Court Opinion

ID: 9855868
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:32:28.541701+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:37:14.088486
License: Public Domain

NEUMAN, Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent. The majority’s view may be technically correct, but it isn’t right.
This controversy- concerns the sum of $578,634.37 held unlawfully by a state agency since December 30, 1994, when the district court — in the first round of litigation — ordered the sum returned to the taxpayer, Bluffs Run. The situation is quite different from Soo Line and Klein, upon which the majority so heavily relies, where the individual plaintiffs had prevailed at the agency level, obviating the need for judicial review. In both those cases, remedy for lack of compliance or payment by the state agency was by way of judicial enforcement of the administrative ruling. See Soo Line, 501 N.W.2d at 530; Klein, 384 N.W.2d at 375; see also City of Des Moines Police Dep’t v. Iowa Civil Rights Comm’n, 343 N.W.2d 836, 840 (Iowa 1984) (noting distinction between judicial review and judicial enforcement); State ex rel. Iowa Dept, of Natural Resources v. Shelley, 512 N.W.2d 579, 580 (Iowa App. 1993) (same). By contrast, Bluffs Run — having lost before the agency — was forced to seek judicial review to recover its refund.
*666Neither Klein nor Soo Line furnish authority for the proposition that a party in Bluffs Run’s position must seek a judgment on judicial review and a separate action for judicial enforcement before interest under section 535.3 becomes payable.
It is true that chapter 99D, which governs gaming commission activities, neither requires nor prohibits the payment of interest on overpaid taxes.- Yet the rationale underlying section 535.3 — to prevent obligors from profiting through delays in litigation — could not be more clearly illustrated than in the present case. In the absence of a statute expressly placing the financial burden of that delay on the claimant, I believe Bluffs Run is entitled to interest from the commencement of its action in district court under Iowa Code section 17A.19.