State Bill Would Jettison ‘Junk Laws’

Did you know there’s a law in California requiring anybody who kills another in a duel to support the widow and children and pay off the loser’s debts?

Or that frogs injured in jumping contests must be quickly destroyed--but not eaten?

Or that it is illegal to sell a new automobile with the radiator cap or ornament extending through the grille? All there. You can look it up.

And that’s just what Assemblyman Jack O’Connell (D-Carpinteria) did. What he found were lots of oldies but doozies, some dating back to the Gold Rush days of 1849. He calls them “junk laws” and he wants them trashed. They are, he says, obsolete.

There is no longer a need, he says, for “wanted dead or alive” reward posters for criminals or for regulations governing the sale of quicksilver used by the unscrupulous to “salt” gold mining claims and then sell them to unsuspecting prospectors.

And where is the constituency clamoring for the law prohibiting horses from mating within 100 yards of any city limits unless they are placed in an enclosure so they can’t be seen by passersby?

“It’s amazing when you realize some of the junk laws that remain on the books in California,” O’Connell said Tuesday. “(These laws) belong in our history books under the Old West or the Gold Rush. Many served a purpose at one time but have clearly lost their significance over the years.”

Although his approach is light-hearted, O’Connell, a candidate for a state Senate seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Gary K. Hart (D-Santa Barbara), is serious about getting as much deadwood as possible out of the lawbooks.

He has invited his Assembly colleagues to submit other old and useless laws they know of for inclusion in his repeal bill, which is moving through the Legislature. So far, O’Connell has identified 53 laws that would be repealed under the bill.

“Constituents tell me over and over how complicated the (state) codes are,” the Southern California lawmaker said. “This is partly in response to their wishes. I want to get rid of the junk to make our other laws easier for Californians to work with.”

The origin of the frog-jumping contest rules, for example, probably don’t have anything to do with the annual Calaveras County event made famous by the Mark Twain story. “But nobody is still alive who knows that for sure,” O’Connell said, adding that the rules could have been put into law to regulate a competing frog-jumping event.

As for the 1939 statute prohibiting the sale of automobiles with radiator caps or ornaments that stick through the grille, O’Connell quipped, “Some very important person must have gotten skewered to get that one on the books.”

Some of the statutes earmarked for repeal are no longer the state’s business or are simply moot. For example, California law allows the killing of beavers, burros and coyotes if they threaten farm crops.

Well, says O’Connell, the state doesn’t have many beavers any more; burros are controlled by the federal Bureau of Land Management, and coyotes are under the supervision of the federal Department of Agriculture.

Some of the outdated laws are of more recent vintage, such as a 1974 statute calling for the California Highway Patrol to study the feasibility of hiring women to be officers. Since the CHP now has 477 female officers, the hiring study is meaningless.

Others are just plain useless, such as the one requiring those in charge of a bear to keep the beast from running wild.

O’Connell’s bill sailed through the Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee on Tuesday without opposition. Its next stop is the Assembly floor.

While the vote was a unanimous 7 to 0, at least one Assembly member, David Knowles (R-Placerville), wondered why a law repealing the consequences of dueling was fodder for a committee dealing with water, parks and wildlife.

A committee aide replied earnestly that many other parts of the bill dealt with subjects within the committee’s jurisdiction.