Court Opinion

ID: 9861896
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 00:53:36.990485+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:29:38.570938
License: Public Domain

LARSON, Justice
(dissenting).
Regardless of whether the majority characterizes the mailing requirement in section *20517A.16(2), The Code 1979, as jurisdictional or as mandatory, the result it reaches is the same: termination of the proceedings. The majority discerns a legislative intent to foreclose further proceedings automatically where a party applies for an agency rehearing but fails to mail a copy of the application to a party of record. This result is not consistent with a reasonable interpretation of the Administrative Procedures Act, ch. 17A. Moreover, it is manifestly unfair to reach that result in this case, where there is considerable evidence a Job Service representative misled the plaintiff on the procedure for rehearing, and where no prejudice could be shown because the rehearing application was denied without the employer’s resistance.
The Administrative Procedure Act is remedial, Bonfield, The Definition of Formal Agency Adjudication Under the Iowa Administrative Procedure Act, 63 Iowa L.Rev. 285, 363 (1977), and thus should be accorded a broad construction to effectuate its purposes, § 17A.23; see also § 4.2, The Code 1981. One of its purposes was to simplify, and to some extent, informalize administrative proceedings and procedure. See generally § 17A.1. A second purpose, implied throughout the Act, was to provide a procedure whereby the preferred disposition of contested cases is on their merits. See generally Bonfield, The Iowa Administrative Procedure Act: Background, Construction, Applicability, Public Access to Agency Law, the Rulemaking Process, 60 Iowa L.Rev. 731, 736-37 (1975). In view of these objectives I do not believe the legislature intended the consequences which the majority attaches to the plaintiff’s failure to comply with the mailing requirement of section 17A.16Í2).1
More important, the legislature has not hesitated to supply sanctions for an agency’s or a party’s noncompliance with its provisions throughout the Act. E.g., §§ 17A.3(2) (“until it has been made available for public inspection and indexed” any agency action is invalid or ineffective); 17A.4(3) (“unless adopted in substantial compliance” with the Act’s requirements, any rule adopted by an agency after July 1, 1975 is invalid); 17A.12(3) (upon a party’s failure to appear in a contested case proceeding, a presiding officer may proceed and “make a decision in the absence of the party”); 17A. 15(2) (if the presiding officer does not prepare the findings of fact in a contested case and the demeanor of witnesses “is a substantial factor,” the portions of the hearing involving demeanor “shall be heard again or the case shall be dismissed”); 17A.19(6) (for purposes of judicial review, a party “unreasonably refusing to stipulate to limit the record may be taxed by the court for the additional costs”). Indeed, this was the approach taken with regard to section 17A.16(2)’s counterpart, section 17A.19(2), which provides that the mailing of a file-stamped copy of a petition for judicial review to all parties of record is “jurisdictional.” 2 We have held that in view of such language, failure to substantially comply with the mailing requirement in section 17A.19(2) terminates the proceedings. E.g., Neumeister v. City Development Board, 291 N.W.2d 11, 14 (Iowa 1980).
This case is clearly distinguishable from the Neumeister line of cases on the basis of the statutes involved: while section 17A. 19(2) (at that time) expressly provided mailing was jurisdictional, section 17A.16(2) does not even imply it. We should not supply, judicially, as onerous a sanction as dismissal for procedural defects without *206legislative direction and without any showing of prejudice. See Sutherland, Statutes and Statutory Construction § 57.08, at 423-24 (1974) (“the general rule is that when a statute provides what results shall follow a failure to comply with its terms, it is mandatory; however, if it merely requires certain things to be done and nowhere prescribes results that follow, such a result is merely directory”).3
I would hold that the mailing requirement in section 17A.16(2) is only directory, and that because the plaintiff’s employer was not prejudiced by her failure to mail notice to it, the proceeding should not have been dismissed. I would remand the case for further proceedings.

. We have held that an application for administrative rehearing is not a prerequisite to judicial review. Kehde v. Iowa Department of Job Service, 318 N.W.2d 202, 205 (Iowa 1982). If that is so, we should not hold mere ineptness in pursuing that remedy is fatal, at least in the absence of prejudice.

. Section 17A.19(2) provided, prior to its recent amendment, that
[w]ithin ten days after the filing of a petition for judicial review file stamped copies of the petition shall be mailed by the petitioner to all parties named in the petition and, if the petition involves review of agency action in a contested case, all parties of record in that case before the agency. Such mailing shall be jurisdictional and shall be addressed to the parties at their last known mailing address.
(Emphasis added.)

. Taylor v. Department of Transportation, 260 Ñ.W.2d 521, 522-23 (Iowa 1977) sets forth the distinction between mandatory and directory statutory duties:
If the prescribed duty is essential to the main objective of the statute, the statute ordinarily is mandatory and a violation will invalidate subsequent proceedings under it. If the duty is not essential to accomplishing the principal purpose of the statute but is designed to assure order and promptness in the proceeding, the statute ordinarily is directory and a violation will not invalidate subsequent proceedings unless prejudice is shown.