Meyer v. Montana Power Co.3/22/2005
me is required here by virtue of this rule of statutory construction.
In Whalen, a contract case, we reasoned that § 25-2-121, MCA, the venue statute for contract actions, more specifically addressed the facts pled therein than § 25-2-118(1), MCA, the venue statute for all civil actions, and, accordingly, we applied § 25-2-121, MCA. Whalen, 8-9. However, the venue statutes involved in this case do not address subject matter that can be compared to determine specificity in the way we compared the statutes at issue in Whalen. There, we could reason that all contract actions are civil actions, but not all civil actions sound in contract, and so it was clear that § 25-2-121, MCA, addressed contract actions more specifically than § 25-2-118(1), MCA. The subject matter of those two statutes was thus comparable, and allowed us to determine specificity, because both based their designation of venue on the same variable--the type of claim. By contrast, the statutes at issue here, §§ 25-2-126(2) and 25-2-122, MCA, base their respective venue designations upon different variables: § 25-2-126(2), MCA, addresses a particular type of defendant, but no specific type of claim; § 25-2-122, MCA, addresses a specific type of claim, but no particular type of defendant. For this purpose, therefore, it cannot be said that either § 25-2-126(2), MCA, or § 25-2-122, MCA, is more specific than the other. We thus conclude that the reasoning of Whalen is not applicable here.
The precise question before us is whether § 25-2-126(2), MCA (venue for actions against political subdivisions), prevails over § 25-2-122(1)(a), MCA (venue for tort actions) in a multiple defendant case, where one defendant is a political subdivision and another defendant is a private entity, the plaintiff has chosen to sue both defendants in the county in which the private entity resides pursuant to § 25-2-122(1)(a), MCA, and that county is neither the county in which the plaintiff's claim arose nor a county in which the political subdivision is located--those being the two venues approved by § 25-2-126(2), MCA.
We note that neither subsection of § 25-2-126, MCA, purports to prescribe the sole proper venue for an action in which the State or a political subdivision thereof is a defendant, to the exclusion of all other venue designations under the statutes. Further, we note that neither § 25-2-115, MCA ("Multiple proper counties"), nor § 25-2-117, MCA ("Multiple defendants"), textually exempts the application of § 25-2-126, MCA, from operation of the rules either sets forth. Thus, there is no statutory authority for the proposition that § 25-2-126, MCA, is a venue designation superior to the other statutes. Nor does anything in our prior venue holdings require such a conclusion. As noted, we held in Weiss that political subdivisions are subject to the operation of the multiple defendant provisions of § 25-2-117, MCA. Weiss, 219 Mont. at 450, 712 P.2d at 1317.
We thus hold that § 25-2-126(2), MCA, does not prevail over § 25-2-122(1)(a), MCA, including, as applied here, in a matter involving multiple defendants pursuant to § 25-2-117, MCA. These provisions simply provide alternative venue options to the plaintiff, which she properly exercised herein.
We affirm the District Court.
JIM RICE
We concur:
W. WILLIAM LEAPHART
PATRICIA O. COTTER
JOHN WARNER
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