Opinion ID: 2641472
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Applicability of 2005 Amendments

Text: During the 2005 West Virginia legislative session, certain amendments were enacted to the “deliberate intent” statute. See 2005 W.Va. Acts, ch. 248 (eff. July 1, 2005). Included in the statutory changes was language by which the requisite showing of an employer’s “subjective realization” of an unsafe working condition was altered to require evidence of the employer’s “actual knowledge” of an alleged unsafe working condition. See W.Va. Code § 23-4-2(d)(2)(ii)(B) (2005). The Legislature expressly provided that the 2005 amendments applied to “all injuries occurring and all actions filed on or after the first day of July, Two Thousand Five.” Id. at § 23-4-2(f). Seeking to come within the pre-2005 amendment standards, Mr. Simmons argues that the Legislature intended that the new language would be applied prospectively and only to those cases where both the injury and the filing of the civil action occur after July 1, 2005. In support of his position, Mr. Simmons suggests that the use of the term “and” indicates that the two specified occurrences–“injuries occurring” and “actions filed”–must coexist to invoke the provisions of the amended statute. W.Va. Code § 23-4-2(f). As the injury at issue occurred prior to July 1, 2005, Mr. Simmons argues that the 2005 amendments are not applicable to his case. Relying on the statutory maxim that every word chosen must be accorded specific meaning, he maintains that the circuit court erred in deciding that either 5 the injury or the filing of the action could independently trigger the application of the 2005 amendments. See State ex rel. City of Huntington v. Lombardo, 149 W.Va. 671, 698, 143 S.E.2d 535, 551 (1965) (“A cardinal rule of statutory construction is that significance and effect must, if possible, be given to every section, clause, word or part of a statute.”). To illustrate his point, Mr. Simmons refers to a decision of this Court in which we addressed the significance of the inclusion of the term “and” within another workers’ compensation statute. In Emmel v. State Compensation Director, 150 W.Va. 277, 145 S.E.2d 29 (1965), we discussed the burden imposed on a workers’ compensation claimant to prove that he/she sustained an injury both in the course of and resulting from his/her employment. As the Court explained, “[t]he two phrases, ‘in the course of’ and ‘resulting from’ are not synonymous and both elements must concur in order to make a claim compensable.” Id. at 281, 145 S.E.2d at 32. Given the unmistakable emphasis in Emmel on the conjunctive nature of the term “and,” Mr. Simmons posits that the statutory language at issue in this case should be similarly applied in the conjunctive rather than the disjunctive. In response, Master Mechanical maintains that the conjunctive meaning of “and” is met by virtue of the fact the 2005 amendments apply to two separate events: (1) injuries that occur after July 1, 2005, and (2) claims that are filed after July 1, 2005, regardless of when the injury occurred. Rather than reading the statutory language in a 6 precedent condition fashion as suggested by Mr. Simmons, the statute need only be read as pertaining to both situations specified above. That this interpretation is logical is easily demonstrated. Given that the effective date of the statutory amendments at issue is the same date chosen by the Legislature to implement the changes, it is logical to assume that the Legislature sought to apply the new provisions to all “deliberate intent” actions where the injuries occurred post July 1, 2005, as well as those actions that were filed on that date or later but involved injuries which occurred pre-amendment. In this fashion, the Legislature brought every deliberate intent action that was filed after July 1, 2005, under the new law. Mr. Simmons’ argument that the conjunctive “and” requires that both events must take place post July 1, 2005, fails because there is no common word or phrase to which both events relate. In illustration, the term employment in the phrase “both in the course of and resulting from his employment” at issue in Emmel clearly pertained to both parts of the clause. In this case, however, the use of the term “and” is used only in the sense of providing an additional factual scenario that may invoke the amended statutory language rather than identifying a necessary element required to establish a statutory claim. This distinction is critical. Upon a reasoned consideration of the position advanced by Mr. Simmons, we wholly reject his contention that the Legislature intended for its 2005 amendments to affect 7 only those cases in which both the injury and the filing of the action occurred after July 1, 2005. Accordingly, we hold that the language set forth in West Virginia Code § 23-4-2(f) (2005), which addresses the implementation of statutory amendments enacted to West Virginia Code § 23-4-2 during the 2005 session of the Legislature, pertains to “deliberate intent” cases in which the injuries occurred after July 1, 2005, and also to actions that are filed on or after July 1, 2005. Our decision on this issue is in accord with the circuit court’s affirmative response to the first certified question.9