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Nixon v. State9/30/2005
, 464 N.W.2d 268, 271 (Iowa 1990). It is undisputed that the plaintiffs made their claims in writing to the state appeal board within two years after discovering the cause of their injuries. For this reason, the plain and unambiguous language of the limitations provision of the Iowa Torts Claims Act does not bar their cause of action. The district court should be affirmed for this reason. See Coralville Hotel Assocs., L.C. v. City of Coralville, 684 N.W.2d 245, 248 (Iowa 2004) (" recise and unambiguous language should be given its plain and rational meaning without resort to the rules of statutory construction.").
The State urges us, however, to go beyond the statutory text to divine legislative intent. It asks us to travel forty years into the past to resurrect a "sunrise" provision the legislature repealed long ago. For as originally enacted, the Iowa Tort Claims Act contained the following language:
'claim' includes only such claims accruing on or after January 1, 1963 . . . .
1965 Iowa Acts ch. 79, § 2(5), repealed by 1969 Iowa Acts ch. 81, § 2. Based upon this repealed "sunrise" provision--as well as a long-repudiated judicial construction of the verb "to accrue" as "to occur"--the State concludes the Iowa Torts Claim Act is intended to bar all claims for injuries that occurred before January 1, 1963. The Iowa Tort Claims Act, the State paradoxically concludes, means what it does not say; indeed, the State interprets the Act to say what the legislature explicitly said it does not say when it repealed the relied-upon language in 1969. The State effectively asks us to re-enact statutory language the legislature repealed long ago. We will not do so. See Doe v. Ray, 251 N.W.2d 496, 501 (Iowa 1977) (" e must avoid legislating in our own right and placing upon statutory language a strained, impractical or absurd construction."); cf. Indep. Sch. Dist. v. Iowa Employment Sec. Comm'n, 237 Iowa 1301, 1308, 25 N.W.2d 491, 496 (1946) (noting "history of statute may properly be considered in case of ambiguity" (emphasis added) (citation omitted)). The repealed portion of the Iowa Tort Claims Act was the statute of limitations provision, and we do not find it appropriate to befuddle our sovereign immunity analysis with statute of limitations arguments that are not now before us.
However, even if the repealed language of the Iowa Tort Claims Act were somehow still enforceable, it would not bar the plaintiffs' claims. We need not bog ourselves down in all the intricacies of the State's historical-statutory analysis. The linchpin of the State's argument is its interpretation of the verb "to accrue," and in what follows, we focus upon it.
As originally enacted, the Iowa Tort Claims Act only waived the State's sovereign immunity for those claims "accruing on or after January 1, 1963." 1965 Iowa Acts ch. 79, § 2(5), repealed by 1969 Iowa Acts ch. 81, § 2. It also imposed a statute of limitations: once a claim "accrued," the plaintiff had two years or until January 1, 1967 to file a claim with the state appeal board, whichever was later. 1965 Iowa Acts ch. 79, § 13, repealed by 1969 Iowa Acts ch. 81, § 2.
After surveying a century's worth of Iowa cases, the State concludes the verb "to accrue" in 1965 meant "to occur" or "to happen." See, e.g., Ogg v. Robb, 181 Iowa 145, 156, 162 N.W. 217, 220-21 (1917) (concluding claim accrued when injury occurred, not when plaintiff discovered cause of injury). While the State recognizes that use of the verb "to accrue" in the Iowa Tort Claims Act now incorporates the discovery rule, see, e.g., Vachon, 514 N.W.2d at 445, it opines that the legislature could not have foreseen this judicial change in the verb's meaning in
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