Court Opinion

ID: 9536859
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 07:08:19.277956+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:55:25.423948
License: Public Domain

HOWE, Justice,
dissenting:
I dissent. The majority has misinterpreted the legislative intent as to the deadline for filing a petition for judicial review of the Tax Commission’s final action.
Section 63-46b-13 provides that any party may timely request reconsideration of an agency’s order. I agree with the majority that Harper did that here. If reconsideration is not granted, the party may seek judicial review. In order to move along the reconsideration process, the legislature provided in section 63-46b-13(3)(b) that “if the agency head or the person designated for that purpose does not issue an order within twenty days after the filing of the request, the request for reconsideration shall be considered to be denied.” Thus, if no agency action has been taken on the request for reconsideration within twenty days, the statute automatically makes the request denied.
The next step for an aggrieved party would be to file a petition for judicial review of the agency action. Section 63-46b-14(3)(a) provides that this filing must be done “within thirty days after the date that the order constituting the final agency action is issued or is considered to have been issued under Subsection 63-46b-13(3)(b).” The majority misconstrues the intent of this statute. It erroneously interprets the statute as starting the thirty days’ appeal time to run from either the date on which the agency denies the request for reconsideration or the date on which it is considered denied under subsection 63-46b-13(3)(b), whichever is later. This interpretation makes no sense and defeats the legislative intent of expediting the administrative process. The reasonable interpretation is that the thirty days for filing a petition for judicial review begin to run when the agency denies the request for re*817consideration, but if the agency has not done so within twenty days, the request is considered denied at that time and the appeal time starts running.
The majority’s interpretation produces the anomalous result that when an agency does not act on a request for reconsideration within twenty days, it is considered to be denied, but at any time thereafter (and' apparently without any outside limit) the agency may act on the request, thereby breathing life into the case, and start running again the thirty days to seek judicial review. I submit that this interpretation is without parallel anywhere in our statutes or rules of practice in any other context. The majority cites no authority for its interpretation. On the other hand, the Supreme Court of Iowa in Ford Motor Co. v. Iowa Department of Transportation Regulations Board, 282 N.W.2d 701 (Iowa 1979), was presented with the identical question. There, the Administrative Procedure Act provided that an application for rehearing shall be “deemed to have been denied” unless the agency grants the application within twenty days after its filing. Id. at 702-03. A further rule provided that a petition for judicial review must be filed within thirty days after the application for rehearing has been denied or deemed denied. The court held that the agency must act on the application for rehearing, if at all, within twenty days. If it has not done so, the application for rehearing is deemed denied and the appeal time starts to run and cannot be restarted by a subsequent denial of the application by the agency. In its opinion, the court wrote:
Parties to the proceedings have a need for and a right to a prompt disposition of a dispute. We are confident that the legislature was fully aware that administrative agencies might meet irregularly. Hence, in the interest of a prompt disposition of disputes, the legislature superimposed an automatic denial of any application not ruled upon within the prescribed period.
Regrettable hardships may well result to litigants who are unaware of the “deemed denied” provisions of the statute. But it is in the overall interest of litigants and the public at large that administrative proceedings move to a prompt conclusion. The legislature obviously had the broader public interest in mind in adopting the statute.
Id. at 703. The same result was reached in Davis v. Alabama Medicaid Agency, 519 So.2d 533 (Ala.Civ.App.1987). There, a statute provided that an aggrieved party may file an application for rehearing with an agency within fifteen days after entry of its order. It was further provided that if the agency enters no order regarding the application within thirty days, the application shall be deemed denied. A petition for judicial review was required to be filed within thirty days after the decision on the request for rehearing is rendered. The court held that once the thirty days had run from the filing of the application for rehearing, the time to appeal began to run and could not be altered or extended by the agency’s subsequent denial of the application for rehearing. Id. at 539.
The majority creates a dilemma for an aggrieved party who desires to seek judicial review. If the party has requested reconsideration by the administrative agency but no action has been taken on the request by the end of twenty days, an appeal must then be filed. If, however, the agency later (and there is no limitation as to how much later) acts on the request and denies it, the appeal which has been taken turns out to be premature and must be dismissed. The party must then file a second appeal, supposedly pay another filing fee, and -continue pursuit of the appeal. In no other context in our appellate system do we tolerate such uncertainty as to when an order is final and appealable and subject a party seeking review to such a duplicative and hazardous procedure.
I would dismiss the appeal as having been filed untimely.