Court Opinion

ID: 9792544
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:30:35.861474+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:43.521800
License: Public Domain

Chief Justice ROVIRA
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent. I accept the statement of the facts set out in the majority opinion and, accordingly, find no need to restate them. I disagree however with its underlying theme that “absolute compliance” and “strict compliance” are synonymous and the trial court erred in applying a standard more stringent than “substantial compliance.”
The Colorado Governmental Immunity Act (Act), §§ 24-10-101 to -120, 10A C.R.S. (1988 & 1990 Supp.), was enacted to provide a balance between providing a remedy to persons injured by the state and its political subdivisions, and protecting those entities against the fiscal burden of unlimited liability. § 24-10-102, 10A C.R.S. (1988). In order to protect public entities from unanticipated exposure to liability, the Act has always required that a person injured by a public entity provide notice to that entity within a certain period after the injury was discovered. § 24-10-109, 10A C.R.S. (1988). In 1986, the General Assembly substantially amended the Act to provide more protection to public entities. The Act’s notice provision was also amended to make its requirements more stringent. Prior to this amendment, subsection 24-10-109(1) provided:
Any person claiming to have suffered an injury ... shall file a written notice as provided in this section within one hundred eighty days after the date of the discovery of the injury. Substantial compliance with the notice provisions of this section shall be a condition precedent to any action brought under the provisions of this article, and failure of substantial compliance shall be a complete defense to any such action.
(Emphasis added.)
As a result of the 1986 amendments, subsection 24-10-109(1), 10A C.R.S. (1988), now provides:
(1) Any person claiming to have suffered an injury by a public entity or by an employee thereof ... shall file a written notice as provided in this section within one hundred eighty days after the date of the discovery of the injury, regardless of whether the person then knew all of the elements of a claim or of a cause of action for such injury. Compliance with the provisions of this section shall be a jurisdictional prerequisite to any action brought under the provisions of this article, and failure of compliance shall forever bar any such action.
(Emphasis added.)
In granting RTD’s motion to dismiss, the trial court considered the language of the *71Act both before and after the 1986 amendments and stated:
Plaintiffs notice merely states that claimants are seeking compensation for “physical injuries” and that the amount of damages will be determined at a later date. Perhaps this notice letter would have been sufficient under the old C.G. I.A. where the standard was “substantial compliance” with the notice provision. However, with the 1987 [sic] amendments, the legislature was obviously making the standard a more stringent one. Under the current Act, compliance is a jurisdictional prerequisite. In light of this language, it does seem that this Court is deprived of subject matter jurisdiction to resolve the dispute between these parties. The effect of a nonclaim statute is to bar substantive claims. Barnhill v. Public Service Company [649 P.2d 716 (Colo.App.1982) ] supra.
Contrary to the view expressed in the majority opinion, see at 68, I believe that the legislative colloquy set out in the majority opinion supports the reasoning of the trial court that, by deleting the term “substantial” and by making the notice provision a jurisdictional prerequisite, the legislature intended to impose a more stringent standard of compliance than was previously required. In short, I believe that compliance with the notice provision is properly tested by a standard greater than “substantial compliance.” To hold otherwise is to suggest that the legislature was engaging in an exercise in futility. It is clear that the intent of the sponsor of the 1986 amendment in deleting the word “substantial” was because “certain cases had interpreted the word too loosely, so as to allow suit to be brought where the notice should have been fatally defective.” At 68.
Moreover, notwithstanding the legislature’s decision in 1986 to delete “substantial” from the phrase “substantial compliance,” the majority nonetheless concludes that consideration of “multiple public interests” requires “nothing less than, nor more than, ‘substantial compliance.’ ” At 69. I cannot agree that, in the face of the legislature’s deletion of “substantial,” subsection 24-10-109(1) may still be construed to require no more than “substantial compliance.” See, e.g., Charnes v. Norwest Leasing, 787 P.2d 145, 148 (Colo.1990) (“There is a presumption that when a statute is amended there is an intent to change the law.”) (quoting People v. Hale, 654 P.2d 849, 851 (Colo.1982)); LaDuke v. CF & I Steel Corp., 785 P.2d 605, 610 (Colo.1990) (same); Allee v. Contractors, Inc., 783 P.2d 273, 281 (Colo.1989) (where statutory scheme creating substantial rights is amended in significant particulars and partially repealed, conclusion is “inescapable” that legislature intended to change pre-ex-isting state of the law).
The majority misreads the legislative history and concludes that by deleting the word “substantial” the sponsor really intended that the degree of compliance should be “substantial.” At 68.
In my view, if the legislature had been satisfied with a standard of substantial compliance it would not have deleted “substantial” and would not have made compliance with the notice provisions a jurisdictional prerequisite and failure of compliance a bar to any action.
Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.