“If it appears by necessary implication from the words, context or objects of a particular enactment that the Legislature intended it to be retroactive in operation, this court will give effect to the intent of the Legislature in so far as the State and Federal Constitutions permit”
How later courts described this case
- “If it appears by necessary implication from the words, context or objects of a particular enactment that the Legislature intended it to be retroactive in operation, this court will give effect to the intent of the Legislature in so far as the State and Federal Constitutions permit”
- "While it was permissible to utilize a special board, the town meeting had no authority to designate a method of selection contrary to the method prescribed by the Legislature. Under the Zoning Enabling Act, it lay only in the selectmen to appoint the membership of the special board."
- appellate court will give effect to enactment of Legislature “in so far as the State and Federal Constitutions permit”
- legislative changes to remedy past errors, omissions, and neglects, may be retroactive
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Cutter, J.
(concurring) I concur in the result, but would place the decision on the ground that the original 1937 by-law was validly adopted. In 1937, the town itself, instead of the selectmen, acted to set up the special group to make a purely advisory report, later acted upon by the town meeting. Nothing suggests that the provision in c. 40, § 27, as appearing in St. 1933, c. 269, § 1, authorizing the appointment by the selectmen of a special zoning board, was included in the statute otherwise than as a convenient procedural method of avoiding the necessity of a town meeting for such an appointment. The deviation from the statutory method seems to me at most a “trivial procedural defect” which is of no substantial significance in the light of the apparent legislative objectives. See Hallenborg v. Town Clerk of Billerica, 360 Mass. 513, 517-518 , and authorities there cited. There was no failure of the special committee to make recommendations. Cf. Whittemore v. Town Clerk of Falmouth, 299 Mass. 64, 68-69 .