Court Opinion

ID: 9859653
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 22:16:34.182799+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:11:45.116095
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE RARICK, dissenting: We had the opportunity to review the appellate court’s decision in this case six years ago. We declined to do so. Defendants’ petition for leave to appeal was denied, the mandate of the appellate court issued, and the cause was remanded to the circuit court for further proceedings. Considerable effort was subsequently expended by the parties, the circuit court and the General Assembly based on the appellate court’s interpretation of the law. Given all that has transpired during the intervening six years, subjecting the appellate court’s judgment to review on the merits at this late date offends basic principles of judicial stability. There is nothing about the appellate court’s opinion that makes it any more worthy of our consideration now than it was when we denied defendants’ petition for leave to appeal in 1998. The merits of the appellate court’s opinion are, in fact, wholly unrelated to why the matter has come before us again. The case is on our docket today solely because of the circuit court’s subsequent determination that the General Assembly’s attempt to alter the appellate court’s judgment was invalid. Our jurisdiction is invoked under Supreme Court Rule 302(a) (134 111. 2d R. 302(a)). It is the circuit court’s judgment invalidating the statutory amendments to the Pension Code, not anything said or done by the appellate court in its prior judgment, that triggered that jurisdiction. For the majority to reverse a six-year-old appellate court judgment that fully resolved the governing legal issues in a case, as it does here, is unprecedented. Garibaldi v. Applebaum, 194 Ill. 2d 438 (2000), and Relph v. Board of Education of DePue Unit School District No. 103, 84 Ill. 2d 436 (1981), the two cases cited by the majority to justify its action, involved fundamentally different circumstances. In Relph, the appellate court initially reversed the circuit court’s judgments based on its construction of a certain statutory provision and remanded the petitioners’ causes of action to the circuit court with directions to enter judgment in their favor. While those proceedings were still pending, this court issued an opinion in Lenard v. Board of Education of Fairfield School District No. 112, 74 Ill. 2d 260 (1979), which construed the applicable law differently than the appellate court had in petitioners’ cases. The question presented was whether the appellate court’s decisions should still be followed or whether the viability of petitioners’ claims should be reconsidered in light of Lenard. The circuit court felt bound to apply the appellate court’s judgments, and the appellate court affirmed. We granted the defendant’s petitions for leave to appeal and reversed, holding that to avoid “illogical results,” the cases should have been decided on their second appeal in accordance with our decision in Relph, 84 Ill. 2d at 444. Significantly, the only judgments we reversed in Relph were the judgments then being appealed. We did not purport to reach back and reverse any prior judgments, as the majority does in this case. Properly considered, Relph was no more than an illustration of the well-established principle that opinions by our court are not normally limited to prospective application. They are also presumed to apply to all cases pending at the time the decision is announced. See Tosado v. Miller, 188 Ill. 2d 186, 196 (1999); Deichmueller Construction Co. v. Industrial Comm’n, 151 Ill. 2d 413, 416 (1992). That principle, however, has no relevance to Professor Mattis’ case. Here, unlike Relph, there was no intervening decision by this or any other court that called the appellate court’s construction of the law into question. So far as the courts were concerned, the appellate court’s construction of the law was settled. As I have mentioned, this appeal is before us only because the circuit court struck down, as unconstitutional, the General Assembly’s attempt to overrule the appellate court legislatively. Garibaldi, the other case cited by the majority, is also inapposite. It involved challenges to the viability of a cause of action asserted by a physician based on a hospital’s alleged failure to comply with certain of its bylaws related to medical staffing decisions. After the circuit court entered summary judgment in favor of defendants on count I of the physician’s three-count complaint, the physician brought an interlocutory appeal to the appellate court under Supreme Court Rule 304(a) (155 Ill. 2d R. 304(a)). The appellate court reversed entry of summary judgment and remanded for further proceedings. We declined to intervene at that stage of the proceedings and denied the defendants’ petitions for leave to appeal. After the matter was remanded to the circuit court, the physician’s claim for injunctive relief under count I was dismissed as moot. The physician appealed again. By this time, the physician had also appealed from a separate judgment entered by the circuit court granting summary judgment in favor of defendants on counts II and III of the physician’s complaint. Those appeals were consolidated by the appellate court, which affirmed the dismissal of the physician’s claim for injunctive relief, but reversed the grant of summary judgment in favor of defendants on counts II and III. We subsequently granted leave to appeal, affirmed in part, reversed in part and remanded to permit the circuit court to address two additional counts asserted by the physician in an amended complaint. There is no similarity between our court’s resolution of Garibaldi and what it has done in the present case. As the foregoing discussion has shown, the initial appeal in Garibaldi was interlocutory. It arose at an early stage of the proceedings and dealt with the viability of only one aspect of the plaintiffs claim. In contrast to the present case, it did not entail a comprehensive review of the plaintiffs cause of action following a trial and did not finally determine the plaintiffs claims on the merits. It merely reversed the entry of summary judgment, allowing the plaintiff to continue to pursue count I of his complaint along with the remaining counts, which were unaffected by the appellate court’s ruling. When Garibaldi’s case came up on appeal the second time, it was not because the General Assembly had attempted to legislatively overrule the appellate court’s opinion, as happened here. It was simply because the case had finally progressed to its conclusion in the trial court. In contrast to the present case, the second appeal did not reverse, alter, or even question the appellate court’s initial ruling. The appellate court’s first decision remained undisturbed. During the second appeal, neither this court nor the appellate court held that reversal of summary judgment as to count I had been a mistake. Count I was disposed of on the wholly separate grounds that subsequent events had rendered plaintiffs claims under that count moot. Garibaldi therefore offers no support for the majority’s action today. As an additional basis for justifying its decision, the majority invokes the axiom that questions regarding the constitutionality of a statute should be considered only where essential to the disposition of the case. I agree with that axiom. I cannot understand how it applies here. The axiom would be relevant if the majority’s opinion concluded that Mattis was not subject to the statutory amendments he challenges as unconstitutional. If the amendments did not apply, their constitutionality would not affect the outcome of Mattis’ case, and there would be no need to address it. The majority’s analysis, however, does not avoid application of the statute. To the contrary, it makes clear that the statute is to serve as the basis for calculating Mattis’ pension. Given that the challenged statute will determine Mattis’ income for the rest of his life, its validity not only remains relevant to his cause of action, it is dispositive. How the majority hoped to avoid this basic flaw in its analysis is unclear. One hint is provided in the second paragraph of the “Analysis” section of the opinion. It appears from that discussion that my colleagues were under the impression that if the statutory amendments merely codified SURS’s construction of the prior law, and if SURS’s construction of the prior law were correct, then the statutory amendments did not, in fact, alter the outcome and their constitutionality would therefore be immaterial to the resolution of this case. That argument, however, is untenable. First, with respect to separation of powers concerns, the problem with the General Assembly’s actions, and the reason the amendments are unconstitutional, is unrelated to the merits of the appellate court’s judgment. Whether that judgment needed to be reversed is irrelevant. In terms of constitutional analysis, the salient point is that the General Assembly was not the proper body to try to reverse it. Second, the majority’s rationale overlooks the fact that the statutory amendments were not limited to clarification of the prior law. They added entirely new provisions, including provisions limited exclusively to Mattis. Because the new provisions did not previously exist, and because those new provisions alter the pension benefits Mattis stands to receive, a determination as to whether SURS’s interpretation of the prior law was correct is not sufficient to resolve this case. The constitutionality of the statutory amendments must still be considered. This litigation began nearly a decade ago when SURS determined that it was going to pay Professor Mattis a lower pension benefit than he believed the law required. SURS calculated Mattis’ benefit to be $2,815.98 per month under the law then in effect. Mattis, however, thought he was entitled to approximately $3,500 per month. The difference was related to a large lump-sum contribution Mattis’ employer had made to the retirement system on his behalf to enable him to take advantage of an early retirement option. At the time, the Pension Code included four different rules for calculating the amount of a university employee’s pension benefit. A retiree’s benefit was determined by whichever of the rules applied to his situation and provided the largest annuity. Two of the rules, Rule 1 and Rule 2, pertained to Mattis’ case. The first rule, which is the one on which Mattis’ benefit was based, took into account his employer’s lump-sum contribution. The second rule, as construed by SURS, did not. Mattis asserted that SURS construction of Rule 2 was erroneous. He argued that under the law, SURS should have considered the employer’s lump-sum contribution when applying the formula set out in Rule 2, just as it had in applying Rule 1. Had that contribution been factored into the Rule 2 computation, Mattis argued, it would have yielded the higher benefit he claimed. The circuit court concurred in SURS’s interpretation of the relevant statutes. The appellate court did not. It agreed with Mattis that he was entitled to the full benefit of his employer’s lump-sum contribution under Rule 2. It therefore reversed and remanded for further proceedings, including recomputation of Mattis’ pension benefits under the Rule 2 formula. Mattis, 296 Ill. App. 3d at 682. On remand, the circuit court followed the appellate court’s directive and concluded that Mattis should receive a lump-sum payment of $152,984.37 plus monthly payments of $3,333.67. After the appellate court’s judgment had become final, but while the case was still pending on remand, the General Assembly amended the Pension Code to change the way in which Mattis’ pension should be computed. The amendments rejected the appellate court’s construction of the law and expressly provided that employer contributions were not to be taken into account in calculating the amount of the retirement benefit due under the Rule 2 formula. The amendments also created a new, additional rule, for computing benefits. The new rule, known as Rule 5, was fashioned solely to address Mattis’ claims. It provided a limited exception, available only to him, from the new statutory prohibition against use of an employer’s contribution in computing the pension benefit. Under the new rule, Mattis qualifies for a benefit of $3,090 per month. That is more than the $2,815.98 per month SURS had been willing to pay, but less than the $3,337.67 per month plus $152,984.37 lump-sum payment Mattis was awarded pursuant to the appellate court’s construction of the law as it existed when his claim arose and the appellate court’s judgment became final. The legislature may change the law as interpreted by the courts prospectively. It cannot, however, alter a statute retroactively in such a way that the statute itself overrules a decision of a reviewing court. Such action violates basic principles of separation of powers and is unconstitutional. In re Marriage of Cohn, 93 Ill. 2d 190, 201-04 (1982). Although the majority attempts to minimize the impact of the actions taken by the legislature in this case, the consequences of its amendments to the Pension Code are sweeping. Those amendments effectively nullify the appellate court’s decision and deny Mattis the benefit of the judgment he obtained there. In my view, it is difficult to imagine a more blatant violation of separation of powers principles. The circuit court was therefore correct to declare the amendments to the Pension Code unconstitutional. As I have already noted, the majority’s decision to reach back and reverse the appellate court’s decision in favor of Mattis does not cure the amendments’ constitutional infirmity. It is for the judiciary alone to interpret the law and decide how it should be applied in a particular case. If the lower courts err in undertaking those responsibilities, we can reverse them. The legislature cannot. Under the Illinois Constitution, the General Assembly has no right to assume for itself the role of a court of last resort. See Roth v. Yackley, 77 Ill. 2d 423, 428-29 (1979). By enacting the amendments to the Pension Code to change the outcome of this case, however, that is precisely what the General Assembly attempted to do. When we refused to allow the petition for leave to appeal in 1998, it decided to step in and sort things out in our stead. Such action cannot be squared with Illinois law. Article II, section 1, of the Illinois Constitution (111. Const. 1970, art. II, § 1) expressly prohibits any of the three branches of government from exercising “powers properly belonging to another.” That prohibition embodies the doctrine of separation of powers, which has been a hallmark of American government since ratification of the United States Constitution. Separation of powers is not a matter of bureaucratic convenience. It is a vital component of our system of checks and balances. The doctrine of separation of powers requires that a line be drawn between the functions of the courts and the functions of the legislature. Nothing in the majority’s opinion alters the fact that when the General Assembly enacted the amendments to the Pension Code at issue here, it crossed that line. Unconstitutional in their inception, the amendments are unconstitutional still. As such, they should be rejected as void and unenforceable. I must therefore respectfully dissent. JUSTICE KILBRIDE joins in this dissent.