Court Opinion

ID: 9516879
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-06 23:54:58.871436+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:39:45.949187
License: Public Domain

SELBY, Justice,
concurring in part and concurring in result.
I concur in the result because to hold otherwise would be to render the saving clause meaningless.
The Myrick Court did not engage in analysis to determine whether § 1897(k) actually forecloses implied preemption analysis. Because the federal standard in that case had been suspended, there was no federal statute available to preempt the state common law. Thus, the Myrick Court jumped immediately to the implied preemption issue, found that there was no preemption, and easily disposed of that case. The same end result would have been reached regardless of whether the Court had analyzed § 1397(k) to determine if implied preemption analysis is appropriate for this statute. Thus, from Myrick, it is not clear that implied preemption analysis is required. All that is clear is that such analysis is permitted.
The majority opinion hinged its decision on the express language of the saving clause. A saving clause generally does not create law, but rather preserves prior law from nullification. A statute and its saving clause are to be considered together in order to ascertain legislative intent. A saving clause ordinarily must be construed as not to include anything not fairly within its terms. Moreover, since there is a presumption against preemption, it is fair to consider this common law remedy to be within the bounds of the saving clause. Therefore, I agree that the common law remedy is not preempted by this statute.