Court Opinion

ID: 9785430
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 21:42:44.251433+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:36:22.563169
License: Public Domain

BRYNER, Chief Justice,
dissenting in part.
I disagree with the court’s conclusion that Brown & Root’s offer of judgment exposed *600Cook to an enhanced award of fees under Civil Rule 68(b).
Civil Rule 68(b) strives to encourage prudent efforts toward early settlements by defining three time frames in which refusing an offer of judgment will be deemed unreasonable and can trigger penalties. The first time frame, set out in paragraph (b)(1), is at issue here:
(b) If the judgment finally rendered by the court is at least 5 percent less favorable to the offeree than the offer, or, if there are multiple defendants, at least 10 percent less favorable to the offeree than the offer, the offeree, whether the party making the claim or defending against the claim, shall pay all costs as allowed under the Civil Rules and shall pay reasonable actual attorney fees incurred by the offer- or from the date the offer was made as follows:
(1) if the offer was served no later than 60 days after both parties made the disclosures required by Civil Rule 26, the offeree shall pay 75 percent of the offeror’s reasonable actual attorney fees[.][1]
Rejecting an offer during this time frame can result in requiring the offeree to pay seventy-five percent of the offeror’s ultimate fees. But the wording of paragraph (b)(1) is ambiguous because it leaves the exact period encompassed within this provision unclear.
At least two readings are plausible. First, the provision can reasonably be read to define a period that begins upon the filing of initial disclosures — “after both parties made the disclosures” — and that ends no more than sixty days later — “no later than 60 days after.” Alternatively, the provision might be read as describing a period with no real beginning — in other words,’ as allowing offers under paragraph (b)(1) to be served as early as the parties please, but “no later than 60 days after” their initial disclosures. Today’s opinion chooses the latter meaning; but in doing so, it ignores the provision’s history, as well as its purpose, and offers no sound reason to support this choice.
The opinion begins by recognizing yet disregarding strong legislative history that favors the first meaning. On February 21, 1997, House Bill (H.B.) 58’s sponsor, Representative Brian Porter, described to the House Judiciary Committee how Rule 68(b)(1) was intended to work. Representative Porter said that the provision would allow attorney’s fees to be awarded only when offers of judgment are made after the parties “get discovery”:
Consequently, what we’re saying is that if this offer is made within a short period of time, from the ability that you would have after a case is filed to get discovery, so you kind of know where you’re at, if a short period of time after that the offer is made, 60 days after that, and you don’t accept it, and when you finally go to trial, the offer is within 5 percent of — less than what you would have settled for, you’ve got to pay all reasonable actual attorneys’ fees and costs, from the time the offer was made until the judgment was entered.[2]
Addressing the same committee again three days later, Representative Porter cemented this point:
[T]he provision in the offer of judgment is aimed right after discovery has been accomplished so that a person has a feel for how the case is, one way or the other. The offer of judgments section comes into play and will certainly induce early settlement.[3]
The opinion dismisses these statements of legislative intent, observing that “Representative Porter’s comments do not convince us that offers made before the parties have made their initial disclosures are premature.”4 This observation misses the point. *601Alaska’s sliding-scale approach to statutory-interpretation does not require a definitive statement before legislative history can be used as an aid in construing ambiguous language. And reliable expressions of legislative intent should not be ignored when they are useful aids in determining what ambiguous language means. Here, Representative Porter’s description of H.B. 58’s intended meaning seems particularly useful because it comports with his description of the bill’s basic purpose: to encourage early settlement by penalizing unwise decisions made after a party has been fully informed — or as Representative Porter put it, after the party “has a feel for how the case is.”
Although it rejects this meaning, today’s opinion advances no sound reason for concluding that a party’s uninformed decision to decline an early offer of judgment should presumptively be deemed unreasonable, and therefore penalized, when the uninformed guess turns out to be wrong. The opinion’s interpretation of Rule 68(b) seems to run counter to the rule’s goal of encouraging reasonable action. A rule that pushes parties toward uninformed choice encourages unreasonable action and simply invites abuse.
In defense of its interpretation, the opinion points to two problems that, in the court’s view, weigh against the interpretation favored by legislative history and policy. First, the opinion reasons, if Rule 68(b)(1) were construed literally to require that “both parties” make their original disclosures before penalties could attach for rejecting an offer, then the purposes of the rule could be subverted, because “a party failing to make the required disclosure could purposefully or unintentionally interfere with the offer process” by failing to make an initial disclosure.5 But this reasoning describes a problem that will never arise. A party facing an offer of judgment from an opponent that has made a timely disclosure could never assert its own breach of the deadline as an excuse for rejecting the offer, since the offeree’s failure to disclose would never impair its ability to make an informed decision. Civil Rule 94 allows flexibility to depart from the strict terms of a rule in the interest of justice. In this situation, a non-complying offeree could hardly claim that the interest of justice would be advanced by allowing its own breach to prevent Rule 68(b) from applying.
Second, the opinion reasons, Rule 68(a) militates against Representative Porter’s interpretation of Rule 68(b) because “such an interpretation would conflict with the first sentence of Rule 68(a), which permits offers to be made ‘[a]t any time more than 10 days before the trial begins.’”6 But this argument overlooks the two distinct purposes served by subsections 68(a) and 68(b).
In contrast to subsection 68(b), which penalizes unreasonable responses to offers of judgment, subsection 68(a), simply defines the basic framework for a valid and binding offer of judgment: it allows either party to make an offer “at any time,” requires the offer to remain open ten days, specifies what the opposing party needs to do to accept it, and describes how to convert the accepted offer into a judgment.7 Nothing in this subsection implies that any penalty necessarily will, or routinely should, flow from rejecting an offer; it merely adopts a uniform, enforceable, and generally applicable early settlement process — a framework that is useful and necessary regardless of whether penalties are imposed for unreasonably rejecting offers of judgment. Hence no conflict exists *602between subsections 68(a) and (b): the fact that subsection 68(b) prescribes sanctions for a limited universe of unreasonably rejected offers has no bearing on the validity or utility of subsection 68(a)’s procedures enabling parties to make and accept offers “at any time.”
In keeping with H.B. 58’s intended meaning and purpose, then, I would interpret subsection 68(b)(l)’s provisions as triggering penalties only after both parties have made their initial disclosures (or after the deadline for initial disclosures has expired). As to all other issues, I join in the court’s opinion.

. Alaska R. Civ. P. 68(b).

. H. Jud. Comm, notes, 20th Leg., 1st Sess. (Feb. 21, 1997) (emphasis added).

. H. Jud. Comm, notes, 20th Leg., 1st Sess. (Feb. 24, 1997) (emphasis added). The same intent was echoed by the bill’s sponsor in its senate version. Senator Robin Taylor, who described it to the Senate Judiciary Committee as requiring "the party who fails to accept an offer of judgment, after a certain date, to pay actual attorney's fees....” S. Jud. Comm, notes, 20th Leg., 1st Sess. (Mar. 12, 1997) (emphasis added).

.Op. at 599.

. Op. at 599.

. Op. at 599.

. Civil Rule 68(a) provides:
At any time more than 10 days before the trial begins, either the party making a claim or the party defending against a claim may serve upon the adverse party an offer to allow judgment to be entered in complete satisfaction of the claim for the money or property or to the effect specified in the offer, with costs then accrued. The offer may not be revoked in the 10 day period following service of the offer. If within 10 days after service of the offer the adverse party serves written notice that the offer is accepted, either party may then file the offer and notice of acceptance together with proof of service, and the clerk shall enter judgment. An offer not accepted within 10 days is considered withdrawn, and evidence of the offer is not admissible except in a proceeding to determine costs. The fact that an offer is made but not accepted does not preclude a subsequent offer.