Opinion ID: 2380608
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Interference With The Legislative Prerogative

Text: In section 753, we are faced with a statute which does not specify when the two-year period of limitations commences to run; the Legislature has not provided a definition of accrues applicable to foreign-object surgical malpractice suits. Absent any explicit legislative direction which would otherwise foreclose our consideration of the meaning of accrual, the process of defining the term remains a judicial function. Anderson v. Neal, Me., 428 A.2d 1189, 1191 (1981); Neel v. Magana, Olney, Levy, Cathcart & Gelfand, 6 Cal.3d 176, 192, 491 P.2d 421, 431, 98 Cal.Rptr. 837, 847 (1971); Franklin v. Albert, 381 Mass. 611, ___, 411 N.E.2d 458, 462 (1980); Shillady v. Elliot Community Hospital, 114 N.H. 321, 323-24, 320 A.2d 637, 639 (1974); Fernandi v. Strully, 35 N.J. 434, 448-49, 173 A.2d 277, 285 (1961); Morgan v. Grace Hospital, Inc., 149 W.Va. 783, 789, 144 S.E.2d 156, 160 (1965). See Williams v. Ford Motor Co., Me., 342 A.2d 712, 714 (1975). Cf. Laughlin v. Forgrave, 432 S.W.2d 308 (Mo. 1968) (construing a statute providing that medical malpractice actions be brought within two years from the date of the act of neglect complained of). Particularly as the statute of limitations implicates a technical legal procedure, and as the term accrual is regarded as an obscure ... legislative phraseology, courts have been held to be peculiarly suited to examine the meaning and application of the statute. Neel, 6 Cal.3d at 192, 491 P.2d at 431, 98 Cal.Rptr. at 847; Fernandi, 35 N.J. at 448-49, 173 A.2d at 285. The defendant asserts that the legislative activity following our decision in Tantish must be characterized as a ratification of the construction imposed by that case on the statute of limitations applicable to foreign-object surgical malpractice actions, and that we are thereby forbidden from re-examining that holding today. The issue of the statute of limitations in such cases has been raised in the Legislature three times since Tantish was decided. [3] In 1963, Leg.Doc. 1581, amending Leg.Doc. 1352, was introduced to create a two year statute of limitations which would commence when the injury is first sustained, discovered, or should have been discovered with the exercise of reasonable care; the bill also would have imposed an ultimate limitation of four years from the date of the negligent act. This proposal was indefinitely postponed. The 104th Legislature considered a similar two year statute of limitations which would have invoked the discovery rule in actions for medical malpractice. The Judiciary Committee unanimously recommended passage of the bill with an amendment imposing a ceiling of six years from the date of the negligent act. The House passed the measure, 1969 Leg.Rec. 2863, but the Senate voted for its indefinite postponement. Id. 3013. The proposal subsequently died when the members of a joint committee, established to explore the possibility of reconciling the two legislative branches, reported that they were unable to agree on the matter. Id. 3983. See also id. 2397-2402. Finally, in P. & S.L.1975, ch. 73, the Legislature created the Commission to Revise the Laws Relating to Medical and Hospital Malpractice Insurance, an entity popularly known as the Pomeroy Commission, charged with formulating proposals to insure the availability of medical and hospital malpractice insurance to physicians and hospitals ... and to develop a more equitable system of relief for malpractice claims. Id., § 1. The fruits of the Committee's report were enacted in 1977 as the Maine Health Security Act, 24 M.R.S.A. §§ 2501-2905. Included in the Act was a statute of limitations applicable to tort actions against a hospital or its employees. § 2902. This provision removed such actions from the purview of the general six year limitations statute, 14 M.R.S.A. § 752, and situated them in a position similar to malpractice actions against physicians, as provided in section 753. Statement of Fact at 21, Leg. Doc. 727 (108th Leg., 1977). During the Legislature's consideration of the Pomeroy Commission Report, four separate amendments were offered which would have attached discovery features to both section 753 and the then pending section 2902 of the Health Security Act. House Filings 771, 780, 788 and 853. Only one of the four amendments (H.F. 788) reached the House floor, where it was indefinitely postponed. 1977 Leg.Rec. 2090-91. See also id. 1832-33, 1945-50. Thus, the Legislature has on several occasions considered the adoption of a discovery rule applicable to foreign-object surgical malpractice suits, but it has never enacted such a provision. Several members of the body engaged in debate over the merits of such a provision. Yet, no one knows why the Legislature did not pass the proposed measure. Anderson, 428 A.2d at 1191, quoting Franklin, 381 Mass. at ___, 411 N.E.2d at 461, and Berry v. Branner, 245 Or. 307, 311, 421 P.2d 996, 998 (1966). Indeed, as we further noted in Anderson, the legislative failure to give statutory recognition to a discovery rule may have resulted from the 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. 428 A.2d at 1191, quoting Franklin, 381 Mass. at ___, 411 N.E.2d at 461-62, and H. Hart & A. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in the Making and Application of Law 1395-96 (tent. ed. 1958) (emphasis added). See also Neel, 6 Cal.3d at 192, 491 P.2d at 431, 98 Cal.Rptr. at 847. Significantly, even in the face of these proposals to implement the discovery rule in medical malpractice cases, the Legislature has not adopted the holding in Tantish that a cause of action for surgical malpractice accrues at the time of the occurrence of the negligent act. Thus, ultimately, we are faced with a silent legislative record which cannot be seen to either endorse or reject the discovery rule in the factual context presented by this case. It is an invalid mode of analysis to evaluate the judicial soundness of Tantish by the absence of subsequent legislation. Such legislative inaction cannot be viewed as a rejection of the discovery rule so as to preclude our examination of it ourselves. See Girouard v. United States, 328 U.S. 61, 69-70, 66 S.Ct. 826, 829-30, 90 L.Ed. 1084, 1090 (1946), quoted in N.L.R.B. v. Plasterers' Local Union No. 79, 404 U.S. 116, 129-30, 92 S.Ct. 360, 368-69, 30 L.Ed.2d 312, 323 (1971). Nor can such inaction be taken as indicative of any intent to in fact legislate the rule previously developed by the court through construction of the generic statutory language. See James v. United States, 366 U.S. 213, 220, 81 S.Ct. 1052, 1056, 6 L.Ed.2d 246, 254 (1961); Girouard, 328 U.S. at 69-70, 66 S.Ct. at 829-30, 90 L.Ed. at 1090; Helvering v. Hallock, 309 U.S. 106, 119-20, 60 S.Ct. 444, 451-52, 84 L.Ed. 604, 612-14 (1939). In two instances, the Legislature has enacted a form of the discovery rule. These include malpractice actions against design professionals, 14 M.R.S.A. § 752-A, and causes of action fraudulently concealed, 14 M.R.S.A. § 859. [4] However, [t]he legislative recognition of the need for a discovery rule of accrual in certain situations ... does not preclude this Court from giving judicial recognition to such a need in others. Anderson, 428 A.2d at 1190. Christiansen v. Rees, 20 Utah 2d 199, 202, 436 P.2d 435, 437 (1968). Unlike actions within the scope of sections 752-A and 859, the Legislature has left undefined when a cause of action subject to section 753 accrues. In the face of the specific intent displayed by the Legislature in sections 752-A and 859, we cannot validly infer from its silence as to section 753 suits an affirmative mandate establishing a point of accrual. There thus exists no explicit legislative direction to divest this Court of its responsibility to define when a foreign-object surgical malpractice action accrues under section 753. In exercising this power, we do not encroach on legislative prerogatives any more than we did in issuing our holding in Tantish. By that decision, we closed the doors of our courtrooms to plaintiffs governed by the harsh accrual rule. We did that without legislative help. We can likewise open them again, without legislative help, when principled articulation of just principles of law in the existing social environment shall so require. See Molitor v. Kaneland Community Unit District No. 302, 18 Ill.2d 11, 25, 163 N.E.2d 89, 96 (1959), cert. denied 362 U.S. 968, 80 S.Ct. 955, 4 L.Ed.2d 900 (1960); Pierce v. Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital Association, 43 Wash.2d 162, 166-67, 260 P.2d 765, 768 (1953). Where the policy at issue is one originally fashioned by the court it remains the primary responsibility of judges to change that policy however long it has persisted, MacDonald v. MacDonald, Me., 412 A.2d 71, 73-74 (1980), when it operates erratically and produces undesirable results in frequently recurring kinds of situations. Black v. Solmitz, Me., 409 A.2d 634, 639 (1979). [5] That which we may not do is to change such a rule or policy once the Legislature has specifically taken that rule or policy out of the arena of the judicial prerogative, in which it originally placed it, by a positive and definitive statutory pronouncement, legitimately within its own prerogative, of a specific rule or policy. As we have demonstrated, that has not happened with respect to the accrual rule we enunciated in Tantish. We have said with respect to this rationale as used in a past similar case, Potter v. Schafter, 161 Me. 340, 211 A.2d 891 (1965), that the Court's refusal there to act, thus deferring to the Legislature, was wrong in theory ... [and] in its intimations that action by the judiciary to change the common law where there is involved a `collision between the principle of stare decisis and contemporary legal philosophy' is `to usurp legislative authority.' MacDonald, 412 A.2d at 74 n.4. Having once surmounted that doctrinal error, we should not again commit it in this case. [6] It is a legitimate judicial function to make law interstitially by giving meaning through judicial interpretation to vague, indefinite or generic statutory terms that alone are but the empty crevices of the law. Linkletter v. Walker, 381 U.S. 618, 624, 85 S.Ct. 1731, 1734, 14 L.Ed.2d 601, 605 (1965). [T]he fact that Congress has remained silent or has re-enacted a statute which we have construed, or that congressional attempts to amend a rule announced by this Court have failed, does not necessarily debar us from re-examining and correcting the Court's own error. James, 366 U.S. at 220, 81 S.Ct. at 1056, 6 L.Ed.2d at 254 (emphasis added); accord, Girouard, 328 U.S. at 69-70, 66 S.Ct. at 829-30, 90 L.Ed. at 1090; Helvering, 309 U.S. at 119-22, 60 S.Ct. at 451-53, 84 L.Ed. at 612-14. Where the Legislature has once left to the courts the performance of that definitional function the judicial prerogative remains open, as circumstances require, for re-interpretation in light of changed conditions, so long as the Legislature does not preempt the pertinent statutory meaning by its own definitive and legitimate pronouncement. See Lewis v. Lewis, 370 Mass. 619, 626, 351 N.E.2d 526, 531 (1976); MacDonald, 412 A.2d at 73-74, and cases therein cited. Reconsideration of a prior precedent settling a question of statutory construction is proper where there is nothing in subsequent legislative history sufficient to persuade us that the legislative branch intended to legislate the rule.