Opinion ID: 196624
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Authority to Revise the QAI.

Text: 16 The petitioners argue that the Secretary's attempt to change the definition of encephalopathy provided in the QAI is impuissant because it surpasses the authority granted to the Secretary by the Act. The Act states: 17 A modification of the Vaccine Injury Table under paragraph (1) [authorizing the Secretary to promulgate regulations to modify the Table] may add to, or delete from, the list of injuries, disabilities, illnesses, conditions, and deaths, for which compensation may be provided or may change the time periods for the first symptom or manifestation of the onset or the significant aggravation of any such injury, disability, illness, condition, or death. 18 42 U.S.C. § 300aa-14(c)(3) (emphasis supplied). In the petitioners' view, the underscored phrases limit the Secretary's powers of alteration, and hence, because the QAI provision is distinct from the Table proper, the Secretary's revisory authority does not extend to it. Ergo, changing the definition of encephalopathy contained in the QAI oversteps the Secretary's bounds. The Secretary debunks this argument. She construes the statute more broadly, urging that it gives her authority to rewrite the QAI. 19 1. Chevron Deference. Before choosing between these competing views, we must address a preliminary issue. The Secretary, correctly observing that courts ordinarily defer to an agency's plausible construction of a silent or ambiguous statute as long as Congress has committed the statute to the agency for purposes of administration, see Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837, 842-43, 104 S.Ct. 2778, 2781-82, 81 L.Ed.2d 694 (1984); Strickland v. Commissioner, Me. Dep't of Human Servs., 48 F.3d 12, 16 (1st Cir.), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 116 S.Ct. 145, 133 L.Ed.2d 91 (1995), asks that we defer to her construction of § 300aa-14(c). There may be more to this request than meets the eye. The petitioners' objection is arguably not directed at a regulation that purports to apply a particular statutory directive which the Secretary is concededly empowered to implement, but instead at a regulation that lies in an area as to which, the petitioners say, the statute grants the Secretary no rulemaking authority at all. In the current state of the law, it is unclear whether deference is appropriate under such circumstances. 6 20 Discretion is sometimes the better part of valor. Because we decide, as a matter of original statutory construction, that the Act grants the Secretary authority to revise the QAI provision, see infra, we leave the question of deference unanswered. 21 2. Interpreting the Statute. We turn now to the disputed statute. While one can focus with Cyclopean intensity on the words singled out by the petitioners and perhaps construct a coherent argument that those words restrict the Secretary's revisory authority to the Table proper, courts are bound to afford statutes a practical, commonsense reading. See King v. St. Vincent's Hosp., 502 U.S. 215, 221, 112 S.Ct. 570, 574, 116 L.Ed.2d 578 (1991). Instead of culling selected words from a statute's text and inspecting them in an antiseptic laboratory setting, a court engaged in the task of statutory interpretation must examine the statute as a whole, giving due weight to design, structure, and purpose as well as to aggregate language. See National R.R. Passenger Corp. v. Boston & Me. Corp., 503 U.S. 407, 417, 112 S.Ct. 1394, 1401-02, 118 L.Ed.2d 52 (1992); Dole v. United Steelworkers of Am., 494 U.S. 26, 36, 110 S.Ct. 929, 934-35, 108 L.Ed.2d 23 (1990); K mart Corp. v. Cartier, Inc., 486 U.S. 281, 291, 108 S.Ct. 1811, 1817-18, 100 L.Ed.2d 313 (1988); Riva v. Massachusetts, 61 F.3d 1003, 1007 (1st Cir.1995). 22 The petitioners' reading of the Act cannot survive the application of this global standard. Reading the statute as a whole, we are satisfied that Congress gave the Secretary authority to revise the QAI. In the absence of such authority the system for updating the Act is virtually unworkable. For instance, when the Secretary exercises her undeniable power to include an emergent condition in the Table, she must be able to amend the QAI to reflect the addition. Surely Congress did not intend either to leave added conditions unexplained or itself to edit the QAI every time the Secretary saw fit to alter the Table. In short, the power to revise the QAI is a necessary adjunct of the power to revise the Table itself. 7 Elsewise, the tension that would be created within the structure of the Act would be intolerable and would contravene the salutary principle that statutes should, whenever possible, be construed sensibly. See American Tobacco Co. v. Patterson, 456 U.S. 63, 71, 102 S.Ct. 1534, 1538-39, 71 L.Ed.2d 748 (1982); Riva, 61 F.3d at 1008; United States v. Meyer, 808 F.2d 912, 919 (1st Cir.1987); see also Norman J. Singer, Sutherland Statutory Construction § 45.12, at 61 (5th ed. 1992). 23 We add, moreover, that the petitioners' proffered reading of the statute is excessively formalistic. If the Secretary could not change the definition of encephalopathy directly, she could certainly accomplish the same result indirectly. She need simply delete encephalopathy from the Table, thus rendering its definition nugatory, and then immediately add encephalopathy, redefined, to the Table. 24 This reality is lethal to the petitioners' position. We cannot imagine that Congress intended to force the Secretary to go round and round the mulberry bush in order to revise the Table and its accompanying explanations. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, and we will not lightly presume that Congress lost sight of so abecedarian a principle. 8 See Singer, supra, § 45.12, at 61 (advocating the baseline assumption that an enacted statute should be construed to achieve[ ] an effective and operative result). To cinch matters, we note that the statutory grant of a greater power typically includes the grant of a lesser power, see, e.g., United States v. O'Neil, 11 F.3d 292, 296 (1st Cir.1993) (describing this principle as a bit of common sense that has been recognized in virtually every legal code from time immemorial), and the overall structure of the Vaccine Act confirms its applicability here: the brute power to subtract listed medical conditions from the Table encompasses the more modest power to trim the definitions associated with listed medical conditions. 25 We have said enough on this score. We hold that the Act grants the Secretary the authority to revise the Qualifications and Aids to Interpretation that accompany the Vaccine Injury Table. Consequently, the petitioners' initial remonstrance fails. 26