Source: http://supreme.nolo.com/us/514/749/case.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 22:17:14+00:00

Document:
More than three years after respondent Hyde was in an accident in Ohio with a truck owned by a Pennsylvania company, she filed suit in an Ohio county court against the company and the truck's driver, petitioners herein. The suit was timely under an Ohio provision that tolls the running of the State's 2-year statute of limitations in lawsuits against outof-state defendants. However, while her case was pending, this Court, in Bendix Autolite Corp. v. Midwesco Enterprises, Inc., 486 U. S. 888, held that the tolling provision places an unconstitutional burden upon interstate commerce. The county court dismissed her suit as untimely, but it was ultimately reinstated by the State Supreme Court, which held that Bendix could not be applied retroactively to bar claims that had accrued prior to the announcement of that decision.
Held: The Supremacy Clause bars Ohio from applying its tolling statute to pre-Bendix torts. Pp. 752-759.
(a) Hyde acknowledges that this Court, in Harper v. Virginia Dept. of Taxation, 509 U. S. 86, 97, held that, when it decides a case and applies the new legal rule of that case to the parties before it, then it and other courts must treat the same rule as "retroactive," applying it, for example, to pending cases, whether or not they involve predecision events. She thereby concedes that Bendix applies to her case and retroactively invalidated the tolling provision that makes her suit timely. She argues instead that the issue here is not one of retroactivity, and that the Ohio Supreme Court's action is permissible because all that court has done is to fashion a remedy that takes into consideration her reliance on pre-Bendix law. Pp. 752-753.
(b) There are serious problems with Hyde's argument. The Ohio Supreme Court's syllabus (the legally authoritative statement of its holding) speaks, not about remedy, but about retroactivity. That court's refusal to dismiss her suit on the ground that she may have reasonably relied upon pre-Bendix law is the very sort of justification that this Court, in Harper, found insufficient to deny retroactive application of a new legal rule. She correctly notes that, as courts apply "retroactively" a new rule of law to pending cases, they may find instances where the new rule, for well-established legal reasons, does not determine the outcome of the case. However, this case involves no instance or special circumstance that might somehow justify the result she seeks.
It does not concern (1) an alternative way of curing the constitutional violation; or (2) a previously existing, independent legal basis for denying relief, see, e. g., McKesson Corp. v. Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco, Fla. Dept. of Business Regulation, 496 U. S. 18, 40-41; or (3) a well-established general legal rule, such as qualified immunity, that trumps the new rule of law, which general rule reflects both reliance interests and other significant policy justifications, see, e. g., Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U. S. 800, 818; or (4) a principle of law that limits the principle of retroactivity itself, see Teague v. Lane, 489 U. S. 288. Hyde has offered no more than simple reliance as a basis for creating an exception to Harper's retroactivity rule and has conceded that Harper governs this case. Her concession means that she cannot prevail. pp.753-759.
68 Ohio St. 3d 240, 626 N. E. 2d 75, reversed.
BREYER, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which REHNQUIST, C. J., and STEVENS, SCALIA, SOUTER, THOMAS, and GINSBURG, JJ., joined. SCALIA, J., filed a concurring opinion, in which THOMAS, J., joined, post, p. 759. KENNEDY, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, in which O'CONNOR, J., joined, post, p. 761.
William E. Riedel argued the cause and filed briefs for petitioners.
* Irene C. Keyse- Walker filed a brief for the Dalkon Shield Claimants Trust as amicus curiae urging reversal.
Briefs of amici curiae urging affirmance were filed for the State of Ohio by Lee Fisher, Attorney General, Richard A. Cordray, State Solicitor, and Simon B. Karas; and for Brown & Szaller Co., L. P. A., et al. by James F. Szaller, Robert A. Marcis, Larry S. Stewart, and Jeffrey R. White.
Ohio held that, despite Bendix, Ohio's tolling law continues to apply to tort claims that accrued before that decision. This holding, in our view, violates the Constitution's Supremacy Clause. We therefore reverse the Ohio Supreme Court's judgment.
The accident that led to this case, a collision between a car and a truck, occurred in Ashtabula County, Ohio, on March 5, 1984. More than three years later, on August 11, 1987, Carol Hyde (respondent here) sued the truck's driver, John Blosh, and its owner, Reynoldsville Casket Company (petitioners). All parties concede that, had Blosh and Reynoldsville made their home in Ohio, Ohio law would have given Hyde only two years to bring her lawsuit. See Ohio Rev. Code Ann. § 2305.10 (1991). But, because petitioners were from Pennsylvania, a special provision of Ohio law tolled the running of the statute of limitations, making the lawsuit timely. See § 2305.15(A) (tolling the statute of limitations while a person against whom "a cause of action accrues" is "out of" or "departs from" the State).
sion. (Section 16, Article I, Ohio Constitution, applied.)" 68 Ohio St. 3d 240, 240-241, 626 N. E. 2d 75 (1994). We granted certiorari to decide whether the Federal Constitution permits Ohio to continue to apply its tolling statute to pre-Bendix torts. And, as we have said, we conclude that it does not.
Hyde acknowledges that this Court, in Harper v. Virginia Dept. of Taxation, 509 U. S. 86, 97 (1993), held that, when (1) the Court decides a case and applies the (new) legal rule of that case to the parties before it, then (2) it and other courts must treat that same (new) legal rule as "retroactive," applying it, for example, to all pending cases, whether or not those cases involve predecision events. She thereby concedes that, the Ohio Supreme Court's syllabus to the contrary notwithstanding, Bendix applies to her case. And, she says, as "a result of Harper, there is no question that Bendix retroactively invalidated" the tolling provision that makes her suit timely. Brief for Respondent 8.
Harper, supra, at 133-134 (O'CONNOR, J., dissenting); American Trucking Assns., Inc. v. Smith, 496 U. S. 167, 218-225 (1990) (STEVENS, J., dissenting). And she quotes Justice Harlan, who, before Chevron Oil, pointed out that "equitable considerations" such as "'reliance'" might prove relevant to "relief." United States v. Estate of Donnelly, 397 U. S. 286, 296-297 (1970) (concurring opinion).
nounced it). If Harper has anything more than symbolic significance, how could virtually identical reliance, without more, prove sufficient to permit a virtually identical denial simply because it is characterized as a denial based on "remedy" rather than "nonretroactivity"?
upon the kind of case, matter, and circumstances involved. Not all cases concerning retroactivity and remedies are of the same sort.
Second, Hyde points to tax cases in which the Court applied retroactively new rules holding certain state tax laws unconstitutional, but nonetheless permitted the state courts a degree of leeway in designing a remedy, including a remedy that would deny state taxpayers, with pending refund cases, the refund that they sought. See Harper v. Virginia Dept. of Taxation, 509 U. S. 86 (1993); Beam, supra. If state courts may at the same time apply new law (invalidating tax statutes) and withhold relief (tax refunds) from tax plaintiffs, asks Hyde, why can they not at the same time apply new law (invalidating tolling statutes) and withhold relief (dismissal) from tort defendants?
dial" exception to "retroactivity" law, but simply from the fact that the state law that the taxpayer had attacked now satisfies the Constitution.
Other tax examples present different, remedial problems.
Suppose a State collects taxes under a taxing statute that this Court later holds unconstitutional. Taxpayers then sue for a refund of the unconstitutionally collected taxes. Retroactive application of the Court's holding would seem to entitle the taxpayers to a refund of taxes. But what if a preexisting, separate, independent rule of state law, having nothing to do with retroactivity-a rule containing certain procedural requirements for any refund suit-nonetheless barred the taxpayers' refund suit? See McKesson Corp., supra, at 45; Reich v. Collins, 513 U. S. 106, 111 (1994). Depending upon whether or not this independent rule satisfied other provisions of the Constitution, it could independently bar the taxpayers' refund claim. See McKesson Corp., supra, at 45.
This tax scenario simply reflects the legal commonplace that, when two different rules of law each independently bar recovery, then a decision, the retroactive application of which invalidates one rule, will make no difference to the result. The other, constitutionally adequate rule remains in place. Hyde cannot bring her case within the protection of this principle, for the Ohio Supreme Court did not rest its holding upon a pre-existing, separate rule of state law (having nothing to do with retroactivity) that independently permitted her to proceed. Rather, the maintenance of her action critically depends upon the continued application of the Ohio statute's "tolling" principle-a principle that this Court has held unconstitutional.
discharge of their duties.'" Id., at 814 (quoting Gregoire v. Biddle, 177 F.2d 579, 581 (CA2 1949)). And, it reflects the concern that "society as a whole," without that immunity, would have to bear "the expenses of litigation, the diversion of official energy from pressing public issues, and the deterrence of able citizens from acceptance of public office." 457 U. S., at 814. These very facts-that a set of special federal policy considerations have led to the creation of a well-established, independent rule of law-distinguish the qualified immunity cases from the case before us, where a concern about reliance alone has led the Ohio court to create what amounts to an ad hoc exemption from retroactivity.
Finally, Hyde points to the line of cases starting with Teague v. Lane, 489 U. S. 288 (1989), in which, she says, this Court has held that a habeas corpus petitioner cannot obtain a habeas corpus remedy where doing so would require the habeas court to apply retroactively a new rule of criminal law. The Teague doctrine, however, does not involve a special "remedial" limitation on the principle of "retroactivity" as much as it reflects a limitation inherent in the principle itself. New legal principles, even when applied retroactively, do not apply to cases already closed. Cf. United States v. Estate of Donnelly, 397 U. S., at 296 (Harlan, J., concurring) (at some point, "the rights of the parties should be considered frozen" and a "conviction ... final"). And, much as the qualified immunity doctrine embodies special federal policy concerns related to the imposition of damages liability upon persons holding public office, the Teague doctrine embodies certain special concerns-related to collateral review of state criminal convictions-that affect which cases are closed, for which retroactivity-related purposes, and under what circumstances. No such special finality-related concerns are present here.
that new rule, for well-established legal reasons, does not determine the outcome of the case. Thus, a court may find (1) an alternative way of curing the constitutional violation, or (2) a previously existing, independent legal basis (having nothing to do with retroactivity) for denying relief, or (3) as in the law of qualified immunity, a well-established general legal rule that trumps the new rule of law, which general rule reflects both reliance interests and other significant policy justifications, or (4) a principle of law, such as that of "finality" present in the Teague context, that limits the principle of retroactivity itself. But, this case involves no such instance; nor does it involve any other special circumstance that might somehow justify the result Hyde seeks. Rather, Hyde offers no more than simple reliance (of the sort at issue in Chevron Oil) as a basis for creating an exception to Harper's rule of retroactivity-in other words, she claims that, for no special reason, Harper does not apply. We are back where we started. Hyde's necessary concession, that Harper governs this case, means that she cannot prevail.
"wrong." (If it were, every citizen would have standing to challenge every law.) In fact, what a court does with regard to an unconstitutional law is simply to ignore it. It decides the case "disregarding the [unconstitutional] law," Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 178 (1803) (emphasis added), because a law repugnant to the Constitution "is void, and is as no law," Ex parte Siebold, 100 U. S. 371, 376 (1880). Thus, if a plaintiff seeks the return of money taken by the government in reliance on an unconstitutional tax law, the court ignores the tax law, finds the taking of the property therefore wrongful, and provides a remedy. Or if a plaintiff seeks to enjoin acts, harmful to him, about to be taken by a government officer under an unconstitutional regulatory statute, "the court enjoins, in effect, not the execution of the statute, but the acts of the official, the statute notwithstanding." Massachusetts v. Mellon, 262 U. S. 447, 488-489 (1923) (emphasis added). In such cases, it makes sense to speak of "remedial discretion."
In the present case, however, ignoring the unconstitutional statute (which the Ohio courts were bound to do) did not result in the conclusion that some remedy must be provided (over which the courts might have some discretion). Rather, it resulted in the conclusion that the remedy which the plaintiff sought could not be provided. Respondent's suit was concededly untimely under the applicable state statute of limitations, Ohio Rev. Code Ann. § 2305.10 (1991). See ante, at 751. When petitioners moved to dismiss the suit, respondent replied that the suit was timely by virtue of the tolling provision, § 2305.15(A). The tolling provision, however, was unconstitutional, see Bendix Autolite Corp. v. Midwesco Enterprises, Inc., 486 U. S. 888 (1988), and since it was unconstitutional it "was ... as inoperative as if it had never been passed," Chicago, 1. & L. R. Co. v. Hackett, 228 U. S. 559, 566 (1913).
some valid Ohio law other than the tolling statute) it had no alternative but to dismiss. The Court's opinion gives reasons why the Ohio law applied by the Ohio Supreme Court in this case is in its substance invalid. I add that even the rubric under which that law was announced is invalid: It has nothing to do with remedial discretion.
instance, through rules pertaining to tolling or waiver. See American Trucking Assns., Inc., supra, at 221 (STEVENS, J., dissenting) (citing Braun v. Sauerwein, 10 Wall. 218, 223 (1870)). When a hard case presents the question of our authority to deny relief in a retroactivity case, that will be soon enough to resolve it; for the law in this area is, and ought to be, shaped by the urgent necessities we confront when there is a strong case to be made for limiting relief despite the retroactive application of the law.
This is not a case where we need to address the issue whether a party is entitled to a full remedy in a retroactivity case, because that question arises only when the right is predicated upon a new rule of law, see United States v. Johnson, 457 U. S. 537, 549 (1982), and Bendix Autolite Corp. v. Midwesco Enterprises, Inc., 486 U. S. 888 (1988), did not announce a new rule. In the civil context, a case announces a new rule of law "either by overruling clear past precedent on which litigants may have relied, ... or by deciding an issue of first impression whose resolution was not clearly foreshadowed." Chevron Oil, supra, at 106; cf. Teague v. Lane, supra, at 301 (new rule in criminal context is one not "dictated by precedent existing at the time the defendant's conviction became final"). Respondent could not and does not attempt to argue that the Bendix decision overruled clear past precedent. Rather, she asserts its holding was not clearly foreshadowed. As the Court was explicit to acknowledge in Bendix, however, it was "[a]pplying wellsettled constitutional principles," Bendix, supra, at 889, not a new legal theory or one that had not been foreshadowed by other precedents.
effect is to favor in-state economic interests over out-of-state interests," id., at 579; and it will balance the State's interest against the burden on interstate commerce when the statute "has only indirect effects on interstate commerce and regulates evenhandedly," ibid. (citing Pike v. Bruce Church, Inc., 397 U. S. 137, 142 (1970)). Respondent concedes that the Pike balancing test is well established but claims its application to the Ohio tolling provision in Bendix was not predictable.
Her argument fails on two fronts. First, in Bendix the Court observed the Ohio tolling provision was so blatant an affront to interstate commerce that it might be considered invalid without engaging in the balancing test. See 486 U. S., at 891; see also id., at 898 (SCALIA, J., concurring). Second, the balancing test provides a clear and certain standard in cases such as Bendix, see id., at 894-895; and even if it did not, the "application of precedent which directly controls is not the stuff of which new law is made," Harper v. Virginia Dept. of Taxation, 509 U. S. 86, 112 (1993) (KENNEDY, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment); see Wright v. West, 505 U. S. 277, 309 (1992) (KENNEDY, J., concurring in judgment) ("Where the beginning point is a rule of ... general application, a rule designed for the specific purpose of evaluating a myriad of factual contexts, it will be the infrequent case that yields a result so novel that it forges a new rule, one not dictated by precedent"); see also Keene Corp. v. United States, 508 U. S. 200, 215 (1993) (case does not announce new rule where claims are resolved "under well-settled law"); Hanover Shoe, Inc. v. United Shoe Machinery Corp., 392 U. S. 481, 496 (1968) (case does not announce new rule unless it indicates "that the issue involved was novel, that innovative principles were necessary to resolve it, or that the issue had been settled in prior cases in a manner contrary to the view held by [the Court]").
ring in judgment), Bendix did not "decide ... 'an issue of first impression,'" Ashland Oil, Inc. v. Caryl, 497 U. S. 916, 920 (1990) (per curiam) (quoting Chevron Oil, supra, at 106), come "out of the blue," James B. Beam Distilling Co. v. Georgia, 501 U. S. 529, 556 (1991) (O'CONNOR, J., dissenting), or represent "an avulsive change which caused the current of the law thereafter to flow between new banks," Hanover Shoe, supra, at 499.

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