Opinion ID: 202864
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Financing Arrangement.

Text: This brings us to the merits. In that regard, the plaintiff's flagship claim is that the Contract contradicts an HCSCA provision governing the permissible length of financing arrangements in connection with health-club services contracts. That provision reads in relevant part: No contract for health club services shall require payments or financing by the buyer over a period that extends more than one month beyond the expiration of the contract. Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 93, § 80. The plaintiff argues that the Contract runs from month to month  it creates, in effect, a series of one-month terms  and that each monthly term expires unless the subscriber elects to pay the next month's dues. Given this design, the plaintiff claims, the financing arrangement that she entered into, which covered a 36-month period, violates the HCSCA provision quoted above. Bally demurs. Pointing to various contractual rights that extend over the 36-month period without regard to the payment vel non of monthly dues, [3] it depicts the term of the Contract as 36 months. Since this span corresponds precisely with the financing period, Bally opines that the Contract complies with the HCSCA imperative. The district court sided with Bally on this issue. See Ruiz, 447 F.Supp.2d at 28. We recognize the closeness of the question anent the duration of the Contract term. We conclude, however, that there is no need to answer that question. Here, the plaintiff's claim is foreclosed regardless of the length of the term. We explain briefly. By its plain and unvarnished language, the HCSCA provision only proscribes health-club services contracts that require payments or financing running more than one month beyond the expiration of the contract's term. The Contract at issue here did not require any such extended payment plan or financing arrangement. Rather, it afforded the plaintiff a choice; she had the option of paying her membership fee in a lump sum when joining the health club or paying the fee in installments by means of a financing arrangement. Even after making an initial choice in favor of financing, she retained the right to prepay her membership fee in full at any time with no prepayment penalty. [4] Seen in this light, it is transparently clear that the Contract does not require (or even encourage) long-term financing of the membership fee. Unless the statute means something other than what it says, the absence of any such requirement is fatal to the plaintiff's claim. The plaintiff strives to convince us that the statute should be read with just such a rhetorical flourish. Cf. Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass (1871) (`When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, . . . `it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.'). She acknowledges that the word require typically means to demand, to compel, or to impose an obligation. See, e.g., Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary 1058 (11th ed.2003) (defining require as to claim or ask for by right and authority or to demand as necessary or essential). Nevertheless, she exhorts us not to read the word literally; essentially, she asks us to equate it with permit. In her view, the Contract, in combination with Bally's marketing practices, transgresses the spirit  if not the letterof the HCSCA through the artifice of the literal monthly renewal language. Appellant's Reply Br. at 4. In support of this argument, the plaintiff cites a report published six years before the enactment of the HCSCA. See Federal Trade Commission, Report of the Presiding Officer on Proposed Trade Regulation Rule Concerning Health Spas, Public Record 215-50 (1979) (FTC Report). The FTC Report referenced concerns that health clubs had been luring customers into long-term contracts that obligated them to pay for services not yet received. See id. at 29. The difficulty with the plaintiff's attempt to mix and match a federal report and a state statute is that she has provided us with no evidence that the Massachusetts legislature was aware of the FTC Report when it enacted the HCSCA  let alone any evidence that the legislature relied on that document. On these facts, the plaintiff's effort to characterize the FTC Report as persuasive evidence of legislative intent is unavailing. Speculation and surmise cannot take the place of proof. See Franklin v. Albert, 381 Mass. 611, 411 N.E.2d 458, 462 (1980). The plaintiff also adverts to the hoary principle that remedial statutes should be interpreted broadly to effectuate their evident purposes, see, e.g., Roberts v. Enter. Rent-A-Car Co., 438 Mass. 187, 779 N.E.2d 623, 627 (2002), and on the corollary principle that a statute should not be read literally if a literal reading would contravene the legislature's discernible intent, see, e.g., Griffin v. Oceanic Contractors, Inc., 458 U.S. 564, 571, 102 S.Ct. 3245, 73 L.Ed.2d 973 (1982). Here, however, those principles yield to the specific wording of the HCSCA. After all, it is settled beyond hope of contradiction that courts must presume that a legislature says in a statute what it means and means in a statute what it says. Barnhart v. Sigmon Coal Co., 534 U.S. 438, 461-62, 122 S.Ct. 941, 151 L.Ed.2d 908 (2002). Statutory interpretation begins with the language of the statute. Where, as here, that language is clear and unambiguous, the inquiry is at an end. See United States v. Ron Pair Enters., Inc., 489 U.S. 235, 241, 109 S.Ct. 1026, 103 L.Ed.2d 290 (1989); López-Soto v. Hawayek, 175 F.3d 170, 172 (1st Cir. 1999). Courts are not free to disregard the plain language of a statute and, instead, conjure up legislative purposes and intent out of thin air. [5] To be sure, courts do make an occasional exception to the plain language rule in order to avoid obvious injustice or absurd results. See Griffin, 458 U.S. at 571, 102 S.Ct. 3245. But no such exception is applicable here. There is no internal ambiguity in the statutory provision, the overall statute suggests no other outcome, and the result reached by a literal application of its text is perfectly sensible. Next, the plaintiff suggests that reading require to mean require will empty the statutory provision of all meaning. That construction should be avoided at all costs, she adds, because a court should not lightly presume that a legislature would enact a stillborn provision. See Ins. Rating Bd. v. Comm'r of Ins., 356 Mass. 184, 248 N.E.2d 500, 504 (1969). We do not denigrate either the wisdom or the utility of the legal construct that this argument embodies. But that construct usually is applied when a particular interpretation of a statute would leave it bereft of any practical effect. See, e.g., Champigny v. Commonwealth, 422 Mass. 249, 661 N.E.2d 931, 933 (1996). The provision of the HCSCA that the plaintiff invokes does not fall within this taxonomy. Even when given the more circumspect reading that its text appears to demand, the provision forestalls several potential evils by prohibiting health-club services contracts that require payments or financing [extending] more than one month beyond the expiration of the contract. So construed, the provision encourages health clubs to disclose the full cost of their contracts by giving consumers the right to pay those costs up front. Further, it ensures that customers cannot be forced into unwanted financing of health-club membership fees. If more were needed  and we doubt that it is  we note that the Massachusetts legislature has used the words require and permit countless times in its enactments, typically attaching the conventional meaning to the word. Compare, e.g., Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 6, § 173, with, e.g., Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 12, § 5D(6). This is fairly convincing evidence that the legislature understands the difference between the two terms. See Roberts, 779 N.E.2d at 627 (presuming the legislature's familiarity with language that previously had been used in other Massachusetts statutes). Given this pattern of semantic usage, we see no reason to suspect that the legislature somehow confused the two familiar words when enacting the HCSCA. Cf. Beeler v. Downey, 387 Mass. 609, 442 N.E.2d 19, 23 (1982) (declining to insert language legislature omitted when the language was used elsewhere in the General Laws). To say more on this point would be supererogatory. For the reasons elucidated above, we conclude that the Contract's financing component does not violate the HCSCA.