Court Opinion

ID: 9759886
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 00:31:47.104372+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:05.918736
License: Public Domain

Justice COATS,
dissenting.
Given the comparatively insignificant amount of costs at issue here and the fact that the statute has now been amended to make each party responsible for its own costs of appeal, it may be difficult to justify devoting further energy to this case. I write very briefly in dissent, however, because I can hardly recall a clearer example of over-construction by this court. While I count myself among the last to minimize the ambiguity inherent in virtually all forms of communication, I am also painfully aware that basic principles of interpretation, or hermeneutics to the non-legal world, can sometimes be used to demonstrate that "up" really means "down" or, as I believe the majority (in effect) does in this case, prove that "Yes, you may recover your costs," actually means "No, you may not."
The critical language at issue here is found in a single sentence and involves neither terms of art nor complex cross-references to other provisions. It clearly provides that upon modification of the valuation for assessment of his property, an appellant shall forthwith receive a refund of his costs. Because an appeal of a property assessment, depending upon the cireumstances, might be heard by either the district court or the board of assessment appeals, the statute proceeds to indicate that the amount of that refund "may be fixed" either by the court or the board, as the case may be.
Use of the permissive term "may" in reference to the two alternate bodies to which the appeal may have been taken, especially when followed by the phrase, "as the case may be," *941is naturally understood to mean that the amount "may be fixed" by the court or it "may be fixed" by the board. It cannot reasonably be understood, however, to mean that despite mandating a refund of costs to the appellant earlier in the same sentence, the legislature now intends to allow the appropriate body to fix and award an amount of costs or not, at its choice. Even if the process of fixing an amount of costs could be understood to inherently involve some degree of discretion, rather than simply an accounting of expenditures, the statutory language could not possibly imply that the decision whether to award costs be nothing more than a matter of beneficence, as apparently contemplated by the majority.
Because I believe the statutory language makes perfect sense as written and the majority's elaborate construction simply carries it further and further from any reasonable understanding of that language, I respectfully dissent.