Opinion ID: 1984692
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: The Dissent's Statutory Construction Argument

Text: The linchpin of the dissent's argument that a union charged with discrimination in the workplace may not be held accountable for such discrimination is its construction of the contribution statute. The dissent acknowledges that the contribution statute, according to its plain terms, allows contribution among joint tortfeasors. The dissent further recognizes that the statute does not distinguish between joint tortfeasors whose conduct injures by intentional design and those whose conduct injures by negligence. Notwithstanding the absence of any supporting language in the statute, the dissent finds a legislative intent to distinguish between the two kinds of joint tortfeasors. The dissent relies in part on one of our longstanding rules of statutory constructionthat statutes enacted in derogation of the common law are narrowly construed. After properly stating the rule, however, the dissent immediately misapplies it. [14] Relying upon Moyses, supra, the dissent asserts that the term joint tortfeasor was a term of art defined in our common law to refer only to negligent tortfeasors. Even if this were true, it is simply irrelevant: four years after Moyses was decided, our Legislature amended the contribution statute to remove any reference to the phrase joint tortfeasors. [15] Moreover, to the extent the Court in Moyses addressed a right of contribution among intentional tortfeasors, it did so only in dicta; the issue before the Court there was whether several, but not joint, tortfeasors could seek contribution. There was simply no allegation that any of the defendants in Moyses were intentional tortfeasors. Yet the dissent appears prepared to treat Moyses as binding authority on this point. Despite evidence of a legislative intent to eliminate any distinction between negligent and intentional tortfeasors, the dissent attempts to revive the contrary dicta from Moyses by pointing out that our Legislature has not seen fit to overrule that dicta. Aside from the obvious fallacy in this argument (why would this or any other court expect the Legislature to react to dicta?), we note that the Legislature only amended the contribution statute to bring it into conformity with the Uniform Contribution Among Tortfeasors Act in 1974, [16] four years after Moyses was decided. It was at this point that the Legislature apparently made the decision not to adopt the model act's provision prohibiting contribution among intentional tortfeasors. Thus, if we accept the dissent's argument that silence can be an indication of legislative intent (which, as made clear below, we do not), the Legislature, by its decision in 1974 not to adopt the intentional tortfeasor provision of the model act, has already overruled Moyses on this point. [17] In response to the dissent's legislative acquiescence argument, we must take this opportunity to observe that legislative acquiescence is an exceedingly poor indicator of legislative intent. Justice Taylor took great pains to point this out last term in Rogers v. Detroit, 457 Mich. 125, 163-166, 579 N.W.2d 840 (1998), and his remarks regarding the majority opinion in that case apply equally to the dissent here: [The majority's legislative acquiescence argument] is remarkable indeed and is perhaps what former Harvard University Law School Professor Thomas Reed Powell meant when he said in discussing legislative acquiescence arguments of this type: `[C]ongress has a wonderful power that only judges and lawyers know about. Congress has a power to keep silent.... Of course when congress keeps silent, it takes an expert to know what it means. But the judges are experts. They say that congress by keeping silent sometimes means that it is keeping silent and sometimes means that it is speaking.' [ Report to the Attorney General, Using and Misusing Legislative History: A Re-Evaluation of the Status of Legislative History in Statutory Interpretation, U.S. Dep't of Justice, Office of Legal Policy, January 5, 1989, p. 110, n. 475, citing Powell, The Still Small Voice of the Commerce Clause, in 3 Selected Essays on Constitutional Law 931, 932 (Ass'n of American Law Schools 1938), quoted in Tribe, Toward a syntax of the unsaid: Construing the sounds of congressional and constitutional silence, 57 Ind. L.J. 515, 522 (1982).] I believe that the majority's legislative factual history argument ... is, as Justice Scalia so aptly said of similar legislative history arguments, frail substitute[ ] for bicameral vote upon the text of a law and its presentment to the [executive]. Thompson v. Thompson, 484 U.S. 174, 192, 108 S.Ct. 513, 98 L.Ed.2d 512 (1988). In fact, if such history tells us anything, its meaning eludes me. At the very most, it is a history that allows the reader, with equal plausibility, to pose a conclusion of his own that differs from that of the majority.2 2 Commentators have noted that one can posit myriad reasons explaining the Legislature's failure to correct an erroneous judicial decision, including: (Complete disinterest [sic]; Belief that other measures have a stronger claim on the limited time and energy of the body; Belief that the bill is sound in principle but politically inexpedient to be connected with; Unwillingness to have the bill's sponsors get credit for its enactment; Belief that the bill is sound in principle but defective in material particulars; Tentative approval, but belief that action should be withheld until the problem can be attacked on a broader front; Indecision, with or without one or another of the foregoing attitudes also; Belief that the matter should be left to be handled by the normal processes of judicial development of decisional law, including the overruling of outstanding decisions to the extent that the sound growth of the law requires; Positive approval of existing law as expressed in outstanding decisions of the Supreme Court; Ditto of the courts of appeals' decisions also; Ditto also of district court decisions; Ditto also of one or more varieties of outstanding administrative determinations; Etc., etc., etc., etc., etc.) [ Report to the Attorney General, Using and Misusing Legislative History: A Re-Evaluation of the Status of Legislative History in Statutory Interpretation, U.S. Dep't of Justice, Office of Legal Policy, January 5, 1989, p. 113, n. 485, citing Hart & Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in the Making and Application of Law, pp. 1395-1396 (tent. ed., 1958).] The majority's analysis poses yet a further problem, for it should not be assumed that the Legislature even agrees it has a duty to correct interpretations by the courts that it considers erroneous. As Judge Stephen Markman, of our Court of Appeals, insightfully observed on this topic in one of his scholarly writings, no sensible theory of statutory interpretation would require Congress to devote a substantial portion of its time to extinguishing judicial forest fires. Markman, On interpretation and non-interpretation, 3 Benchmark 219, 226, n. 60 (1987). As is clear, in my view, this case is an excellent example of the misuse of the doctrine of legislative acquiescence. Indeed, whether it can ever be appropriate to use legislative acquiescence has in the past been the subject of heated debate on this Court. In Autio v. Proksch Construction Co., 377 Mich. 517, 527, 141 N.W.2d 81 (1966), Justice Souris described it as a pernicious evil designed to relieve a court of its duty of self-correction and indicated that it has been examined and rejected by this Court before, but its current resurrection demands we perform the task once more lest our silence be construed as signifying its unanswerable validity. In the course of his discussion, Justice Souris quoted language from Van Dorpel v. Haven-Busch Co., 350 Mich. 135, 145-146, 85 N.W.2d 97 (1957), which is worthy of consideration: Now this beguiling doctrine of legislative assent by silence possesses a certain undeniable logic and charm. Nor are we oblivious to the flattery implicit therein; double flattery, in fact; flattery both to the profound learning and wisdom of the particular supreme court which has spoken, and flattery to a presumably alert and eagerly responsive State legislature. One pictures the legislators of our various States periodically clamoring and elbowing each other in their zeal to get at the pearls of wisdom embalmed in the latest decisions and advance sheets of their respective supreme courtsand thenceforth indicating their unbounded approval by a vast and permanent silence. Yet there are several dark shadows in this picture. For one, it suggests a legislative passion for reading and heeding the decisions of our supreme courts which we suspect may be scarcely borne out by the facts. For another, pushed too far such a doctrine suggests the interesting proposition that it is the legislatures which have now become the ultimate courts of last resort in our various States; that if they delay long enough to correct our errors those errors thus become both respectable and immutably frozen; and, finally, the larger and more dismal corollary that if enough people persist long enough in ignoring an injustice it thereby becomes just. If it has not been clear in our previous decisions, we wish to make it clear now: legislative acquiescence is a highly disfavored doctrine of statutory construction; sound principles of statutory construction require that Michigan courts determine the Legislature's intent from its words, not from its silence. Finally, we note that the dissent would use legislative acquiescence to bind the Legislature not only to our past holdings, but also to mere dicta. We think it presumptuous to bind the Legislature to that which we do not even bind ourselves. Hett v. Duffy, 346 Mich. 456, 461, 78 N.W.2d 284 (1956), overruled on other grounds in Weller v. Mancha (On Rehearing), 353 Mich. 189, 194, 91 N.W.2d 352 (1958). [18] Heaven forfend if the Legislature is obligated to respond to every excursus of the third branch or else be deemed bound thereby. The language of the contribution statute plainly allows contribution among joint tortfeasors of all stripes. We are unconvinced by the dissent's effort to look beyond the words of the statute and find a distinction between intentional and negligent tortfeasors that is otherwise unapparent.