Request By:
Willard Stanley, Commissioner
Department of Mines and Minerals
P.O. Box 680
Lexington, Kentucky 40586
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; By: David K. Martin, Assistant Attorney General
In your letter dated May 3, 1983, you inquired as to whether venue for a prosecution for mining without obtaining a mine license from the Department of Mines and Minerals, KRS 351.990(13), could lie in Fayette County. KRS 351.990(13) makes such an offense a Class A misdemeanor and provides that venue shall lie in the county in which the offense occurred. Fayette County is the site of the offices of the Department of Mines and Minerals and is the place of issuance of mine licenses for coal and clay mines pursuant to KRS 351.175. The only reported Kentucky case concerning venue for mining without a mine license issued pursuant to KRS 351.175 is
Commonwealth v. Sizemore, Ky., 488 S.W.2d 685 (1972). While there was no majority opinion in that case, six of the seven judges of Kentucky's highest court in that case believed that the offense of mining without such a license occurs only in the county in which the mine is located. As three of the judges said, in concluding that the offense does not occur in Fayette County:
"It is plain that the proscribed conduct is unlicensed mining, the obtaining of a license has no significance apart from the carrying on of mining operations."
See, also,
Kentucky Straight Creek Coal Co. v. Commonwealth, 304 Ky. 247, 200 S.W.2d 470 (1947), in which it was held that the offense of doing business in the Commonwealth without registering with the Secretary of State as a foreign corporation occurs in the county in which business is done rather than the county in which the Secretary of State's office is located.
In addition to the weight of prior authority rejecting the theory that Fayette County is the situs of the offense of unlicensed mining, consideration must be given to the intent of the General Assembly in enacting KRS 351.990(13). The legislature is presumed to be aware of existing state laws and prior interpretations of existing laws by the courts.