Hauserman v. Board of County Commissioners

(dissenting) : A mechanical application of rules of statutory construction is often fatal to sound reasoning and prohibitive of just results. While ordinarily it is true that an amendment which leaves out of a former statute a certain provision conferring power is intended to take away such power, still the syllogism depends for the soundness of its structure upon the integrity of its premises. If the only legislative grant of power to county commissioners touching an award of damages for laying out a highway were found in the words omitted from the act of 1903, the conclusion arrived at in…