Opinion ID: 524249
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: retroactive repeal of the statute of repose

Text: 8 The parties agree that if Sec. 12-310 were a statute of limitation the due process clause would not prevent the District from extending the period and thereby reviving a cause of action that the statute had expunged. See International Union of Electrical Workers v. Robbins & Myers, Inc., 429 U.S. 229, 97 S.Ct. 441, 50 L.Ed.2d 427 (1976); Chase Securities Corp. v. Donaldson, 325 U.S. 304, 65 S.Ct. 1137, 89 L.Ed. 1628 (1945); Campbell v. Holt, 115 U.S. 620, 6 S.Ct. 209, 29 L.Ed. 483 (1885). The defendant claims to find in Chase and Campbell a simple dichotomy between procedure and substance, under which changes in purely procedural provisions may be retroactive while changes in substantive ones may not. This constitutes the major premise of a proposed syllogism. Defendant would add a minor premise, that statutes of repose are substantive. The desired result follows automatically. 9 We may in fact resolve this case, however, without classifying the District's statute as substantive or procedural. The cases simply do not support defendant's major premise. 10 First, the cases upholding retroactive application of amendments of statutes of limitations by no means give the procedure/substance distinction anything like the place that U.S. Gypsum suggests. Robbins and Campbell do not mention it. Chase does so, but in terms that fall far short of establishing defendant's theory. Justice Jackson wrote: 11 The abstract logic of the distinction between substantive rights and remedial or procedural rights may not be clear-cut, but it has been found a workable concept to point up the real and valid difference between rules in which stability is of prime importance and those in which flexibility is a more important value. 12 325 U.S. at 314, 65 S.Ct. at 1142. While the sentence lends some support to defendant's major premise, it reformulates the distinction as being between rules for which stability is important and ones for which flexibility is critical. Justice Jackson then turned to a lengthy quotation from an opinion written by Justice Holmes as Chief Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. After a passage talking of the inexactitude of constitutional restraints, end[ing] in a penumbra where the Legislature has a certain freedom in fixing the line, 1 Justice Holmes proceeds (in the quotation) to a characteristic statement of an entirely functional test: 13 But however that may be, multitudes of cases have recognized the power of the Legislature to call a liability into being where there was none before, if the circumstances were such as to appeal with some strength to the prevailing views of justice, and if the obstacle in the way of the creation seemed small. 14 325 U.S. at 315, 65 S.Ct. at 1143, quoting Danforth v. Groton Water Co., 178 Mass. 472, 476, 59 N.E. 1033 (1901). 15 Later decisions have emphatically confirmed Holmes's view of the matter, both in its functionalism and in its hint of the leeway open to legislative bodies. Thus in Usery v. Turner Elkhorn Mining Co., 428 U.S. 1, 96 S.Ct. 2882, 49 L.Ed.2d 752 (1976), the Court approved Congress's creation of an entirely new liability of coal mine operators for death or illness of miners where linked, through a series of stringent presumptions (some of them irrebutable), to work in an operator's mines, even if the work long antedated the passage of the statute. The Court dealt curtly with the due process objection based on retroactivity, seemingly testing the statute merely for rationality: 16 [L]egislative Acts adjusting the burdens and benefits of economic life come to the Court with a presumption of constitutionality, and ... the burden is on one complaining of a due process violation to establish that the legislature has acted in an arbitrary and irrational way.... [O]ur cases are clear that legislation readjusting rights and burdens is not unlawful solely because it upsets otherwise settled expectations. This is true even though the effect of the legislation is to impose a new duty or liability based on past acts. 17 428 U.S. at 15-16, 96 S.Ct. at 2892 (citations omitted). And in Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. v. R.A. Gray & Co., 467 U.S. 717, 104 S.Ct. 2709, 81 L.Ed.2d 601 (1984), the Court sustained the imposition of a novel withdrawal liability on employers who withdrew from multi-employer pension plans before the passage of the burden-creating legislation. Again the Court invoked the modest rationality standards that it generally applies to economic legislation: 18 [T]he strong deference accorded legislation in the field of national economic policy is no less applicable when that legislation is applied retroactively. Provided that the retroactive application of a statute is supported by a legitimate legislative purpose furthered by rational means, judgments about the wisdom of such legislation remain within the exclusive province of the legislative and executive branches.... 19 To be sure ... retroactive legislation does have to meet a burden not faced by legislation that has only future effects.... But that burden is met simply by showing that the retroactive application of the legislation is itself justified by a rational legislative purpose. 20 467 U.S. at 729-30, 104 S.Ct. at 2717-18. 21 At this point, therefore, any substance/procedure dichotomy suggested by Chase is either completely defunct or, at the very most, establishes procedural rules as a safe harbor within which a legislature may freely make retroactive changes. 22 Application of Turner Elkhorn and Gray is not difficult here. We cannot say it is irrational for the District to decide that the losses due to defects in building materials discovered long after installation should fall on the supplier rather than the building's owner. Indeed, defendant makes no claim of irrationality. Moreover, defendant's equities are not especially powerful; the statute of repose became law only in 1972, see Pub.L. No. 92-579, 86 Stat. 1275 (1972), about 12 years after the last building at issue was completed. Thus defendant made the sales without reliance on the statute. See Turner Elkhorn, 428 U.S. at 17 & n. 16, 96 S.Ct. at 2893 & n. 16 (discussing relevance of a party's reliance on prior law). 23 None of this is to deny U.S. Gypsum's arguments that there are real distinctions between a statute of limitation and one of repose. Defendant frames the distinction around the existence of a cause of action, saying that a statute of repose prevents one from ever coming into existence (unless the terms are satisfied), whereas a statute of limitation causes the expiration of an existing cause of action. We think this line of distinction may be somewhat metaphysical. If a statute of limitation extinguishes an undiscoverable cause of action, as some do, one could easily recharacterize it as a statute of repose: so viewed, it prevents the claim from ever accruing (with discovery, or the possibility of discovery, being a necessary component of accrual). Thus we rest more confidence in the distinction suggested earlier, in terms of the event that satisfies the statute (i.e., an injury, for a statute of repose; filing of suit, for a statute of limitation). But we need not tarry with these theoretical points. Even if they proved that statutes of repose were substantive it would not advance our resolution of the constitutional claim. 24 U.S. Gypsum seeks to distinguish such cases as Turner Elkhorn and Gray on the ground that the present case is not one where the legislature is imposing liability for past acts which had not previously been legislatively addressed at all. Appellee's Brief at 12-13. We fail to perceive a distinction of constitutional magnitude between an expectation of nonliability that arises from legislative silence and common law nonliability, and one that arises from the type of affirmative legislative action present in this case. For support the defendant cites Bradley v. Richmond School Board, 416 U.S. 696, 720, 94 S.Ct. 2006, 2020, 40 L.Ed.2d 476 (1974), which addresses a quite different issue--the factors a court, confronted with a change in law during the pendency of litigation, should consider in deciding whether to apply the new law in the absence of specific legislative guidance. See id. at 710-16, 94 S.Ct. at 2015-19; United States v. Schooner Peggy, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 103, 110, 2 L.Ed. 49 (1801). 25 Accordingly, we must reverse the district court's decision invalidating the retroactive effectiveness of the statute of repose.