Court Opinion

ID: 9630388
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 10:10:06.722598+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:07:38.099363
License: Public Domain

STEPHEN N. LIMBAUGH, Jr., Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part to supplemental opinion.
I respectfully dissent from the holding of the supplemental opinion that “a bright-line rule cannot be drawn” and that “the question whether retroactive application would work an injustice ... necessarily is dependent on the degree of notice, reliance and hardship shown by [the] particular candidate or class of candidates.” In my view, this Court’s sole function is to decide whether its decision is prospective or retrospective as to all persons affected as has been this Court’s practice with every case heretofore decided in which the prospective/retrospective issue was raised. Although the majority correctly decides that the decision is prospective for candidates who have completed their campaigns, I would hold that the decision is prospective for all candidates.
An across-the-board “prospective only” holding is fully supported by the law and the record. As the majority correctly notes, citing State ex rel. Cardinal Glennon Mem’l Hosp. for Children v. Gaertner, 583 S.W.2d 107, 118 (Mo. banc 1979), this Court will not make a decision retrospective “to the extent that it causes injustice to persons who have acted in good faith and reasonable reliance upon a statute later held unconstitutional.” The injustice here is readily apparent from the fact (as tacitly stipulated by the parties) that between January 1 and July 19 hundreds of then-legal “over-limit” contributions were made to scores of candidates, Democrats and Republicans alike, for statewide, legislative, county, municipal, and judicial offices. These contributions would be deemed illegal and subject to refund if this Court’s holding were retrospective. In this way, these candidates would be penalized for their initiative and resourcefulness in declaring their candidacy and raising funds early on, and they would lose any campaign advantage that they had rightfully earned. This is true for these candidates categorically: they suffer an injustice, great or small, whether they have to repay a million dollars or only a thousand dollars.
It is no answer to this injustice that it must somehow be weighed against a supposed corresponding injustice to the many candidates who did not declare and raise funds early on. These “might-file” candidates had the same opportunity and the same level playing field as the other candidates who took advantage of the opportunity. For this reason, any corresponding *155injustice to “might-file” candidates is of their own making. Furthermore, it goes without saying that none of these hypothetical future candidates has any entitlement or vested right that the law would not be changed before they eventually declared their candidacies. Indeed, the majority invites the legislature to do just that! This means too, as the majority would necessarily concede, that it is altogether uncertain what the law will be for the “might-file” candidates who wait.
The other requirement for prospective application of the holding — the candidates’ good faith and reasonable reliance on the statute repealing the contribution limits— is evident by the very fact that so many candidates from both parties availed themselves of the statute. Their good faith and reasonable reliance should be presumed. But as I understand the majority opinion, candidates will be deemed to have unreasonably relied on the statute simply if they had actual notice of a lawsuit challenging the statute, even a lawsuit to which they were not named as a party. However, no case (until now) has ever so held. Must all persons acting in reliance on a statute now stop in their tracks whenever they learn of a challenge to the statute? And whatever the merits of the challenge? The only case the majority cites in support of the proposition that the courts should “refus[e] prospective-only application of a decision to entities that clearly had notice of the litigation” is Akin v. Missouri Gaming Comm’n, 956 S.W.2d 261 (Mo. banc 1997). But that opinion is fundamentally miscast because the entities (the gaming companies) that were refused prospective application of the decision were the actual defendants in the lawsuit.
Even if non-parties are to be charged with notice of a lawsuit, it is certainly inappropriate to do so here because notice of this particular lawsuit could not have afforded fair notice of the actual grounds on which this Court ultimately rendered its decision. In other words, notice to non-parties that a suit was filed challenging a statute on certain grounds is not sufficient notice that the suit may be successfully challenged on grounds the parties failed to raise. That is the point the majority seems to make when it states that “... the issue of [the candidates’] actual notice of this litigation is undeveloped. Questions may arise whether the invalidity of the provision eliminating contribution limits was reasonably foreseeable by these persons.” I see no need, however, to resolve those questions by referring the matter to an independent fact finder.
The challenge raised in plaintiffs petition was not specific to the repeal of the contribution limits, and as the majority concedes, there was no claim that the repeal of the contribution limits was itself unconstitutional. Instead, the exclusive focus was the alleged invalidity of sections 115.342 and 115.350 and the black-out provision of section 130.032.2. Even if these claims were well-taken, the parties (not to mention the candidates who were not parties) could reasonably rely on the presumption in section 1.140 that the invalid sections of H.B. 1900 were severable from the valid sections and that the bill would not be invalidated in its entirety. And, as expected, although the trial court did invalidate the challenged sections, the balance of the bill was left intact. Furthermore, at no time during the pendency of the case did the parties raise, or did the trial court address, the issue of the sever-ability of the unconstitutional black-out period from the repeal of the campaign contribution limits. Indeed, the trial court’s judgment is silent on the matter. It was not until May 4 that appellant Trout first raised the issue in the final point (no. 6) in his brief to this Court, and even then, the overriding focus of the brief, and thereaf*156ter of the state’s brief, too, was the challenge to sections 115.342 and 115.350. In short, up to the time of appeal, this Court’s invalidation of the repeal of campaign contribution limits was an apparently unforeseen collateral consequence of the invalidation of the black-out period, a consequence unforeseen even to the parties themselves. Under these circumstances, I 'would not impute notice to non-parties to the lawsuit, much less hold that they were not entitled to good faith reasonable reliance on the statute.
The best case on the application of the Cardinal Glennon prospective/retrospective analysis is the Cardinal Glennon case itself. In that case, this Court invalidated all of Chapter 538, a statutory scheme under which any person having a malpractice claim against a health care provider must refer the claim to the “Secretary of the Professional Liability Review Board Authority” before filing an action in court. State ex rel. Cardinal Glennon Mem’l Hosp., 583 S.W.2d at 110. Chapter 538, the Court ruled, was invalid because it imposed a procedure as a precondition to access to the courts, in violation of the “open courts” provision of the Missouri Constitution. Id. One component of the statutory scheme in section 538.020 provided a means of tolling the statutes of limitations during the time required for the board to consider a malpractice claim and make its recommendations. In a supplemental opinion giving prospective application to the decision to the extent that it invalidated the tolling provision, this Court stated:
We are now reminded that during the period from the effective date of Chapter 538 until February 13, 1979, a substantial number of claims against health care providers have been submitted under Chapter 538 and that such claimants have undoubtedly relied on the protection afforded them by the tolling provision of section 538.020.... If the tolling provision of section 538.020 is viewed as retroactively unconstitutional, those claimants who have reasonably and in good faith relied upon section 538.020 to protect their rights to ultimately submit their claims to the courts would suffer a manifest injustice. We, therefore, order that the statutes of limitations shall be tolled pursuant to section 538.020 as to those claims submitted to the Professional Liability Review Board between the effective date of Chapter 538 and February 28, 1979 [the date of the supplemental opinion].
Id. at 118. I cannot fairly distinguish these circumstances from those in the case at hand. In my view, the many claimants who relied on the tolling of the statute of limitations (despite the suit contesting the statute’s validity) are in no different position than the many candidates who relied on the repeal of the campaign contribution limits.1
Finally, it seems to me that the majority’s remedy for determining whether retroactive application would work an injustice is itself unworkable. To assign this problem to the Ethics Commission for a case-by-case analysis of the injustice to each candidate will present a monumental task that likely is well beyond the re-
*157sources of the Commission. As I understand the majority ruling, the Ethics Commission is now charged with investigating and prosecuting claims for refunds against scores of candidates who collected over-limit contributions and then determining whether an injustice would result by requiring refunds of the contributions. I see no practical way to accommodate that procedure during the current election cycle, especially considering the many appeals to the court system that are sure to follow. In addition, it will be a further injustice to the candidates themselves who will have to go to the additional time, expense, and trouble to defend themselves, and to do so in many instances where there is no other candidate against whom to weigh the so-called relative injustices. The better course was taken in Cardinal Glennon and in Sumners, the very two cases cited by the majority in support of its position that there must be an evaluation of the injustice to non-parties caused by the retrospective operation of a decision. In both of those cases, this Court applied the holdings prospectively to all persons potentially affected, Cardinal Glennon, 583 S.W.2d at 118; Sumners v. Sumners, 701 S.W.2d 720, 722-25 (Mo. banc 1985), and there was no effort to determine who had notice of the pending suit and who did not, nor to conduct a case-by-case analysis with independent fact finders to evaluate the relative injustices. The same approach should be made here. See also In re Extension of Boundaries of Glaize Creek Sewer Dist. of Jefferson County, 574 S.W.2d 357, 364-65 (Mo. banc 1978) (giving prospective application to all persons and entities potentially affected by decision invalidating statute pertaining to annexation of sewer districts because of injustice to those who relied on the statute); Abernathy v. Sisters of St. Mary’s, 446 S.W.2d 599, 606 (Mo.1969) (giving prospective application to all persons potentially affected by decision eliminating doctrine of charitable immunity because of injustice to those who relied on prior decisions).
For these reasons, I would hold that the decision invalidating the repeal of the campaign contribution limits should be applied prospectively from the date of the decision — July 19, 2007.

. Although the majority discounts this holding because "the harm of retroactive application to all [claimants] was both uniform and readily ascertainable,” it overlooks the fact that there was a corresponding and equally uniform and readily ascertainable harm to the many health care providers whose absolute defense of the statute of limitations was taken away. Ironically, under the majority’s current analysis, the balancing of the uniform and readily ascertainable harms would have required the Cardinal Glennon Court to give retrospective effect to its decision.