Circuit Courts with Plenary Jurisdiction and Administrative Agencies with Exclusive Jurisdiction: Can They Peacefully Coexist in Missouri?

I. INTRODUCTION For Missouri courts, 2009 was the year of jurisdiction. The year began with the Supreme Court of Missouri's momentous pronouncement that the state's circuit courts have broad subject matter jurisdiction--jurisdiction that is plenary in scope. (1) Its breadth is so expansive that successful motions to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction seem to be a relic of the past. (2) As momentous as that revelation was, another at the end of the year was even more epochal: the circuit courts' subject matter jurisdiction is so broad that it engulfs even matters that the General Assembly delegates to the exclusive jurisdiction of administrative agencies, such as workers' compensation. (3) The reason for these revelations was a change to the Missouri Constitution--one that occurred more than three decades before. In 1976, Missourians amended their constitution to give circuit courts "original jurisdiction over all cases and matters, civil and criminal." (4) The amendment took away the General Assembly's authority to put statutory restrictions on circuit courts' subject matter jurisdiction. As significant as the amendment was, surprisingly there is little evidence that anyone took much notice of it before the Supreme Court of Missouri shined the spotlight on it in 2009 in J.C.W. ex rel. Webb v. Wyciskalla. (5) It seems odd that it took thirty-three years for Missouri courts to perceive the significance of the constitution's grant of all-encompassing power to trial courts. This begs two questions: what precipitated the change and what was the change all about? When the Supreme Court finally took notice of the amendment in J.C.W., the court asserted that the change solved the perplexities of subject matter jurisdiction for Missouri judges. (6) In fact, the court assured, the constitutional amendment simplified analysis of jurisdictional issues in Missouri by allowing judges to determine their courts' subject matter jurisdiction simply by asking whether a lawsuit is a civil case or matter. (7) If it is, judges can be certain that their courts have subject matter jurisdiction, and that any issue arising in a case speaking in jurisdictional terms--such as a statute requiring posting of a bond to file a petition--is not jurisdictional. (8) As simple as J.C.W.'s analysis seems to be, it apparently was rather unsettling for Missouri judges. It was a huge change in their analysis of jurisdictional issues, requiring them to jettison longstanding, entrenched concepts and traditions--and traditions tend to be tenacious. (9) Moreover, judges, like most individuals, intrinsically distrust anything new. (10) Thus Missouri judges struggled to apply J.C.W.'s simple approach at the outset, most notably in cases involving administrative agency jurisdiction. In a case questioning the jurisdiction of the Missouri Division of Workers' Compensation, an apparently exasperated appellate judge commented that, after J.C.W., "confusion ... seems to permeate any use of the word 'jurisdiction.'" (11) Adding to judges' confusion was the Supreme Court's failure to lay down clear rules in J.C.W. In explaining how judges should handle statutes that make jurisdictional-sounding requirements, J.C.W. instructed only that they should "read [them] as merely setting statutory limits on remedies or elements of claims for relief that courts may grant." (12) In other words, judges are to treat such restrictions as non-jurisdictional rules. But J.C.W. did not say whether all statutory restrictions are non-jurisdictional--even those setting time deadlines or those giving an administrative agency exclusive jurisdiction over a particular subject matter. Judges trying to apply J.C.W. spent much time debating these matters. (13) As former United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart observed, "The art of being a judge, if there is such an art, is in announcing clear rules ...," (14) But the most notable consequence of J. …