Court Opinion

ID: 9628689
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 09:29:19.317109+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:13:35.706627
License: Public Domain

Hill, J.
(dissenting) — I dissent: Constitutional amendments like statutes are construed to operate prospectively only, unless on the face of the amendment the contrary intention is clearly manifest. American Federation of Labor v. American Sash & Door Co. (1948), 67 Ariz. 20, 189 P. (2d) 912. Schalow v. Schalow (1958), 163 Cal. App. (2d) 448, 329 P. (2d) 592. Snow v. Keddington (1948), 113 Utah 325, 195 P. (2d) 234.
The amendment in question adds the following sentence to Art. II, § 25, of the state constitution, which prohibits the legislature’s granting any public officer, agent, or servant any extra compensation after his services shall have been rendered:
“Nothing in this section shall be deemed to prevent increases in pensions after such pensions shall have been granted.”
*167It is self-evident that the amendment on its face does not indicate that it is to operate retrospectively.
It is, of course, recognized that there is an exception to this rule of construction, but that exception applies only when there is a remedial statute or constitutional provision, which effects not substantive rights, but only the remedies which are available for the enforcement of those rights. A “remedy” is “the means employed to enforce a right or redress an injury.” Paulsen v. Reinecke (1935), 181 La. 917, 160 So. 629, 97 A. L. R. 1184.
The cases, while recognizing the exception, serve to emphasize the rule.
An increase in a pension is substantive and while it may remedy an inequitable situation, it is not “remedial” within the purview of the exception, which applies to procedural and not substantive remedies.
The recognized rules of construction require a holding that the 1958 amendment to Art. II, § 25, of the state constitution did not operate retrospectively; and that the 1959 act of the legislature which attempted to make pension increases effective prior to the date of the adoption of the constitutional amendment was unconstitutional; and that the judgment of the trial court should be reversed.
No significant amounts are involved here; the time for which the retroactive increase is made, is relatively short (two years). The legislature like the proverbial camel has merely pushed a relatively harmless nose under the constitutional tent. The majority opinion says there is no objection to the nose; but the same reasoning that justifies the nose, justifies the camel and would make constitutional the increase of every pension that has been established, retroactive to the beginning of the pension, whether it be two years or thirty years ago. I do not believe that this was the effect of the amendment, or the intent of the people that voted for it.
Donworth, J., concurs with Hill, J.
December 12, I960. Petition for rehearing denied.