Court Opinion

ID: 9609416
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 03:26:57.319605+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:02:50.367382
License: Public Domain

Justice MITCHELL
concurring.
I completely concur in the scholarly opinion of the Court in this case. I must point out, however, that this opinion demonstrates the error of the bare majority of this Court which implied in a prior case that legislative inaction after a judicial interpretation of a statute was a weak reed upon which to lean and that the legislature’s failure to modify a statute after such a judicial interpretation was as likely to be the product of political cowardice as to be the product of the legislature’s approval of this Court’s interpretation. DiDonato v. Wortman, 320 N.C. 423, 425, 358 S.E.2d 489, 490 (1987). I believe that Justice Webb was correct when he stated in his dissent in DiDonato that the rule of statutory construction treating legislative silence as approval of our prior judicial construction of a statute should not be denigrated. Id. at 437, 358 S.E.2d at 497 (Webb, J., dissenting). As Justice Webb quite accurately stated: “It cannot add to the strength of this Court to use this canon of construction when we want to reach a certain result, State v. Gardner, 315 N.C. 444, 340 S.E.2d 701 (1986), and ignore it when it suits our convenience.” DiDonato, 320 N.C. at 437, 358 S.E.2d at 497. I am pleased to see this Court return in the present case to the undiluted application of the doctrine of statutory construction inferring legislative approval of the decisions of this Court from legislative silence in the face of those decisions. It is my sincere hope that the Court will now follow this canon of statutory construction consistently and not ignore it when it suits our purpose to do so.