Court Opinion

ID: 9657805
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 20:38:34.46897+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:13:48.549449
License: Public Domain

SIMONETT, Justice
(concurring specialty)-
I join in the court’s opinion but wish to comment on a matter of statutory construction.
While this appeal was pending, the defendants Herickhoff had their state representative introduce legislation in the Minnesota House that apparently was designed to reverse the trial judge’s adverse decision. See Legislative Tape, House Commerce Committee, April 10, 1991. The proposed bill provided that “A credit agreement need not be signed by the creditor if: (1) the creditor prepared the agreement on the creditor’s letterhead stationery; and (2) the credit agreement does not contain a signature line for the creditor.” See H.F. 895 as read for the first time in the House, March 18, 1991.1 Mark and Donna Herick-hoff along with their attorney testified before the House Committee on Financial Institutions and Insurance and the Senate Commerce Committee in support of the bill. The original proposal was amended and, ultimately, 1991 Minn.Laws, ch. 329 was passed, section 1 of which added a fourth subparagraph to Minn.Stat. § 513.33, subd. 1, as follows: “(4) ‘signed’ has the meaning specified in section 336.1-201(39).” Section 2 of the amendment reads: “The intent of section 1 is to clarify the intent of the legislature in enacting section 513.33.”
As the law becomes increasingly statutory, we may expect more litigants to resort to the legislature to reverse an adverse judicial ruling; and to this I have no objection as personal initiative and ingenuity are not to be denied. My interest is in how this court should view “clarifying” legislation which, if applied retroactively, may reverse a court ruling.
Ordinarily a statute is not to be applied retroactively unless it specifically so states. Minn.Stat. §§ 645.21, 645.31 (1990); Chapman v. Davis, 233 Minn. 62, 64-65, 45 N.W.2d 822, 824 (1951). If, however, an amendment seeks only to “clarify” the interpretation of the statute, we have said the clarifying amendment may be applied retroactively. Nardini v. Nardini, 414 N.W.2d 184, 196 (Minn.1987). The rationale is that the legislature is not changing its mind but is only making clear the legislative intent that was always there. Id. See also Holman v. All Nation Ins. Co., 288 N.W.2d 244, 250-51 (Minn.1980); Gudvangen v. Austin Mut. Ins. Co., 284 N.W.2d 813, 817 (Minn.1978). The more doubt or ambiguity surrounding a statute, the more likely it is that an amendment of the statute is intended to clarify rather than to change the law. Sutherland, Statutory Construction § 49.11 (5th ed. 1992).
*709When section 513.33 was enacted, requiring that credit agreements must be “signed” to be enforceable, the word “signed” was not defined. By passing what it designates as a “clarifying amendment,” the legislature now is apparently saying that it had always intended “signed” to include the U.C.C. meaning of the term, namely, “any symbol executed or adopted by a party with present intention to authenticate a writing.” See Minn.Stat. § 336.1-201(39) (1990).
This court now holds that the word “signed” as originally used in the statute includes the U.C.C. meaning. But does the court reach this result on its own or by giving full faith and credit to the clarifying amendment? If the latter, I would have a problem. A legislative clarification prompted by an influential constituent seeking to reverse a court ruling seems to me highly suspect. Particularly is this true here, where the defendants, when the case was in the trial court, were apparently unable to point to any legislative history in the original enactment suggesting that the legislature had the U.C.C. then in mind, and where the trial judge ruled that, as originally enacted, the word “signed” did not include the U.C.C. definition.
For the purpose of determining what the legislature meant by “signed” when the statute was enacted in 1985, I would give little, if any, weight to the “clarifying” label tacked onto the 1991 amendment. Even so, in this case, I would reach the same result as the majority opinion; I would do so, however, simply by analyzing the intent and purpose of the original statute.
In this case there is nothing about the original statute (nothing, for example, about its language or grammar) that shrouds the word “signed” in ambiguity or doubt. It is only after the word “signed” is considered within the factual context of this case that its latent ambiguity emerges. In resolving this ambiguity to arrive at legislative intent, Minn.Stat. § 645.16 lists various factors to be considered by the court, such as the occasion for the law, the mischief to be remedied, and what bearing other laws on a similar subject might have.2 In considering these factors, I conclude that, when the legislature enacted § 513.33 in 1985, it intended “signed” to have a broad meaning, a meaning which one would expect bankers to be conversant with, the meaning given “signed” in the Uniform Commercial Code and which is consistent with commercial usage. In other words, putting completely aside the “clarifying” label, I have no difficulty concluding that “signed” as used in the original enactment, included the U.C.C. definition.
The question here is not whether the legislature can change the meaning of a statute by a subsequent amendment. Of course it can. The question, rather, is whether the legislature intends the change in meaning to be retroactive. For reasons of fairness, the legislature will usually be disinclined to give retroactive effect to the insertion of a new, unexpected meaning to an existing statute. See Smead, The Rule Against Retroactive Legislation: A Basic Principle of Jurisprudence, 20 Minn. L.Rev. 775 (1936). On the other hand, if the amended meaning or the need for an amended meaning was foreshadowed in the existing law, the legislature might be inclined to give the amended meaning retroactive effect and might even flatly so state. See Minn.Stat. § 645.21 (1990) (“No law shall be construed to be retroactive unless clearly and manifestly so intended by the legislature.”). But when the legislature chooses simply to characterize an amendment as “clarifying,” the court should, it seems to me, carefully consider the basis for the characterization before attributing to it any retroactivity.
Any attempt to give retroactive effect to a “clarification” obtained through the sole *710initiative of a disappointed litigant seeking to reverse an adverse ruling in a still-pending lawsuit should be treated with great skepticism.

. The original proposed amendment begins “A credit agreement need not be signed” if certain conditions are met, conditions which conveniently fit the facts of this lawsuit. What is interesting is that the bill assumes that "signed” means to affix one’s written signature, and the bill then proceeds on the theory that the word "signed” has to be supplemented with a new definition, not just clarified.

. These factors include: "(1) The occasion and necessity for the law; (2) The circumstances under which it was enacted; (3) The mischief to be remedied; (4) The object to be obtained; (5) The former law, if any, including other laws upon the same or similar subjects; (6) The consequences of a particular interpretation; (7) The contemporaneous legislative history; and (8) Legislative and administrative interpretations of the statute.” Minn.Stat. § 645.16 (1990).