Court Opinion

ID: 9858886
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 17:05:52.806953+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:57:28.212133
License: Public Domain

LeGRAND, Justice
(dissenting).
I dissent from Division II and from the result solely because the majority ignores basic rules of statutory construction in arriving at its conclusion.
As the majority points out, the “unusual and rash act” doctrine is the minority view and, were we considering it for the first time, there are persuasive reasons for not adopting it. But we no longer have that option.
We have adhered to this rule since at least 1922. In almost sixty years the legislature has not elected to amend § 85.16 to correct our interpretation as applied in Christensen v. Hauff Bros., 193 Iowa 1084, 188 N.W. 851 (1922).
Legislative inaction following an opinion placing judicial interpretation on a statute is some evidence that the legislature accepts our view as correct. When the legislative silence continues in an area of legislative activity, the presumption becomes stronger and stronger as time advances.
The Workers’ Compensation field is one of considerable legislative activity. Hardly a legislative session passes without some amendment to the act. Yet this doctrine has remained untouched. This is in marked contrast to the dispatch with which legislative action greeted our opinion in Craven v. Oggero, 213 N.W.2d 678 (Iowa 1974). The *92very next legislative session (65th GA, eh. 1111) amended § 85.22 to nullify what we said there.
We treated this same question in another field in General Mortgage Corporation of Iowa v. Campbell, 258 Iowa 143, 152, 138 N.W.2d 416, 420-21 (1965), where we said:
The legislature has had forty years and twenty regular sessions to change the frequently castigated sections of the Code [concerning the priority of mechanic liens], but has not seen fit to do so. The Uniform Commercial Code enacted by the 61st GA [General Assembly] makes no changes in the mechanic’s lien law as it relates to real estate. It cannot be said the legislature is dissatisfied with the interpretation placed on these sections by this court.
“Where a particular interpretation has been placed on a statute by the court, and the legislature at its subsequent meetings was left the statute materially unchanged, it is presumed that the legislature has acquiesced in that interpretation.” 82 C.J.S. Statutes § 316, p. 549. It has been held failure to amend a statute for twenty years raises a strong presumption of legislative satisfaction with the interpretation given it by the courts. Ex parte Rogers, 56 Idaho 521, 57 P.2d 342.
In the face of this inaction by the legislature in such an important and active field of law, we are reluctant to change ajn interpretation with which the construction industry, the financial institutions and their legal advisors have lived for nearly ninety years.
It seems rather late in the day to now say, as the majority does, that an interpretation announced in 1922 and accepted by the legislature since then has “engrafted” a doctrine which “distorts the statute.”
REES, J., joins in this dissent.