Court Opinion

ID: 9751004
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 15:56:30.021714+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:26:31.451855
License: Public Domain

GILBERT, J.
I respectfully dissent.
Absurdity—I know it when I see it. I agree with my colleagues that absurdity is in the mind of the beholder. Perhaps I am too prone to see it, but its specter haunts me in this case.
The school teacher here is arrested for possession of cocaine. He admits this to his principal and also admits he was under the influence of cocaine when he was arrested. The school teacher is placed on a leave of absence from teaching pursuant to statute. He is in a drug diversion program for almost two years. During this time, the California Commission on Teacher Credent!aling suspends his teaching credential.
After successfully completing the drug diversion program, criminal charges against the teacher are dismissed pursuant to Penal Code section 1003. The District has good cause to fire the teacher, but instead gives him a break and allows him to come back to work. The teacher then sues the District for backpay during the time he was lawfully suspended.
Under the majority holding, the teacher would have received the full $40,000 in backpay had it not been that he fortuitously earned money during his suspension. A literal reading of the plain language of Education Code section 44940.5 compels this unfortunate result.
The school district’s reference to County of Sacramento v. Hickman (1967) 66 Cal.2d 841, 849, footnote 6 [59 Cal.Rptr. 609, 428 P.2d 593], is apt. The Hickman court acknowledged that in most cases ambiguity precedes interpretation. The Hickman court stated that “[although this proposition is generally true, ‘The literal meaning of the words of a statute may be disregarded to avoid absurd results or to give effect to manifest purposes that, in the light of the statute’s legislative history, appear from its provisions considered as a whole.’ ” (Ibid., citing Silver v. Brown (1966) 63 Cal.2d 841, 845 [48 Cal.Rptr. 609, 409 P.2d 689].)
*1703In most cases, it is appropriate for courts to literally interpret statutes. The result that necessarily flows from clear, unambiguous language is almost always the “correct result,” irrespective of whether the judge thinks it is wise or unwise. We must not, however, be slaves to the tyranny of literalness so that we construe a statute in a way that yields “a grotesque caricature of the Legislature’s purpose.” (Frank, Words and Music, Some Remarks on Statutory Interpretation (1947) 47 Colum.L.Rev. 1259, 1262.)
This case reminds me of Riggs v. Palmer (1889) 115 N.Y. 506 [22 N.E. 188]. Elmer was a beneficiary under his grandfather’s will. He poisoned his grandfather and was convicted and sentenced to jail. The issue in Riggs was whether Elmer was entitled to inheritance under his grandfather’s will. The New York statute of wills did not exclude a person who murdered the testator from taking under the will. Nevertheless, the majority opinion held that Elmer simply could not inherit.
Contemporary legal scholar, Ronald Dworkin, points out that the majority holding in Riggs gave the “legislators’ intention an important influence over the real statute.” (See Dworkin, Law’s Empire (1986) pp. 15-20.) The writer of the majority in Riggs “relies on the distinction between the text, which he calls the ‘letter’ of the statute, and the real statute, which he calls the ‘statute’ itself. It would be absurd, he thought, to suppose that the New York legislators who originally enacted the statute of wills intended murderers to inherit, and for that reason the real statute they enacted did not have that consequence.” (Id., at pp. 18-19.)
Relying upon a canon of construction, the majority in Riggs wrote “that a thing which is within the intention of the makers of a statute is as much within the statute as if it were within the letter; and a thing which is within the letter of the statute is not within the statute unless it be within the intention of the makers.” (Riggs v. Palmer, supra, 22 N.E. at p. 189.)
The Riggs court concluded that if collateral consequences arise out of a statute which are contrary to common reason, then the statute should be void as to those collateral consequences. In Riggs, it goes against our system of shared values to have allowed the grandson to take under his grandfather’s will. Such a result would be so unjust as to be absurd.
So, too, here would it be absurd and unjust to allow Unzueta to recover backpay. As the District points out, the purpose behind Education Code section 44940.5 is to protect students from teachers who have committed certain offenses. The purpose behind the drug diversion statute is to rehabilitate first-time drug offenders and to spare them the stigma of a criminal *1704record. (Morse v. Municipal Court (1974) 13 Cal.3d 149, 157 [118 Cal.Rptr. 14, 529 P.2d 46]; Frederick v. Justice Court (1975) 47 Cal.App.3d 687, 691 [121 Cal.Rptr. 118].) Penal Code section 1000 and Education Code section 44940.5 were not designed to provide teachers with an additional reward of backpay for the time spent on a drug diversion program.
The District may choose, as it did here, to place an employee on compulsory leave when that employee is charged with an offense. (Ed. Code, § 44940, subd. (e).) It is true Education Code section 44940.5, subdivision (c) requires the District to pay the employee full compensation for the period of his compulsory leave of absence if the employee is acquitted of the offense or the charges against him are dismissed.
The District must so act when the prosecution fails to convince the trier of fact of the teacher’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. It may also occur when the prosecution cannot proceed, for example, because a crucial witness fails to appear. In such cases, the teacher, or any other person for that matter, always carries with him or her the presumption of innocence. The teacher remains in the same position as though he or she were innocent of the charge.
In the diversion statute, a dismissal is occasioned by entirely different circumstances. As a rule, a person accepting diversion has committed an offense, but not always. Sometimes a person who is in fact innocent of an offense charged against him might nevertheless request diversion. The particular circumstances of the case might make conviction a possibility. Diversion avoids having to face that possibility. In any event, dismissal for successful completion of diversion is of a different kind than is dismissal because of failure to prove the offense. Although for many purposes the two types of dismissal are treated the same, I doubt they were meant to be the same as far as Education Code section 44940.5 is concerned.
The majority concedes that for Unzueta to receive $40,000 from the school district after he had already received $30,000 for other employment during the time he was in the drug diversion program would be an absurd result. I applaud them for this insight. It is equally absurd, however, to award him $10,000, or any other amount of money.
If we can disregard the literal meaning of the statute to avoid the absurdity of paying the teacher $40,000, we can do the same to avoid the absurdity of paying him $10,000.
I find the majority’s quote from Judge Learned Hand ironic. The school district urged us to read this reprint of a radio address by Judge Hand to *1705support its position that we should not interpret the statute so as to defeat common sense. The majority cites Hand, but fails to heed his advice. He warns us against following the dictionary school of jurisprudence. Judges who take this approach “follow the letter of the law absolutely. ... No matter what the result is, he [or she] must read the words in their usual meaning and stop where they stop.” Hand points out that “[n]o judges have ever carried on literally in that spirit, and they would not be long tolerated if they did.” (Hand, The Spirit of Liberty, Papers and Addresses of Learned Hand (1952) p. 107.)
My approach is not to assert judicial supremacy over the Legislature. Quite the contrary. By interpreting the language of Education Code section 44940.5 beyond its literal language, I am acknowledging legislative supremacy. The “real statute,” measured against the background of common sense and reason, dictates that Unzueta should receive no compensation for the 22 months of his suspension. He is lucky to have been rehired by the District. His luck should stop there.
A mechanical, literal interpretation of the statute in the lifeless atmosphere of a vacuum creates a result contrary to public policy, contrary to legislative intent, contrary to common sense, and contrary to our shared notions of justice.
I would reverse.
A petition for a rehearing was denied June 26, 1992, and appellant’s petition for review by the Supreme Court was denied August 20, 1992. Lucas, C. J., Mosk, J., and George, J., were of the opinion that the petition should be granted.