Crain v. Missouri State Employees' Retirement System, WD

• Court: Court of Appeal of Missouri (US)
• Citation: 613 S.W.2d 912
• Decision Date: 02 March 1981
• Docket Number: No. WD,WD
• Parties: Joe C. CRAIN & Helen Crain, his wife, Roy W. McGhee & Lena G. McGhee, his wife, Willard B. Leavitt & Maude Ann Leavitt, his wife, J. Herbert Taylor & Lucille Taylor, his wife, Lawrence Bradley & Lucille Bradley, his wife, Paul W. Barrett & Dorothy M. Barrett, his wife, Henry I. Eager & Lorene F. Eager, his wife, Vivian Bradford, Edith Scott, and Benson C. Tomlinson & Martha Tomlinson, his wife, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. MISSOURI STATE EMPLOYEES' RETIREMENT SYSTEM, James I. Spainhower, as the Treasurer for the State of Missouri, and Stephen C. Bradford, as the Commissioner of Administration for the State of Missouri, Defendants- Respondents. 31554.

Page 912

613 S.W.2d 912 Joe C. CRAIN & Helen Crain, his wife, Roy W. McGhee & Lena
G. McGhee, his wife, Willard B. Leavitt & Maude Ann Leavitt,
his wife, J. Herbert Taylor & Lucille Taylor, his wife,
Lawrence Bradley & Lucille Bradley, his wife, Paul W.
Barrett & Dorothy M. Barrett, his wife, Henry I. Eager &
Lorene F. Eager, his wife, Vivian Bradford, Edith Scott, and
Benson C. Tomlinson & Martha Tomlinson, his wife,
Plaintiffs-Appellants,
v.
MISSOURI STATE EMPLOYEES' RETIREMENT SYSTEM, James I.
Spainhower, as the Treasurer for the State of Missouri, and
Stephen C. Bradford, as the Commissioner of Administration
for the State of Missouri, Defendants- Respondents. No. WD 31554. Missouri Court of Appeals, Western District. March 2, 1981.
Motion for Rehearing and/or Transfer to Supreme Court Denied
March 30, 1981.
Application to Transfer Denied May 11, 1981.

Page 914

Cullen Coil, Jefferson City, for plaintiffs-appellants.

John Ashcroft, Atty. Gen., B. J. Jones, Asst. Atty. Gen., Jefferson City, for defendants-respondents.

Before CLARK, P. J., and DIXON and SOMERVILLE, JJ.

DIXON, Judge.

Plaintiffs, who are judges, retired judges, commissioners and retired commissioners of the Missouri judiciary, and their dependents and beneficiaries, brought a class action against the Missouri State Employees' Retirement System and the statutory trustees of the Retirement System, the Commissioner of Administration, and the State Treasurer. The petition sought a declaration that they were entitled to receive certain retirement compensation and other benefits under §§ 476.515-476.595 RSMo 1978.

The Attorney General filed a motion to dismiss, asserting a variety of grounds. The trial court sustained the motion without specifying the basis for the ruling. The plaintiff class has appealed.

The appeal presents, in addition to a conventional attack on the petition for failure to state a cause of action, a battery of claimed defects subsumed under the general headings of sovereign immunity, separation of powers, existence of a political question, and an assertion that the pleadings call for an advisory opinion.

The initial question is the ability of the pleadings to state a cause of action in declaratory judgment.

Page 915

In the determination of that question, this court's scope of review is delineated in City of Creve Coeur v. Creve Coeur Fire Protection District, 355 S.W.2d 857 (Mo.1952). Such a review, in accordance with the authority cited, intends that pleadings shall be liberally construed and averments of the petition accorded their reasonable and fair intendment. If, being given such intendment, the averments of the pleading invoke substantive principles of law entitling the plaintiff to relief, the pleading is sufficient. When the petition is a request for the interpretation of a statute, ... "it is not the function of the trial court on a motion to dismiss or of this court on appeal from a judgment of dismissal to make an analysis of the law under which the rights are claimed or to construe the statutes in question or to determine on the merits whether plaintiff is entitled to the declaratory relief he seeks in accordance with the theory he states." City of Creve Coeur, supra at 859-60. Only if, from the face of the petition, it can be declared "beyond peradventure of doubt" that a claim of right, under any construction of the statutes, is wholly without substance may the petition be dismissed for failure to state a cause of action in declaratory relief. It is a necessary corollary of the rule stated that if a construction of the statutes is necessary to refute the claim of right of the plaintiff, then the petition may not be dismissed.

The appellant class of retirees assert that the issue is controlled by City of Creve Coeur, supra, and that the pleadings of the class call for a construction of the statutes and Article V, § 26 of the Missouri Constitution. The class further asserts that the construction they plead is not wholly without substance but is an arguable construction of the statutes and the Constitution. The Attorney General as respondent does not meet the issue squarely on this branch of the case. The Attorney General cites Shapiro v. Columbia Union National Bank & Trust Company et al., 576 S.W.2d 310 (Mo. banc 1979), cert. denied, 444 U.S. 831, 100 S.Ct. 60, 62 L.Ed.2d 40 (1979), and Harris v. State Bank & Trust Co. of Wellston, 484 S.W.2d 177 (Mo.1972), for the proposition that if no proper case for declaratory judgment is presented, then it is proper to dismiss the petition. The rule of those cases is not doubted, but their ruling does not address the issue presented in the instant case. The Attorney General's brief nowhere contains any citation of authority or even argument countering the assertion by the class in their petition that the pleaded statutes and constitutional provisions require construction in order to determine the rights and benefits of the class.

The appellant class also cites Creve Coeur, supra, for the proposition that it is not the function of the trial court nor this court on appeal to undertake an analysis of the law or to construe the statutes in question to determine the merits of the theory which plaintiff claims in the petition. Unless it can be said with certainty that...