Opinion ID: 2595652
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Whether Mat-Su was required to exhaust administrative remedies before suing for injunctive relief under AS 18.07.091(a)

Text: As a second alternative basis for affirming, Advanced Pain argues that Mat-Su failed to exhaust available administrative remedies before seeking judicial review. Advanced Pain appears to be renewing an argument it made in the superior court that, because Mat-Su failed to make a timely request for reconsideration by the commissioner, it allow[ed] its administrative remedies to lapse. Mat-Su replies that Advanced Pain's interpretation seek[s] to impose a new condition upon the applicability of AS 18.07.091(a) that simply does not exist in the statute. Mat-Su argues that subsection .091(a) does not condition the right to seek injunctive relief upon first filing an administrative appeal or exhausting administrative remedies. It also contends that it would be nonsensical to impose such a prerequisite, because one of the parties that may seek relief under the statute is the commissioner. We have noted that the basic purpose of the exhaustion doctrine is to allow an administrative agency to perform functions within its special competenceto make a factual record, to apply its expertise, and to correct its own errors so as to moot judicial controversies. [32] The United States Supreme Court has held that [p]roper exhaustion demands compliance with an agency's deadlines and other critical procedural rules because no adjudicative system can function effectively without imposing some orderly structure on the course of its proceedings. [33] But the case in which the Court so held involved a lawsuit brought under the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995, which explicitly provided that the action could not be brought until such administrative remedies as are available are exhausted. [34] Nothing in AS 18.07.091or in Alaska's CON laws for that matterexplicitly required Mat-Su to exhaust available administrative remedies before suing for injunctive relief in the superior court. Furthermore, as discussed above, Mat-su's claim for injunctive relief against Advanced Pain was not an administrative appeal because the dispute focused far more on the validity of Advanced Pain's cost estimate than on what the commissioner did. A failure to exhaust therefore is not an alternative ground for affirming.