Opinion ID: 4532444
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: the legislative-acquiescence presumption

Text: Offering nothing in our precedent supportive of the prosthetic-device exception, the majority retreats to the cover of the legislative-acquiescence presumption. According to two 20 footnotes in the majority opinion, an “unusual and perhaps unprecedented circumstance,” ante at 9-10 n.4, proves that the General Assembly has specifically endorsed the prosthetic-device exception to the maximum-medical-improvement doctrine. The intended implication is that holding otherwise would impermissibly defy the legislative will and undermine “[j]urisprudential stability,” ante at 9. I respectfully disagree. The story of this “unusual and perhaps unprecedented circumstance,” ante at 9-10 n.4, begins 17 years ago, after the Commission issued an opinion applying the logic of Hill to prosthetic joint replacements. 2 A legislator unsuccessfully introduced a bill in the General Assembly clarifying that maximum medical improvement could only be “reached when the anatomical effects of injury or illness are permanent and all reasonable and necessary medical interventions, including but not limited to the implantation of artificial devices, have occurred,” S.B. 1130, Va. Gen. Assem. (Reg. Sess. 2003) (emphasis added). See ante at 6 n.1. Because the bill never passed, the majority asserts that the General Assembly implicitly endorsed the prosthetic-device exception. We know this to be true, the majority says, because the legislature “apparently” considered the proposed legislation and rejected it on the merits. See ante at 6 n.1, 9-10 n.4. I do not find that conclusion apparent at all. It is far more likely that what happened with this bill 17 years ago has nothing to do with this case, which explains why Richardson, the employer, the deputy commissioner, the full Commission, and the Court of Appeals never mentioned it. Neither house of the General Assembly ever voted on the bill. No committee or 2 See Rowe v. Dycom Indus., Inc., VWC File No. 179-38-18, 2002 WL 847855, at  (Apr. 24, 2002) (finding the decision of the Court of Appeals in Hill to be “controlling” and to forbid the consideration of implanted corrective devices in “orthopedic cases,” concluding that there is no “meaningful distinction legally between an intraocular lens transplant and knee replacement”). 21 subcommittee of either chamber heard arguments or testimony concerning the bill. No one spoke in favor of or against it. No legislator in the General Assembly cast a single vote for or against this bill. Instead, the patron withdrew the bill without comment shortly after the legislative session had begun. I fail to see how this bill, filed and promptly withdrawn 17 years ago, can shut down our judicial duty “to say what the law is,” Howell v. McAuliffe, 292 Va. 320, 350 (2016) (quoting Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 177 (1803)), and oblige us to presume that the legislature has implicitly folded into the text of the Workers’ Compensation Act a legal theory with no textual support. Without that withdrawn bill, there can be no persuasive basis for invoking the legislativeacquiescence presumption. Our only cases relevant to this subject, Hart and Owen, do not mention, much less support, the prosthetic-device exception. The only other possible predicate for the presumption is a misreading of Hill, a Court of Appeals decision, and the opinion of the Commission that found it “controlling,” see supra note 2. Neither of these opinions, however, can support the presumption of legislative acquiescence. The legislative-acquiescence presumption applies in full force only to decisions of courts of last resort, not intermediate or lower courts. See Southwestern Paint & Varnish Co. v. Arizona Dep’t of Envtl. Quality, 976 P.2d 872, 875 (Ariz. 1999) (en banc) (“[T]he principle of legislative acquiescence applies only where a statute has been construed by the court of last resort, not an intermediate appellate court.”). 3 No intermediate or lower court binds, directly or indirectly, a 3 See also Hefner v. White, 47 N.E.2d 964, 965 (Ind. 1943) (“[T]he failure of the Legislature to change a statute after a line of decisions of a court of last resort giving the statute a certain construction amounts to an acquiescence by the Legislature in the construction of the court . . . .” (emphasis added)); Commonwealth v. Trousdale, 181 S.W.2d 254, 256 (Ky. 1944) (“It is a generally recognized rule of statutory construction that when a statute has been construed by a court of last resort and the statute is substantially re-enacted, the Legislature may be regarded as adopting such construction.” (emphasis added)); United States v. Streidel, 620 22 court of last resort. Until a court of last resort rules on a specific issue, it remains open for any litigant to seek an ultimate appeal to that court after receiving an adverse ruling from a lower or intermediate court on the issue. For this reason, we rarely presume that the General Assembly treats decisions of the Court of Appeals as the final judicial word on Virginia law that necessitates, if considered erroneous, a legislative response. 4 It necessarily follows that we should not presume that Commission decisions wholly governed by “controlling” precedent from the Court of Appeals, see supra note 2, bind us on the theory that the General Assembly has silently endorsed the Commission’s expert interpretative judgment. If a decision of the Court of Appeals does not warrant application of the legislativeacquiescence presumption, then neither can a decision of a subordinate tribunal that is duty A.2d 905, 914 n.12 (Md. 1993) (noting that the principle of legislative acquiescence “has little or no applicability when the judicial construction of the statute is not by the highest court of the jurisdiction involved”), superseded by statute on other grounds, Judgments — Limitations on Noneconomic Damages Act, ch. 477, 1994 Md. Laws 2292 (codified as amended at Md. Code Ann., Cts. & Jud. Proc. §§ 11-108 to -109 (1995)); Handlin v. Morgan Cty., 57 Mo. 114, 116 (1874) (“[W]here a court of last resort construes a statute, and that statute is afterwards reenacted, or continued in force, without any change in its terms, it is presumed that the legislature adopted the construction given to it by the court.” (emphasis added)); Mechanics Fin. Co. v. Austin, 86 A.2d 417, 420 (N.J. 1952) (noting that the previous decision allegedly acquiesced in “was not the interpretation of the court of last resort”); Henry Campbell Black, Handbook on the Construction and Interpretation of the Laws § 93, at 298 (2d ed. 1911) (“And after the enactment of a statute, when a construction has been placed upon it by the highest court of the state, it will be steadily adhered to . . . and more especially . . . where it has been acquiesced in by the legislature for a succession of years.” (emphasis added)). 4 I am aware of only two examples where this Court has relied upon a decision of the Court of Appeals as a predicate for the legislative-acquiescence presumption. See Barson v. Commonwealth, 284 Va. 67, 74 (2012); Weathers v. Commonwealth, 262 Va. 803, 805 (2001). Both opinions merely assume, without any analysis, the doctrine’s applicability to decisions of the Court of Appeals. More recently, however, we reversed a decision of the Court of Appeals in which that court had explicitly relied upon its own precedent to establish legislative acquiescence. See Luttrell v. Cucco, 291 Va. 308, 318 (2016) (reversing the Court of Appeals without mentioning that court’s reliance upon legislative acquiescence to one of its own decisions in Luttrell v. Cucco, Record No. 1768-14-4, 2015 WL 1782065, at  (Apr. 21, 2015) (unpublished)). 23 bound to follow the higher court’s precedent. That scenario is exactly the one that we face here. Every Commission decision applying the alleged prosthetic-device exception — from Rowe to the Commission’s decision in this case — simply followed, either directly or indirectly, the binding precedent that the Court of Appeals had established in Hill. 5 Stretching the legislative-acquiescence presumption to fit this odd context is imprudent, as the doctrine is speculative enough on its own terms. See United States v. Wells, 519 U.S. 482, 495-96 (1997) (commenting that “it is at best treacherous to find in congressional silence alone the adoption of a controlling rule of law” (alteration and citation omitted)). Even when it is applicable, the presumption is an “exceedingly poor indicator of legislative intent” and “a highly disfavored doctrine of statutory construction” because “sound principles of statutory construction require that . . . courts determine the Legislature’s intent from its words, not from its silence.” Donajkowski v. Alpena Power Co., 596 N.W.2d 574, 581-83 (Mich. 1999) (emphasis in original). The presumption, moreover, is at its weakest when it relies upon precedent from any court other than the highest court authorized to decide the issue. See Jones v. Liberty Glass Co., 5 See Prasad v. DBHDS\N. Va. Mental Health Inst., Jurisdiction Claim No. VA00001243671, 2019 WL 4014162, at -4 (Va. Workers’ Comp. Comm’n Aug. 19, 2019); Hicks v. Giant Landover, Jurisdiction Claim No. VA01002424518, 2018 WL 4680652, at -4 (Va. Workers’ Comp. Comm’n Sept. 24, 2018); Richardson v. Loudoun Cty., Jurisdiction Claim No. VA00000806147, 2018 WL 4523188, at  n.3 (Va. Workers’ Comp. Comm’n Sept. 11, 2018); Orshoski v. Culpeper Reg’l Hosp., Jurisdiction Claim No. VA00000800421, at -3 (Va. Workers’ Comp. Comm’n Nov. 15, 2017); Locksmith v. Chippenham Hosp., JCN 183-93-44, 2011 WL 3251417, at -4 (Va. Workers’ Comp. Comm’n July 27, 2011); Liming v. Venezia Transp. Serv., Inc., VWC File No. 227-66-84, 2009 WL 3119696, at -4 (Va. Workers’ Comp. Comm’n Sept. 29, 2009); Estate of Allen v. Alexandria Hosp., VWC File No. 207-31-38, 2005 WL 2998009, at -11 (Va. Workers’ Comp. Comm’n Oct. 3, 2005); Wheeler v. United Parcel Serv. of Am., VWC File No. 191-89-10, 2004 WL 377394, at  (Va. Workers’ Comp. Comm’n