

Lastly, it is argued that sec. 5140 of the Rev. Codes is unconstitutional and void, for the reason that it is violative of sec. 1 of the fourteenth amendment to the federal constitution, and of sec. 13, art. 1, of the state constitution in that it deprives respondent of its property without due process of law and denies to it the equal protection of the laws. We do not think this objection is well founded. In the first place, under this statute, there is no liability against one who injures, destroys or removes such property, unless there is an existing lien thereon. The statute creates the lien. It specifies the kind of a contract and transaction and the conditions under which a laborer will be entitled to a lien. Whenever, therefore, the owner or purchaser of or contractor for property falling within the purview of this statute employs a laborer or enters into a contract which comes within the terms of the statute, the law at once becomes operative and gives to the party rendering the services or performing the labor a lien. This lien exists by operation of law for the period of [443]*443sixty days. At the expiration of that time, the lien lapses and ceases to exist, unless in the meanwhile the claimant has complied with the provisions of the statute requiring the filing of a written notice of his lien claim, setting forth the facts required to_ be shown by the statute. If the lien claimant complies with this statute, the lien continues in force from the time of its inception, namely, when he commenced work until the claim is paid or the lien is foreclosed. Under this statute, it is not a question of the lien arising at the time the notice of lien is filed with the proper county official and of the lien relating back to the time the work commenced. There is no such thing under this statute as a lien relating back. The lien arises with the commencement of work and is created by statute, and its continuance beyond sixty days is conditional upon the claimant doing the thing required by the statute.

Now, as for the contention that the statute is void because of being arbitrary, we fail to see wherein this contention contains any merit. The court will first determine whether the claimant was entitled to a' lien, and after that fact has been determined, the damages sustained by the lien claimant by reason of eloignment of the property must be determined and assessed in the same way that damages would be determined and assessed in any other case.

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Bluebook (online)
138 P. 127, 25 Idaho 433, 1914 Ida. LEXIS 3, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/anderson-v-great-northern-railway-co-idaho-1914.