Opinion ID: 196227
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: The Exemption

Text: 14 Both Riva and Pentland began receiving disability retirement benefits prior to the effective date of the OWBPA, and their benefits were reduced pursuant to section 7(2)(b 1/2) after the effective date. For the reasons that follow, we think that the payment stream is exempt from scrutiny under the federal statute. 3 15 We start with a prosaic precept: In a statutory construction case, the beginning point must be the language of the statute, and when a statute speaks with clarity to an issue judicial inquiry into the statute's meaning, in all but the most extraordinary circumstance, is finished. Estate of Cowart v. Nicklos Drilling Co., 505 U.S. 469, 474-76, 112 S.Ct. 2589, 2594, 120 L.Ed.2d 379 (1992). In other words, the court need not consult legislative history and other aids to statutory construction when the words of the statute neither create an ambiguity nor lead to an unreasonable interpretation. See United States v. Charles George Trucking Co., 823 F.2d 685, 688 (1st Cir.1987). In searching a statute's text for a pellucid expression of congressional intent, we attribute to words that are not defined in the statute itself their ordinary usage, see Baez v. INS, 41 F.3d 19, 24 (1st Cir.1994), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 115 S.Ct. 2608, 132 L.Ed.2d 853 (1995), and make a commonsense concession that meaning can only be ascribed to statutory language if that language is taken in context, see King v. St. Vincent's Hosp., 502 U.S. 215, 221, 112 S.Ct. 570, 574, 116 L.Ed.2d 578 (1991). Applying these tenets, we find that section 105(e) unambiguously excludes Pentland's benefits from the application of the OWBPA. 16 As previously noted, Congress exempted from the OWBPA's grasp any series of benefit payments ... that began prior to [OWBPA's] effective date and that continue after the effective date pursuant to an arrangement that was in effect on the effective date.... OWBPA Sec. 105(e). A series is routinely defined as a group of usu[ally] three or more things or events standing or succeeding in order and having a like relationship to each other. Webster's Third New International Dictionary 2073 (1986); accord Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary 1074 (1989) (defining series to include a number of things or events of the same class coming one after another in spatial or temporal succession); The Random House Dictionary of the English Language 1748 (2d ed. 1987) (defining series to include a group or a number of related or similar things, events, etc., arranged or occurring in temporal, spatial, or other order or succession). 4 Consistent with these definitions, all the benefit payments to Pentland form a single series as that word is used in section 105(e). 17 The like relationship of the payments is readily apparent. The disbursements, both before and after the recalculation, form a continuing stream of monthly payments, made on account of the same disability, and determined at the time of inception under the same statutory scheme. What is more, the ARB began to pay these serial benefits before the OWBPA's effective date, continued to pay them afterwards, and did so pursuant to an arrangement--the payment scheme established in the Massachusetts statute--that was in full flower when the OWBPA took effect. 18 To be sure, the size of Pentland's monthly check diminished when she turned 65, but her argument that the reduced benefits comprise a new series because her payments were then recalculated on the basis of the superannuation tables is belied by the text of the Massachusetts statute. It directs that an affected individual's benefits shall be adjusted to that to which [s]he would be entitled under the [statutory scheme] if [s]he were to be retired for superannuation. Mass.Gen.L. ch. 32, Sec. 7(2)(b 1/2). This language makes it transpicuously clear that Pentland has continuously received the same kind of benefits--accidental disability retirement benefits--both before and after the OWBPA's effective date. Only the amount of the monthly stipend, not the nature of the payments, changed when she attained age 65. 19 At the expense of carting coals to Newcastle, we add that appellants' interpretation of a series as comprising, for all intents and purposes, a sequence of identical items, is profoundly flawed. To read section 105(e) in this way would be totally at odds with ordinary usage and, moreover, would lead to absurd results. Carried to its logical extreme, such a reading would gut the exemption by rendering it inapplicable to any stream of benefits that changed after the OWBPA's effective date by reference to an external source. Thus, even the most commonplace adjustments (such as cost-of-living increases) would serve to defeat the exemption. We cannot conceive of any reason why Congress--which patently believed that employers should have a substantial degree of protection against the application of a new rule to payment protocols already in use to sustain existing payment schemes--would have desired to take so quixotic a position. 20 Section 105(e)'s reference to a preexisting arrangement is equally unhelpful to Pentland's quest. Both section 7(2)(b 1/2) and the relevant superannuation guidelines were in existence at the time that the ARB started paying Pentland's retirement benefits, and the parties have not directed our attention to any subsequent changes in either provision which might support a finding that the Commonwealth put a fresh arrangement into effect. In Pentland's case, therefore, the entire stream of benefit payments has been (and will be) made pursuant to a single arrangement that was crafted in whole prior to the OWBPA's effective date. Consequently, section 105(e) applies unreservedly. 21 Although the plain language of section 105(e) carries the day and obviates any need for a detailed examination of extrinsic sources, we note in passing that the legislative history of the OWBPA strongly suggests that Congress intended precisely the result that follows from a straightforward rendering of section 105(e)'s plain language. The original draft of the bill, submitted to the Senate on September 17, 1990, contemplated that the OWBPA provisions on which Pentland relies would apply retrospectively. See 136 Cong.Rec. S13, 237 (daily ed. Sept. 17, 1990). This approach provoked stout opposition, and section 105(e) emerged as a compromise. See 136 Cong.Rec. S13,603 (daily ed. Sept. 24, 1990). In responding to a question about the truncated version of the nonretroactivity clause, Senator Pryor, chairman of the Special Committee on Aging and a prime sponsor of the legislation, indicated that the drafters intended, through the compromise, to ensure that the OWBPA would reach benefits that were discriminatorily structured after the applicable effective date, leaving other benefits unaffected. See id. at S13,609. Senator Metzenbaum, whose original bill, as we have said, featured broad retroactivity, concurred in this interpretation of the compromise language. 5 So did another key supporter, Senator Hatch. 6 22 In sum, it appears virtually certain that Congress did not intend the OWBPA to apply to benefit payments, like Pentland's, which were structured and commenced prior to the effective date of the neoteric legislation. The comments relied on by the appellants in urging an opposite view--mainly statements by legislators who expressed their desire to avoid disruptions in ongoing benefits, such as the remarks of Senator Hatch, quoted supra note 6--are more plausibly read as wishing to avoid displacements that would be caused by wide-ranging retroactive application of the OWBPA rather than as guaranteeing level benefit rates, regardless of the circumstances, or as disfavoring changes in benefits compelled by the unamended operation of preexisting retirement schemes. 23 We have exhausted this issue. To conclude, we hold that a stream of benefits does not become a new series in the contemplation of OWBPA Sec. 105(e) simply because the monthly benefit amount is adjusted by reference to an external source pursuant to a directive contained in a preexisting arrangement. Riva and Pentland are, therefore, fishing in an empty pond.