Court Opinion

ID: 9885572
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-06 13:07:33.065096+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:43:55.528781
License: Public Domain

Justice EID,
specially concurring.
The majority first finds that section 106 is ambiguous as to whether it limits declaratory relief to written contracts, and then it employs a host of interpretive aids in order to resolve that ambiguity. For example, it traverses the caselaw of other jurisdictions with an eye toward harmonizing our law with theirs. Maj. op. at 256. Because I think this is a plain language case, I would not find it necessary to resort to such secondary interpretive aids.
I would start my analysis not with section 106, as the majority does, but rather with section 13-51-109, which states that the enumeration in section 106 is not a limitation on a court’s authority to issue declaratory relief that “will terminate the controversy or remove an uncertainty.” § 13-51-109, C.R.S. (2005). Section 13-51-109 negates the statutory construction maxim expressio unius est exclusio alterius-the expression of one thing implies the exclusion of the other. See, e.g., Beeghly v. Mack, 20 P.3d 610, 613 (2001) (employing the maxim); Taylor v. Canterbury, 92 P.3d 961, 969 (Colo.2004) (Coats, J., dissenting) (same). Section 109 thus makes clear that section 13-51-106 is an illustrative, not an exclusive, enumeration of instances in which courts may issue declaratory relief that “will terminate the controversy or remove an uncertainty.” In so doing, it directly refutes petitioners’ argument, as phrased by the majority, that “the express inclusion of ‘written contracts’ [in section 106] implies the exclusion of oral contracts.” Maj. op. at 255. As the majority eventually concludes, any ambiguity in section 106 is somewhat beside the point because the section is not a limitation on the court’s authority in any event. Id. at 260.
We should not rest our decisions on ambiguity where plain language resolves the case. *262Here, of course, the result is the same under either approach, but in other eases the difference could be outcome-determinative. Even in this case, the analysis differs in an important way. After finding an “inherent ambiguity” in section 106, the majority turns to § 13-51-104, C.R.S. (2005), which instructs that the Colorado Uniform Declaratory Judgments Law be construed to make uniform the laws of the states and, to the extent possible, in harmony with federal law. After surveying the caselaw of other jurisdictions, maj. op. at 256-59, the court sides with the “majority reasoning.” Id. at 256. Under my analysis, by contrast, I find the caselaw from other jurisdictions instructive not because there are more cases on one side of the “written contract” question than the other, but because other courts have looked to their jurisdiction’s counterpart to section 109 and come to the same conclusion about its plain meaning. See, e.g., Temm v. Temm, 354 Mo. 814, 191 S.W.2d 629, 632-33 (1945); In re Dahl’s Estate, 196 Or. 249, 248 P.2d 700, 702 (1952). Declaratory judgments are permitted in cases such as this one not because other jurisdictions permit them, but because the language of the statute dictates that result.