Times Picayune Publishing Corp. v. City of New Orleans

760 So. 2d 375, 99 La.App. 4 Cir. 1685, 2000 La. App. LEXIS 670, 2000 WL 310407
CourtLouisiana Court of Appeal
DecidedFebruary 23, 2000
DocketNo. 99-CA-1685
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 760 So. 2d 375 (Times Picayune Publishing Corp. v. City of New Orleans) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Louisiana Court of Appeal primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Times Picayune Publishing Corp. v. City of New Orleans, 760 So. 2d 375, 99 La.App. 4 Cir. 1685, 2000 La. App. LEXIS 670, 2000 WL 310407 (La. Ct. App. 2000).

Opinions

bBYRNES, Judge.

Plaintiff-appellant, The Times-Picayune Publishing Corporation, filed a petition requesting a declaration that New Orleans City Code Sections 2-6 (providing for an official journal and an auxiliary official journal) and 2-9 (providing for the establishment of the New Orleans Register) are illegal and void; that any action by the City to implement the provisions of these Code Sections is void; and that a preliminary and permanent injunction issue preventing the City from receiving bids pursuant to its Proposal No. FTC-2946 (a bid package for the official journal of the City) or entering into a contract pursuant to New Orleans City Code Sections 2-6 and 2-9. The Times-Picayune appeals a judgment denying the relief sought in the petition. We affirm.

The Times-Picayune brought this suit to challenge the efforts of the City of New Orleans to enact local requirements for Official Journal publication that it claims significantly dilute mandatory state law minimum standards. The arguments of The Times-Picayune basically break down into two categories: (1) LSA-R.S. 43:141 A does not exempt the parish of Orleans from the standards for an | ^official journal applicable to other parishes; and (2) the standards established by the City aíre not reasonable and violate due process.

I. The City is exempt from the state standards for parish and municipal official journals.

This case turns largely on whether the “parish of Orleans” exemption referred to in LSA-R.S. 43:141 A exempts the City from that part of the Revised Statues entitled “Official Journal of Parishes, Municipalities and School Boards,” LSA-R.S. 43:140 et seq., as is contended by the City, or whether that exemption applies only to the timing of the selection of the official journal by the City as is contended by the Times-Picayune. The trial court adopted the City’s position. LSA-R.S. 43:141 provides:

A. The police juries, city and parish councils, municipal corporations, 1 and school boards in all the parishes, the parish of Orleans excepted, at their first meeting in June of each year, shall select a newspaper as official journal for their respective parishes, towns, or cities for a term of one year. [Emphasis added.]
B. In any parish which is divided by the Mississippi River and has a population of not less than one hundred thousand the governing body shall have the authority to select two official journals for their respective parishes, one which shall be located on one bank of the river and the other which shall be located on the opposite bank thereof and no act heretofore performed shall be considered invalid because of any such parish having heretofore designated two such official journals.

IsThe Times-Picayune does not contend that the state has no authority to make an exception to the state statutes regarding parish and municipal official journals that would allow the parish of Orleans to enact its own reasonable standards for such a journal or journals. The Times-Picayune contends that the LSA-R.S. 43:141 A exception “only excepts the ‘Parish of Orleans’ from the requirement of ‘selecting]’ an Official Journal ‘at their first meeting in June of each year,’ and not from the obligation to select an Official Journal meeting the minimum requirements.” However, the placement of the exception language within the paragraph does not support The Times-Picayune’s position. It is much more logical and consistent with the placement of the exception to conclude that the exception was intended to exclude the “parish of Orleans” from the state statutory scheme concerning official journals. Had the phrase “the parish of Orleans [378]*378excepted” followed the phrase “at their first meeting in June each year” then we might be persuaded that the exception was intended to apply to the June meeting date. But the phrase “the parish of Orleans excepted” immediately follows the phrase “all the parishes” and by any normal reading and construction must be understood as creating an exception to “all the parishes” rather than creating an exception to the June meeting date.

The main import of LSA-R.S. 43:141 is the establishment of the official journal requirement. The designation of the June meeting date is merely incidental. This conclusion is reinforced by comparison of LSA-R.S. 43:141 with the related next chapter of Title 43 concerning judicial advertisements and legal notices. LSA-R.S. 43:201 commences with the phrases, “All parishes of the state, outside of the parish of Orleans ...,” while Orleans is dealt with separately in the LSA-R.S. 43:202. More significantly, LSA-R.S. 43:202 requires that the | ¿newspaper for judicial and legal notices in Orleans be selected in June. In other words, not only does LSA-R.S. 43:201 creates a clear exception for “the parish of Orleans” as does LSA-R.S. 43:141 A, but LSA-R.S. 43:202, which regulates Orleans separately from the other parishes, specifically requires that the selection of the publication of choice be made in June, dispelling all notion that there is any reason to read the corresponding provision in the preceding chapter of Title 43, LSA-R.S. 43:141 A, in such a way as to limit the effect of the exception applicable to the “parish of Orleans” to the timing of the selection process.

In its brief The Times-Pieayune contends that LSA-R.S. 43:145 “clearly requires the City of New Orleans, a ‘municipal corporation’ [to] ‘select ... ’ a newspaper as its Official Journal.”. However, when LSA-R.S. 43:145 is read in its entirety it leads to a very different conclusion:

Municipal corporations shall select an official journal published in an office physically within their municipal boundaries if a newspaper as defined in R.S. 43:140(3) is published therein. If no qualified newspaper is published within the municipal boundaries, a newspaper published in the parish of the municipal corporation which meets the requirements of a newspaper as defined in R.S. 43:140(3) shall be selected. [Emphasis added.]

We find that LSA-R.S. 43:145 was enacted for the purpose of setting forth the geographic requirements of official journals of other parishes and municipalities, not for the purpose of governing the City’s official journal. Instead, the requirement that there be municipal and parish official journals is set forth in LSA-R.S. 43:141 where the exception for the City is to be found. LSA-R.S. 43:141 is found near the outset of Part I, Chapter 4 of Title 43 entitled “Official Journal of Parishes, Municipalities and School Boards,” immediately following the [.¡“Definitions”1 in LSA-R.S. 43:140. Had LSA-R.S. 43:145 been intended to be the section in Part I, Chapter 4 of Title 43 designed to establish the requirement that parishes and municipalities have official journals, which is, after all, the designated purpose of that Part of the statutes, one would normally expect that basic purpose to be expressed at the outset, leaving the ensuing sections to deal with the particulars of the matter. (Similarly, the state official journal is established by LSA-R.S. 43:81 which corresponds to LSA-R.S. 43:141, and eorre-[379]*379spondingly is found at the beginning of Chapter 2 of Title 43.)

LSA-R.S. 43.T45 was intended to be limited in its applicability to the geographic requirements for official journals. LSA-R.S. 43:145 does not exist in a vacuum. When it is read in the context of the entire Part I, Chapter 4 of Title 43, it becomes obvious that it LSA-R.S. 43:145 must be read in tandem with LSA-R.S. 43:146:

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Opinion Number
Louisiana Attorney General Reports, 2001

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Bluebook (online)
760 So. 2d 375, 99 La.App. 4 Cir. 1685, 2000 La. App. LEXIS 670, 2000 WL 310407, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/times-picayune-publishing-corp-v-city-of-new-orleans-lactapp-2000.