Opinion ID: 1210641
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Construing AS 09.10.040(b)

Text: Each of the parties' arguments about the scope of subsection (b) has merit. As CSED claims, a motion to establish a judgment for child support arrears under AS 25.27.226 is not an action as that term was understood at common law. But Thomas is correct that the legislature drafted AS 09.10.040(b) with the understanding that it would apply to such motions. [23] The crucial point, however, is that the legislature added new subsection (b) because of the lower courts' erroneous conclusion that former AS 09.10.040 applied to CSED's motions to collect arrears. We have previously considered how to analyze a statute when the legislature acts based on a mistaken premise. In City of Fairbanks v. Schaible, [24] we were asked to decide whether the City could be held liable for injuries resulting from the negligence of its fire department. [25] The City urged us to find that it was immune from tort liability; as evidence, it pointed to a statute enacted in 1957 that assumed that fire-fighting organizations enjoyed such immunity. [26] We recognized that the legislature's understanding of immunity law stemmed from decisions of the territorial district court in Alaska, which had held that cities were not liable in tort for their exercise of governmental functions. [27] We concluded, however, that the territorial court had misinterpreted the law of our state and that municipalities in Alaska did not enjoy immunity from tort liability. [28] We also implicitly held that the 1957 statute did not change the law and emphasized that it was based on an erroneous belief. [29] The circumstances in Schaible, although different from those in this case, are sufficiently analogous to provide guidance in resolving the issue before us. The legislature that passed the AS 09.10.040(b) amendment, like the legislature that passed the 1957 statute in Schaible, was relying on an erroneous construction of the law by a lower court. A statute passed based on a mistaken premise does not change the legal rule in effect before its passage. [30] Although the 1957 statute in Schaible was not an amendment to the preexisting statute, that case presented us with an opportunity to broaden the scope of municipal immunity beyond that in the preexisting statute based on the legislature's implied recognition of such immunity in the later statute. Instead, we declined to change the judicially recognized meaning of immunity to conform to the legislature's mistaken view of the law. [31] In this case, the legislature's decision to amend AS 09.10.040(b) does not relieve us of the duty of interpreting the term action in that provision. Understandably, the legislature relied on erroneous trial court decisions in its assumption that motions to reduce arrears to judgment constitute actions. But in Dean we held that they do not. As in Schaible, we decline to broaden the judicially recognized scope of the word action to conform to the legislature's erroneous belief about the law. Thus, we hold that new subsection (b) does not apply to AS 25.27.226 motions to collect arrears because such motions are not actions as that term is understood in the common law. The superior court therefore erred in concluding that new subsection (b) barred CSED's AS 25.27.226 motion in this case. [32]