¶1Mr. H. L. McCormick, of Washington, D. C., with whom Mr. Clair L. Stout, of Washington, D. G, was on the brief, for appellant.
¶2Mr. Walter M. Bastían, of Washington, D. G, for appellee.
¶3*341Before STEPHENS, VINSON, and RUTLEDGE, Associate Justices.
¶5A jury in the Municipal Court, after finding appellant’s dog, “Popo”, to have been the perpetrator of a fatal assault upon “Little Bits”, the pet Pomeranian owned by Mrs. Emily W. Erck, and that the appellant had been apprised of Popo’s malevolent propensities, returned a verdict for Mrs. Erck in the sum of $200.00. Since the judgment Mrs. Erck has died, and there has been substituted in her place as appellee William E. Richardson, executor and trustee of her estate. Appellant contends that appellee is not entitled to recover for the loss of Little Bits, relying upon the admitted fact that Little Bits, at the time of its death, was not wearing and never had been provided with a tax tag as prescribed by Title 20, Sections 915 et seq., of the District of Columbia Code (1929).1
¶6The statute, enacted in 1878, provides for the levy qf an annual tax upon “all dogs owned or kept in the District of Columbia”;2 the issuance by the collector of a “tax tag” upon the payment thereof;3 the impoundment and disposal of all dogs found running at large without the tax tag;4 the civil liability of the owner of a “recorded” dog for any damage done by the same;5 the adornment of all dogs with a certain collar containing the said tag and prescribing penalties for the failure thereof ;6 and certain penalties for the removal or molestation of these collars or tax tags.7 In addition, Section 918 declares :
¶7“Any dog wearing the tax tag … shall be permitted to run at large within the District of Columbia, and any dog wearing the tax tag … shall be regarded as personal property in all the courts of said District, and any person injuring or destroying the same shall be liable to a civil action for damages …
¶8It is an established principle of the common law that a dog is personal property and that its owner may recover for a willful or negligent injury thereto,8 and it has been deemed immaterial whether the injured dog had been licensed or taxed as prescribed by law.9 It is in the discretion of the legislature, however, to delimit these property rights in a dog,10 and appellant asks us to consider that Section 918 effects a deprivation of these rights to the extent that Little Bits cannot be regarded as personal property, and that no action can be predicated upon its destruction. Appellant contends that Congress in declaring that all dogs wearing the tax tag shall be regarded as personal property and that any person injuring the same shall be liable in a civil action for damages, by necessary implication, has changed the common law rule to the extent that any dog not wearing the tax tag is not personal property and that anyone injuring the same is not liable in damages.
¶9The suggested construction would change the common law rule. No explicit provision for such a change is contained in the Act. The courts have consistently held legislation derogative of the common law accountable to an exactness of expression, and have not allowed the effects of such legislation to be extended beyond the necessary and unavoidable meaning of its terms. The presumption runs against such innovation. This is merely a familiar principle of statutory construction. We are mindful, however, of the caution with which this principle is applied whenever there is a suggestion that an adherence to the letter of the statute would defy an obvious legislative purpose or “lessen the scope plainly intended to be given to the measure.”11 Not only must we weigh *342the force and finality of the words employed in Section 918, but its effect should not be judicially determined apart from its context. It should be considered in association with other related declarations in the Act with a view to the legislative aims and purposes therein and the legislative history of the general subject matter. Guided by these directives, we find the Act to contain several positive indications inconsistent with appellant’s construction.
¶10In 1887, this court, in Murphy v. Preston,12 construed Section 919. This Section reads:
¶11“Any person owning any dog so recorded in the collector’s office shall be liable in a civil action for any damage done by said dog to the full amount of the injury inflicted.”
¶12The plaintiff, there, argued that the Section dispensed with the' common law requirement of scienter to establish the liability of an owner for the damage done by his dog. The court acknowledged that a strict interpretation of that Section supported the plaintiff’s contention; but ruled that the common law necessity of proving scienter had not been modified, holding the provisions of the statute to be in derogation of the common law and thus subject to a strict construction.
¶13After a “careful examination and comparison” of the previously existing regulations concerning dogs, this court stated it was satisfied that Congress had not designed the Act of 1878 to introduce any new principles of law:
¶14“* =:= * the act announces no new principle of law on the subject. The provision that dogs shall be considered, in such wise, personal property, that the owruer may have an action against those injuring them, had already been recognized as the law by our courts. Meig’s Case, 1 MacArthur, 53 [8 D.C. 53, 29 Am.Rep. 578]. Hence, section 4 of the act [§ 918] which declares that a person injuring on destroying a dog wearing a tag shall be liable in a civil action for damages to the owner of the animal, is only declaratory of the existing law, and must be construed according to common lam principles.
¶15“… So, the provision in section 5 [§ 919], that the owner should be liable in damages for injuries caused by his dog, was already well recognized as the law. …”13 [Italics supplied.]
¶16 When a statute, such as this, is of some sixty years’ vintage, a contemporaneous construction and analysis of this sort is of particular persuasiveness on the question of legislative intent. It may be considered that Congress attached implied approbation to this construction when, in 1902, it made an addition to Section 918,14 and left that Section unaffected in all material respects.15 On the basis of the observations in the Murphy case, therefore, as well as the treatment of analogous statutes in other jurisdictions, we believe that the above admonition apropos of interpretative liberality in deference to obvious legislative intent does not pertain to the present legislation, and that the general rule of strict construction prevails. ,
¶17 It is an established rule of the common law that an owner may be liable in a civil action for the damage caused by his dog. Section 919 imposes this liability upon the owner of the “recorded” dog. Consistency would compel the appellant to argue that Congress, in declaring therein that the owner of a recorded dog should be liable in a civil action for damages caused by the same, by necessary implication, has changed the common law rule to the extent that any owner of a dog not recorded should not be so liable. The parallel of this reasoning with the reasoning advanced in support of the appellant’s contention in respect of Section 918 is perfect. A comparison of these two sections is, therefore, especially indicative of the conclusion that appellant’s contention cannot stand. These two sections are consecutive parts of the same Act, passed on the same day, worded with similar references to preceding sections, possessed of parallel phraseology, and obviously intended (as is the whole of the Act) to be read together. The similar structure and terminology must be given the same effect in the one as in the other. If this court should follow appellant’s contention as to Section 918, it would experience difficulty in attaching a different in*343terpretation to Section 919, should, the occasion arise. The discriminatory effects implicit in the latter instance need no extended delineation. If the roles of the principals in this tragedy had been reversed, with Little Bits the villain and Popo the victim, the appellant might very well have considered that the appellee had not exempted himself from civil liability by failing to provide Little Bits with a tax tag.
¶18In addition, there are other evidences in the Act that make it plain that an unlicensed dog was not intended to lose its status as personal property. Section 917 provides that when an unlicensed dog is impounded, it may be redeemed by “the owners thereof” upon the payment of two dollars. While this two dollars is the monetary equivalent of the tax levy, the provision does not, in terms, or by any manner of implication, make the forfeiture thereof the payment of the tax, but rather a penalty and the price of redemption (the pound-master not being entitled to instant re-seizure as the dog would no longer be at large). More important, however, the use of the word “owners” and the provided ppwer of redemption are too opposed to the concept of a complete absence of property rights to give the statute the force that appellant contends. The etymological association and the legal interdependence of the words “owners” and “property” make the conclusion inescapable that all property rights in an untagged dog were not intended to be and were not removed.
¶19If the other construction be adopted, appellee has urged that foreign dogs, temporarily in the District, being necessarily without a license, would be subject to abuse and their owners entitled to no redress in our courts. Appellee does not go far enough, for under the appropriate conflicts rule, there being no tort where the injury occurred, the aggrieved owner would be unable to seek redress in any court.
¶20There is still a further indication in the Act that the owners of untagged dogs were intended to have property rights therein. In Section 921, it is provided that any person who shall seize or molest “any dog” while held or led by any person, or who shall bring “any dog” into the District to kill it, shall forfeit up to $20.00.
¶21We have been unable to discover anything in the examination of this Act or in the legislative history of the subject matter thereof to indicate that Congress intended to affect the status of a dog in the respect contended.
¶22The judicial treatment of similar statutes in other jurisdictions supports this position. In Alabama Great Southern R. Co. v. Wedgworth,16 the court held that an Alabama statute17 requiring a registration fee and identification tag, and declaring dogs so provided to be “property”, did not deprive the plaintiff of a right to civil damages for a negligent injury to his unlicensed and untagged dog, and disavowed any construction of the statute which destroyed valuable pre-existing rights. In Chapman v. Decrow,18 it was held that a Maine statute19 requiring the registration and licensing of dogs and creating a civil liability for the killing of a dog so provided did not prevent the plaintiff’s recovery for the destruction of his unlicensed and untagged dog. The construction of these statutes is especially significant in view of the fact that both contained a provision (absent in our own) making it the duty of certain officials to kill any dog found running at large without these licenses and tags. In State v. Fenske,20 the court held that a Kansas statute21 providing for a certain levy upon dogs and declaring that a dog which had been accordingly listed and valued should be considered personal property did not imply that failure to comply with its provisions destroyed a dog’s classification as personal property for the purposes of larceny.
¶23We have considered several cases where a construction in accordance with the appellant’s argument has been applied, but in each instance the applicable legislation made plainly explicit that which appellant urges is necessarily implicit in our statute. Invariably these statutes contained positive provisions that no dog was to be entitled to the protection of the law unless placed upon the assessment rolls22 or else *344declared that it was lawful for any person to kin any dog not so provided either when found running at large 23 or whenever and wherever found.24
¶24In the course of our inquiry into the merits of appellant’s arguments, we have been measurably impressed by the consistency with which the courts have applied the strictest of constructions to any statute which seemingly modified the common law rule in respect of the property rights in a dog. In jurisdictions where the legislatures have provided that anyone could kill or cause to be killed an unlicensed or unregistered dog, the courts have held that these statutes did not extend to the situation in which the unlicensed dog was killed by another dog;25 in which an unlicensed dog was negligently run over upon the public highway;26 and in which the unlicensed dog was killed by someone other than those who the statute declared might kill the same.27
¶25Apart from any aversion to the inhumane implications of the appellant’s proposal, we are unable to find anything in the Act of 1878, the interpretation of similar state statutes, or the general judicial treatment of the subject matter which lends support thereto.
¶26We have carefully examined the other alleged errors, and, in our view, they are not sufficient to authorize reversal.
¶27The judgment is
¶28Affirmed.
¶58(concurring).
¶59I concur in Judge VINSON’S opinion, for the reasons stated therein and upon the following additional authority:
¶60“This saga of Popo, malevolent pooch,
¶61And Erck’s Pomeranian pet;
¶62Your etymological-legal approach
¶63To canons of dog etiquette,
¶64Persuade me that canines are property still
¶65Whether licensed, unlicensed or tagged;
¶66Not ferae naturae, or fair game to kill
¶70(dissenting).
¶71The question in this case is: Does the statutory provision that “any dog wearing the tax tag . . . shall be regarded as personal property in all the-courts of said District, and any person injuring or destroying the same shall be liable to a civil action for damages”1 mean that dogs not wearing a tax tag shall not *345be regarded as personal property in the courts of the District of Columbia for the purpose of a civil action for injury or destruction. I am of the view that this is what the statute does mean, and that accordingly the case should be reversed and the judgment for damages for Little Bits’ death from the attack of Popo set aside. I am impelled to this conclusion for the following reasons.
¶721. Courts “are not at liberty to construe any statute so as to deny effect to any part of its language. It is a cardinal rule ■of statutory construction that significance and effect shall, if possible, be accorded to every word. . . . ” Market Co. v. Hoffman, 1879, 101 U.S. 112, 115, 25 L.Ed. 782. All of the words of a statute must be taken as if Congress had intended them to have meaning, for Congress is not to be thought by the courts to have used language idly. That being so, if Congress in passing this statute had intended that both tagged and untagged dogs were to be regarded as personal property in the courts and the proper subject of a civil action for injury or destruction, why did it mention tags at all? Such mention is idle if both classes of dogs were to be regarded as property and made the subject of an action for injury or destruction. If it had been the intention of Congress that all dogs, whether tagged or not, were to be regarded as property in the courts, it could have said in terms that all dogs, tagged or not, should be so regarded; or it could have left the statute (and previous statutes — upon which I comment below) silent on the subject so that the common law rule, that although property in dogs is of an imperfect or qualified nature (so that they were not regarded as the subject of larceny) they are so far recognized as property that an action will lie for their conversion or injury, would prevail.2 But Congress did neither of these things. True, it might have added to the statute the words “and no others” to make explicit that only tagged dogs were covered. But Congress is not required to express in the negative what an affirmative, in the normal use of words, clearly implies; and to say that “any dog wearing the tax tag . . . shall be regarded as personal property in all the courts of said District, and any person injuring or destroying the same shall be liable to a civil action for damages” does clearly imply that untagged dogs shall not be regarded as personal property in the courts and the proper subject of a civil action against any person injuring or destroying the same.
¶73There is judicial confirmation of my view. In Connecticut a statute provided that “every person who shall steal or confine and secrete any registered dog or any *346dog under the age of six months, or who shall unlawfully kill or injure any such dog shall be liable to the owner in a civil action.” § 4481 Gen. Stat.1902, as amended by c. 6, p. 6, Public Acts of 1903. In Dickerman v. Consolidated Ry. Co., 1907, 79 Conn. 427, 65 A. 289, the plaintiff’s bulldog was killed by, the defendant’s street railway car. The dog, though over six months of age, was unregistered, and in that case, as in the instant case, the trial judge permitted a verdict for the plaintiff to be rendered nevertheless, instructing the jury that the dog, even though not registered, was entitled to be upon the public street, and was not a trespasser if upon the railroad tracks of the defendant, and that if the defendant was guilty of negligence it was liable for its death. But on appeal this ruling was reversed by the Connecticut Supreme Court of Errors, that court reasoning, in view of the statute, as follows:
¶74“. . .If one has such a property right in his unregistered dog, whether over or under six months of age, that he may recover its value by a civil action when it is either negligently or willfully killed by another person ... he certainly would have no less a right after it was registered. Why, then, provide by statute a remedy by civil action for the unlawful killing of a registered dog or a dog under six months of age?” [65 A. at pages 289, 291.]
¶75It is true that the Connecticut statute made it (as the District of Columbia statute does not) a misdemeanor to own or keep a dog without complying with the registration requirement, and this was commented upon in the course of the opinion of the Supreme Court of Errors. But the essence of the reasoning of the court was, so far as the question of the meaning of the words of the statute was concerned, that if the legislature had intended that the owner of an unregistered dog might recover its value by a civil action when negligently or wilfully killed by another, what purpose could the legislature have had in especially providing by statute a remedy by civil action for the unlawful killing of a registered dog. That is to say, the court there thought, as I think here, that the words of the statute providing for a civil action in respect of the killing of a registered dog were idle unless given not only their expressed positive meaning but also their necessary negative implication in respect of unregistered dogs.
¶76In Chapman v. Decrow, 1899, 93 Me. 378, 45 A. 295, and Alabama Great Southern R. Co. v. Wedgworth, 1922, 208 Ala. 514, 94 So. 549, there were statutes which broadly parallel the District of Columbia act (except that the Alabama statute made it unlawful to keep an untagged dog) in that they recognized a civil liability for the destruction of a registered dog. In those cases it was held that' such statutes do not necessarily imply a legislative intent that unregistered dogs shall not be the subject of a civil action for destruction. The Supreme Court of Alabama said that courts do not favor any construction of a statute that will destroy valuable rights pre-existing and that such an intendment will not be indulged unless it be a necessary implication from the language used, or essential to the effective operation of the law. But I cannot agree that the implication is not necessary if all the words of such statutes be given effect. Moreover, I think it would be faulty to reason in respect of the District of Columbia act, which, as stated above, does not make it a misdemeanor to keep an untagged dog, that the implication is not essential to the effective operation of the law — for if, despite the words of the statute, both tagged and untagged dogs are to be regarded as property in the courts and made the subject of a civil action for injury or destruction, the incentive for paying the required tax and securing a tag will be much diminished, if not destroyed, especially in this day when few dogs run at large whereby the pound master' could seize them if not tagged. The District act is a revenue as well as a regulatory measure. What substantial incentive will there be to pay the tax if untagged dogs are to receive the same treatment as property in the courts as those whose owners have thought sufficiently of them to pay the tax.
¶77The appellee relies upon Lacker v. Strauss, 1917, 226 Mass. 579, 116 N.E. 236, L.R.A.1917F, 434; Commonwealth v. Flynn, 1934, 285 Mass. 136, 188 N.E. 627, 92 A.L.R. 206; Jarvis v. Porter, 1893, 15 Ky.Law Rep. 447, and Pardee v. Royal Baking Co., 1923, 63 Utah 63, 221 P. 847. In Lacker v. Strauss it was held that liability for the killing of an unlicensed dog on a public highway is not limited to cases involving intentional, wanton or reckless acts, but includes cases of ordinary negligence. The court stated that the general rule supported by the weight of authority is that the *347owner of a dog, licensed or unlicensed, may maintain an action for damages for the wilfull or negligent killing or injuring of such an animaL But neither Lacker v. Strauss nor the cases cited therein are based upon a statute like the one at bar, that is, one expressly providing that any dog wearing a tax tag shall be regarded as personal property in the courts and that any person injuring or destroying such a dog shall be liable in a civil action for damages.3 Commonwealth v. Flynn holds merely that there can be larceny of an unlicensed dog, under a statute making it larceny to take feloniously “a domesticated animal,” and has therefore no pertinence to the instant question. The citation to Jarvis v. Porter shows only an abstract of a decision of the Superior Court of Kentucky, reversing a. case appealed from a circuit court, the abstract reading: “ForI the killing of a dog the owner may maintain an action without showing that he has complied with the terms of the Act of May 17, 1886, a dog being property in this State independent of that act.” While the statute referred to recognizes dogs upon which a tax has been paid as “personal property for any and all purposes as fully as personal property of any other kind or description,”4 in the absence of an opinion disclosing the reasoning of the court the case is not persuasive; and for the reasons stated above I disagree with the position taken in the abstract. Pardee v. Royal Baking Co. holds that a licensed dog is the proper subject as property of an owner’s action for damages for negligent destruction. The case has no pertinence.
¶78Counsel for the appellee urge that there can be no change of the common law even by necessary implication. But here I think that their anguish over the passing of Little Bits, untimely snuffed out by the ruthless, pouncing Popo, has led them into error. It is true that where a statute is silent upon a subject, the common law principle relating thereto will not be held to have been changed. Murphy v. Preston, 1887, 5 Mackey 514, 16 D.C. 514, holding that § 5 of the local act,5 which is silent as to scienter, does not repeal the common law requirement of scienter as a foundation for the liability of an owner for injury by a vicious animal, exemplifies that well settled rule, as does in another context Reeves & Company v. Russell, 1914, 28 N.D. 265, 148 N.W. 654, L.R.A. 1915D, 1149.6 The appellee relies, however, with especial emphasis upon Hoage v. Murch Bros. Const. Co., 1931, 60 App.D.C. 218, 50 F.2d 983, wherein this court held that the local statutory provisions as to who may solemnize marriages do not nullify the right of common law marriage *348and wherein the court said that “the legislative intent to abrogate the common-law right may not be presumed, unless clearly expressed.” But in that case the court merely followed the general rule that the provisions of statutes regulating marriage, providing who may solemnize, requiring a license, witnesses, etc., are to be construed as directory only and not to forbid common law marriage, unless express words of nullity are used. That rule rests obviously upon the strong and proper public policy not to question legitimacy and inheritance, and neither the ruling nor the language used in the Hoage case is properly to be taken to forbid the court, when inquiring as to legislative intent for the purpose of determining the effect of statutes generally upon the common law, to give consideration not only to the words themselves of the statutes but also to the normal implications of the words. It is true that “repeals by implication are not favored, and indeed that a statute will not be construed as taking away a common law right existing at the date of its enactment, unless that result is imperatively required; that is to say, unless it be found that the pre-existing right is so repugnant to the statute that the survival of such right would in effect deprive the subsequent statute of its efficacy; in other words, render its provisions nugatory.” Texas & Pac. Ry. v. Abilene Cotton Oil Co., 1907, 204 U.S. 426, 437, 27 S.Ct 350, 51 L.Ed. 553, 9 Ann.Cas. 1075. But in order to determine whether a pre-existing right is repugnant to a statute it must first be decided what the statute means, and in ascertaining legislative intent the necessary implication of the words used can no more be ignored than the words themselves. “The rule that statutes in derogation of the common law are to be strictly construed does not require such an adherence to the letter as would defeat an obvious legislative purpose , or lessen the scope plainly intended to be given to the measure. ...” Jamison v. Encarnacion, 1930, 281 U.S. 635, 640, 50 S.Ct. 440, 74 L.Ed. 1082. It is to be noted further, in respect of Hoage v. Murch Bros. Const. Co., that not only is it a far cry from statutes on marriage to those on dogs, but also that the marriage statute in that case construed would parallel the dog statute involved in the instant case only if to the marriage statute were added a clause saying that “all unions solemnized as provided herein shall be recognized in the courts as marriages”— as the dog statute says “any dog wearing the tax tag hereinbefore provided for . . . shall be regarded as personal property in all the courts of the District,” etc. It is to be noted also that that section (§ 4) of the dog statute particularly involved in the instant case cannot be compared with the section (§5) involved in Murphy v. Preston, supra, note 5, or with such a statute as was before the court in Reeves & Company v. Russell, supra, because § 4 is not silent in respect of property in dogs and right of action for their injury; it speaks on that subject and what it says must therefore be regarded.
¶792. But the question whether § 4 of the statute of 1878 repealed the common law or attached a new condition, that is, the obtaining of a tax tag, before property in, and right of action for injury to, a dog, can be recognized in the courts, cannot properly be determined by looking at § 4 out of the context of previous statutes concerning dogs; and there have been statutes, ordinances or regulations, in the District of Columbia on the subject of dogs since an early day. A by-law of the Corporation of Alexandria of September 24, 1804, required a dog to have a collar and permitted a constable to kill a dog without a collar. See Swann v. Bowie, Fed.Cas. No.13,672, 2 Cranch C.C. 221, 2 D.C. 221 (Circuit Court of the U. S. at Alexandria, 1820). An ordinance of the Corporation of Washington of January 14, 1858, made it unlawful to possess a dog without a license and required a collar with the name of the dog and the letters “C. W.,” to which collar was to be attached the insignia or stamp furnished by the registrar; the act authorized police officers to kill dogs found going at large contrary to the provisions of law, but provided also that any police officer or other person who should kill a properly licensed and collared dog should forfeit not less than five nor more than twenty dollars.7 In 1864, a *349statute applicable to that portion of the County of Washington outside Washington City and Georgetown provided that whenever the owner or keeper of a dog neglected or refused to pay the tax thereon it should be the duty of the proper officer for the collection of taxes in such part of the District to kill or cause to be killed every such dog.8 In 1872 “An Act-for the protection of owners of dogs” was passed. It provided that an owner who had complied with all the requirements of existing laws relating to dogs and those which might thereafter be passed should be entitled to recover upon proper proof of ownership any dog which may have been lost or stolen, and it also provided a fine to be imposed upon one convicted of stealing a dog; finally the act provided that “from and after the passage of this act dogs shall be deemed and held to be personal property.”9 Then came in 1878 the present statute, levying a tax, providing for a tag, authorizing seizure and destruction or sale of dogs without a tag, and providing that all dogs wearing the tag shall be regarded as personal property in the courts of the District of Columbia and for a civil action against any person killing or injuring the same.
¶80The upshot of this statutory history is this: From an early day dogs have been required to be licensed and collared and have been recognized as property and as the subject of theft; but the intention of the legislative authorities has been to protect licensed dogs. It is especially evident that the present statute but strengthens and makes more explicit the 1872 act in respect of the right of legal protection for dogs and that, reading these two acts *350together in the context of the statutory history as a whole, it was not intended by Congress under the present act that untagged dogs should be regarded as personal property in the courts and the proper subject of an action for injury or destruction.10 .Therefore the judgment in favor of the appellee should, in my opinion, be reversed.