Court Opinion

ID: 9785924
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 22:48:12.620217+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:36:35.924462
License: Public Domain

LARRY JOPLIN, Presiding Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
¶ 1 While I concur with Part One of this opinion, I strongly dissent to Part Two. The majority holds Defendant’s offer to confess judgment to Plaintiffs invalid because § 1101.1 requires individual offers to each Plaintiff. In support of this conclusion, the majority relies on Haddock v. Woodland Park Home, Inc., 2004 OK CIV APP 42, 90 P.3d 594.1
¶ 2 In Haddock, the Court of Civil Appeals held an offer of judgment which “provided one judgment amount directed to both plaintiffs and expressly required the plaintiffs to accept the judgment together” was invalid for two reasons. First, the Court observed that the wording of § 1101.1 was in the singular, i.e., “any defendant” and “any plaintiff.” Second, the Court reasoned that separate offers to each plaintiff was the best approach. This interpretation of § 1101.1 misapplies the law and violates the rules of statutory construction in the first part, and invades the province of the legislature in the second. In this respect, § 1101.1 provides:
After a civil action is brought for the recovery of money or property in an action other than for personal injury, wrongful death or pursuant to Chapter 21 of Title 25 or Section 5 of Title 85 of the Oklahoma Statutes, any defendant may file with the court, at any time more than ten (10) days prior to trial, an offer of judgment for a sum certain to any plaintiff with respect to the action or any claim or claims asserted in the action....
*89012 O.S. § 1101.1 (B)(1).2
¶ 3 In construing the language of this statute, we may not ignore the plain words, but must give each its ordinary meaning, and we may not “expand the plain wording of [the] statute by construction....” Toxic Waste Impact Group, Inc. v. Leavitt, 1988 OK 20, ¶ 10, 755 P.2d 626, 630. The Oklahoma Legislature has mandated the construction we must place on singular and plural words:
Words used in the singular number include the plural, and the plural the singular, except where a contrary intention plainly appears.
25 O.S. § 25. The contrary intention must plainly appear and may not be inferred. See, e.g., Rupp v. City of Tulsa, 1950 OK 28, ¶ 8, 214 P.2d 913, 915.
¶ 4 Treating the singular to include plural and vice-versa is consistent with the commonly accepted definition of the word, “any.”3 By judicial decision, “[t]he use of the word ‘any’ within a statute is equivalent and has the force of ‘every’ and ‘all.’ ” State ex rel. Porter v. Ferrell, 1998 OK 41, ¶ 9, 959 P.2d 576, 578. Section 1101.1 does not indicate in any manner that it is limited to the singular, and “[w]here a statute is plain and unambiguous and its manifest intention and purpose is clearly shown by the language employed therein, the couH is without authority to render a different meaning or construction thereon, in order to avoid an inequality that may arise in isolated cases.” In re Assessment of Champlin Refining Co., 1940 OK 67, ¶ 0(3), 99 P.2d 880. (Emphasis added.)
¶5 To interpret this statute, which, by both legislative and common law mandates, clearly allows “any” defendant to make an offer to “several plaintiffs,” to prohibit such a singular, unapportioned offer turns statutory and common law jurisprudence on its head. The first rationale of Haddock is wrong and should not be followed by this court.
¶ 6 Although candidly admitting “[n]o published Oklahoma case has ruled whether the use of the singular in the statute requires that an offer be made to each plaintiff singly,” the Court in Haddock secondly relied on other states’ decisions to conclude that requiring separate offers was the best approach. Haddock, 2004 OK CIV APP 42, ¶¶ 14, 17, 90 P.3d at 597, 598.4 While a statute requiring apportionment of offers to each plaintiff might be the better policy, such a decision is for the Legislature, not this Court:
When a court is called on to interpret a statute, the court has no authority to rewrite the enactment merely because it does not comport with the court’s view of prudent public policy. Also, the wisdom of choices made within the Legislature’s lawmaking sphere are not our concern, because those choices — absent constitutional or other recognized infirmity — rightly lie within the legislative domain.
Duncan v. Oklahoma Dept. of Corrections, 2004 OK 58, ¶ 5, 95 P.3d 1076,1079.
¶ 7 Because the majority clings to the faulty construction of § 1101.1 espoused in Haddock, I therefore dissent to Part Two. I concur with Part One of the majority opinion.

. While opinions of the Court of Civil Appeals do not carry precedential weight unless approved for publication by the Supreme Court, they may be persuasive. Not surprisingly, the author of the majority opinion was persuaded by Haddock, having authored it.

. Section 1101.1(A)(1), governing "Actions for personal injury, wrongful death, and certain specified actions," contains identical language to § 1101.1(B), "Other cases.”

. The word, "any,” "is often synonymous with 'either,' 'every,' or 'all.' " Black's Law Dictionary, 5th Ed. (West, 1979).

. "Most importantly though, we agree with the cases which find that an unapportioned offer to multiple plaintiffs prevents each plaintiff from evaluating the settlement offer against the value of his or her claim and would lead to confusion in apportioning the various plaintiffs’s responsibility for the attorney fees award after a judgment for less than the settlement offer.... [I]t is ... unclear ... which portion of the offer was directed to [wife] which portion to her husband. Clarity requires separate offers to each plaintiff....”