Opinion
No. 38317
Decided July 8, 1964.
Insurance — Mutual protective association — Permitted to insure nonfarm detached buildings — Section 3939.01, Revised Code, construed.
Under Section 3939.01, Revised Code, a mutual protective insurance association organized under Chapter 3939 of the Revised Code is permitted to insure nonfarm detached dwellings and outbuildings.
APPEAL from the Court of Appeals for Franklin County.
Plaintiffs, the Allen County Mutual Insurance Association and 80 similar insurance organizations, appellants herein and herein referred to as plaintiffs, instituted an action for declaratory judgment in the Court of Common Pleas to determine whether Section 3939.01, Revised Code, permits them to insure dwellings within this state whether situated within or without the limits of a municipal corporation.
Plaintiffs have been insuring dwellings within municipalities over a long period of years. In 1953, the Attorney General in an opinion addressed to the Superintendent of Insurance (Opinions of Attorney General [1953], 576) advised that plaintiffs are not authorized to insure dwellings other than detached farm dwellings. The superintendent thereupon ordered that plaintiffs cease insuring nonfarm dwellings, and, subsequently, plaintiffs brought this action in the Court of Common Pleas against the Superintendent of Insurance.
The Court of Common Pleas granted judgment in favor of plaintiffs.
On appeal, the Court of Appeals reversed that judgment.
The cause is now before this court, pursuant to the allowance of a motion to certify the record.
Messrs. Morrow Gordon and Messrs. Wright, Harlor, Morris, Arnold Glander, for appellants.
Mr. William B. Saxbe, attorney general, and Mr. Theodore K. High, for appellee.
The single issue presented in this cause is whether under Section 3939.01, Revised Code, a mutual protective insurance association is permitted to insure detached dwellings and outbuildings situated within a municipality.
The pertinent part of Section 3939.01, Revised Code, reads:
"* * * Such associations may only insure farm buildings, detached dwellings and outbuildings, schoolhouses, churches, township buildings, grange buildings, farm implements, farm products, livestock, household goods, furniture, pleasure and utility vehicles, motor vehicles, steam, gas, gasoline, and oil engines, motor trucks, tractors, electric motors, electric appliances, lighting systems, and other similar property except property used exclusively for commercial or industrial purposes.
"Such property may be classified only for the purpose of determining and levying assessments, and such property may be located within or without the limits of any municipal corporation. * * *."
Examination of the words of the statute discloses that the word, "buildings," is limited by the adjective, "farm," whereas the words, "detached dwellings and outbuildings," stand separately and independently. The words, "detached dwellings and outbuildings," thus are unqualified unless it can be said that the limiting word, "farm," applies equally to them. However, the word, "farm," is not connected directly to the words, "detached dwellings and outbuildings," and those words are placed not in apposition but are in series with the other enumerated items.
When these items are so read, as being in series, there is no ambiguity. Although it is possible, as defendant contends, that the Legislature intended to limit these associations to the insuring of only farm dwellings and outbuildings, the language employed by the Legislature fails to accomplish such limitation. If the Legislature had intended to restrict such associations to the insuring of only farm dwellings and outbuildings, it could have done so easily, e.g., by inserting the adjective, "farm," before the words, "detached dwellings," and before the word, "outbuildings."
It is established that, "if the provisions of a statute are plain and unequivocal, there is no occasion for construction or interpretation" ( Hadfield-Penfield Steel Co. v. Oberlander, 109 Ohio St. 592, 597), and, "where the words of a statute are plain, explicit and unequivocal, a court is not warranted in departing from their obvious meaning, although from considerations arising outside of the language of the statute, it may be convinced that the Legislature intended to enact something different from what it did in fact enact" (paragraph one of the syllabus of D.T. Woodbury Co. v. Berry, 18 Ohio St. 456).
It is our conclusion, that the words, "detached dwellings and outbuildings," are not limited by the adjective, "farm," which limits "buildings," but refer to both detached farm dwellings and outbuildings and detached nonfarm dwellings and outbuildings. Such conclusion is supported by the further language of the statute, added in 1910 (101 Ohio Laws, 294), "such property may be located within or without the limits of any municipality."
Had this provision been added at a later time when rapid territorial growth of municipalities caused annexation of more and more rural territory, it would be conceivable that the intent of the Legislature was not to permit mutual protective association insurance coverage of nonfarm dwellings but to permit continuance of coverage already provided for farm dwellings, which by events had become part of a municipality. Such, however, is not the case. When this part of the statute was included, municipalities had not indulged in wholesale annexation of surrounding territory.
Thus, it is apparent that when the General Assembly inserted the language, "such property may be located within or without the limits of any municipal corporation," it was considering ordinary residential property and not only dwellings located on farms.
For the above-stated reasons it follows that under Section 3939.01, Revised Code, a mutual protective insurance association is permitted to insure nonfarm detached dwellings and outbuildings.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is, therefore, reversed, and that of the Court of Common Pleas affirmed.
Judgment reversed.
COLLIER, DOYLE and GIBSON, JJ., concur.
TAFT, C.J., ZIMMERMAN and MATTHIAS, JJ., dissent.
COLLIER, J., of the Fourth Appellate District, sitting by designation in the place and stead of O'NEILL, J.
DOYLE, J., of the Ninth Appellate District, sitting by designation in the place and stead of HERBERT, J.
The writer dissents for the reason that, in his view, the majority opinion extends Section 3939.01, Revised Code, beyond its intended limits, and past acquiescence in the unauthorized operations of the appellants does not now preclude the confinement of those operations within statutory bounds.
TAFT, C.J., and MATTHIAS, J., concur in the foregoing dissenting opinion.