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Nixon v. State9/30/2005
ly "claims accruing on or after January 1, 1963" were included in the waiver of immunity, the legislature did not intend to revive claims for torts committed prior to January 1, 1963.
In fact, that was exactly the interpretation this court gave to the statute one year after its enactment. In Graham v. Worthington, 259 Iowa 845, 146 N.W.2d 626 (Iowa 1966), we considered the validity of a constitutional challenge to the State Tort Claims Act. One ground addressed by the court was directed to the provision stating that "'claim' includes only such claims accruing on or after January 1, 1963." Graham, 259 Iowa at 855, 146 N.W.2d at 634. The challenger claimed this provision violated a constitutional prohibition against the payment of public money for a purpose not provided for by pre-existing law. Id. at 855-56, 146 N.W.2d at 634. We stated:
By its terms the Iowa Tort Claims Act became effective March 30, 1965. This then means claims which may have accrued anytime within two years and three months before its effective date are embraced within the terms of the enactment.
The question now presented is whether disbursement of funds for torts committed prior to the effective date of the Act would constitute payment of money, the subject matter of which was not provided for by any previously enacted law.
Id. at 855-56, 146 N.W.2d at 634 (emphasis added). Clearly this court equated accrual of the claim with the date the tort was committed.
Later in the same opinion, we considered "whether chapter 25A operates equally upon all within the same class and with uniformity." Id. at 863, 146 N.W.2d at 638. We said:
[The law] accords to all damaged or injured by the tort of an officer, agent or employee of the state subsequent to January 1, 1963, a prescribed method and means by which to secure a judicial or quasi-judicial determination of their grievances, denying this right to no person within that designated general field or classification.
Id. at 864, 146 N.W.2d at 639. Again, this court was undoubtedly interpreting the language "accruing on or after January 1, 1963," to refer to damage or injury occurring subsequent to January 1, 1963. Moreover, this interpretation of the statute was not mere dicta. To the contrary, our court was required to identify the legislative classifications in order to assess the validity of the plaintiff's constitutional challenge under the Iowa Constitution's Equality Clause. See Grovijohn v. Virjon, Inc., 643 N.W.2d 200, 204 (Iowa 2002) ("The first step of an equal protection claim is to identify the classes of similarly situated plaintiffs singled out for differential treatment.").
It is significant that this interpretation of the language at issue was made only one year after the statute was adopted. Certainly this court's understanding of the well-defined meaning of the statutory term "accruing" would have been much clearer in 1966, than it is now after having been muddied by the intervening years of applying the discovery rule in ever-growing contexts. See generally Wiltgen v. United States, 813 F. Supp. 1387, 1392, (N.D. Iowa 1992) (stating "it often happens that those cases closer in time to the enactment of a statute or the handing down of a precedent are in a better position to assess its true character"); accord State ex rel. McElhinney v. All-Iowa Agri. Ass'n, 242 Iowa 860, 868, 48 N.W.2d 281, 285 (1951) (presuming "meaning given [the statute] by contemporary usage" to be the true meaning).
In summary, when the legislature abrogated sovereign immunity in 1965, it did so only for torts that were committed on or after January 1, 1963. Therefore, the plaintiffs' claims, based o
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