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Landsman v. Maryland Home Improvement Commission12/22/2003
Black's Law Dictionary at 931 (7th ed. 1999) (defining a license as " revocable permission to commit some act that would otherwise be unlawful").
It has thus been said that a professional license is not "an absolute vested right," but is at most "only a conditional right which is subordinate to the police power of the State to protect and preserve the public health" and welfare. Dr. K. v. State Bd. of Physician Quality Assurance, 98 Md. App. 103, 120 (1993), cert. denied, 334 Md. 18, cert. denied, 513 U.S. 817 (1994). Because a license is only the grant of permission to act, the Commission's authority to suspend a contractor's license for non-repayment into the Fund does not interfere with a substantive or vested right of the contractor.
The Commission asserts that " etroactive application of the increased award limit to a January 1997 contract would raise serious due process issues, because it would impose additional liability upon a contractor that he could not reasonably have foreseen at the time of the contract, in January 1997." The Commission specifies that at the time the home improvement contract was entered into, neither Landsman nor Somerville "could have had the slightest inkling the General Assembly was preparing to increase the Guaranty Fund limit to $15,000 some 44 months later." The Commission further argues that Somerville entered into the contract in 1997 under the belief that the extent of its liability to the Fund was $10,000.00; therefore, a statutory increase of $5,000.00 to the contractor's maximum liability, without notice or reasonable expectation, constitutes a due process violation.
Landsman responds that applying the 2000 amendment in this case would not deprive Somerville of any vested right in the additional $5,000.00, because the Commission itself has already determined that Landsman has incurred an actual loss of more than $42,000.00 due to Somerville's abandonment of the home improvement project. We agree with Landsman.
"The Constitution of Maryland prohibits legislation which retroactively abrogates vested rights. No matter how `rational' under particular circumstances, the State is constitutionally precluded from abolishing a vested property right or taking one person's property and giving it to someone else." Dua, 370 Md. at 623. The Court of Appeals stated in Dua that
t is clear that retrospective statutes abrogating vested property rights (including contractual rights) violate the Maryland Constitution. . . . he particular provisions of the Constitution which are violated by such acts are Article 24 of the Declaration of Rights and Article III, § 40, of the Constitution. . . . A statute having the effect of abrogating a vested property right, and not providing for compensation, does "authorize private property, to be taken . . . , without just compensation" (Article III, § 40). Concomitantly, such a statute results in a person or entity being "deprived of his . . . property" contrary to the "law of the land." (Article 24).
Id. at 629-30. We discern no such due process concerns in this case.
Of relevance here is the principle that "` laims contrary to justice and equity cannot be regarded as'" vested, because "` he only right taken away is the right dishonestly to repudiate an honest contract or conveyance to the injury of the other party.'" Tyrone W., 129 Md. App. at 289 (quoting Randall, 90 U.S. at 149)). Landsman and Somerville contracted for Somerville to undertake a home improvement project for Landsman at an agreed upon price. Somerville abandoned the project before completion and refused to repay Landsman for the work that Somerville failed to complete. T
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