“Unlike other Act provisions, Section 2(4) does not use the adjectives ‘benefited,’ ‘affected,’ o[r] ‘assessed’ in limiting the type of property owners who may participate in the decision to create an NID.”
How later courts described this case
- “Unlike other Act provisions, Section 2(4) does not use the adjectives ‘benefited,’ ‘affected,’ o[r] ‘assessed’ in limiting the type of property owners who may participate in the decision to create an NID.”
- invoking the principle of statutory construction denominated expressio unius est exclusio alterius
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
DISSENTING OPINION BY
SENIOR JUDGE LEADBETTER
I must respectfully dissent. I agree .with the Objector’s arguments outlined on pages 867-68 of the proposed majority opinion. I find particularly persuasive that, as the trial court found, all property owners will be impacted in some way by the NID, and this is not in any way unique to the NID at issue, but will generally be the case. Therefore, by designating a limited class of “affected” property owners entitled to vote under Section 5(f)(2), the General Assembly cannot have intended that to mean all property owners. When it intended to mean “all property owners” it said so in Section 5(b)(1). Certainly, as the majority points out, the Act does not use the term “assessed” in Section 5(f)(2), but neither does it use the term “all.” I agree that the statutory language could be clearer but, for the other reasons cited by Objector, I believe that interpreting “affected” to mean “assessed” is closer to the statutory intent than interpreting “affected” to mean “all.”