District of Columbia v. Gallagher

• Decision Date: 29 July 1999
• Docket Number: No. 97-CV-1138.,97-CV-1138.
• Citation: 734 A.2d 1087
• Parties: DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, et al., Appellants, v. Monica GALLAGHER, Appellee.
• Court: D.C. Court of Appeals

734 A.2d 1087

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, et al., Appellants, v. Monica GALLAGHER, Appellee.

No. 97-CV-1138.

District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

Argued November 5, 1998.

Decided July 29, 1999.

Leo N. Gorman, Washington, DC, for appellants. Jo Anne Robinson, Principal Deputy Corporation Counsel, Charles L. Reischel, Deputy Corporation Counsel, and Martin B. White, Assistant Corporation Counsel at the time the brief was filed, were on the brief for appellants.

St. John Barrett, Washington, for appellee.

Before TERRY and RUIZ, Associate Judges, and GALLAGHER, Senior Judge.

TERRY, Associate Judge:

Appellee Monica Gallagher is the former wife of the late David Norman, a retired judge of the Superior Court at the time of his death in 1995. After Judge Norman died, Ms. Gallagher submitted an application for a survivor annuity to the District of Columbia Office of Personnel. Her application was denied because she and Judge Norman had been divorced in 1987, and the Personnel Office concluded that it was not authorized to award survivor annuities to former spouses of government employees who were divorced before March 16, 1989, the effective date of the District of Columbia Spouse Equity Act, D.C.Code §§ 1-3001 et seq. (1992). The trial court ruled that the District was not precluded from awarding appellee a survivor annuity, and that its failure to do so in this case was an abuse of discretion. The court therefore granted Ms. Gallagher's motion for summary judgment and ordered the District to pay her a survivor annuity. We hold that the Spouse Equity Act bars such payments, and thus we reverse the judgment in Ms. Gallagher's favor and remand with directions to enter judgment for the District.

I

In May 1973 David Norman was appointed to be a judge of the Superior Court. He elected to participate in the survivor annuity program established by the District of Columbia Judges' Retirement Fund. See D.C.Code § 1-714 (1992). Under that program, a survivor annuity would be paid upon Judge Norman's death to his wife, Ms. Gallagher, whom he had married in 1968. When he retired from the bench in 1983, Judge Norman chose to continue participating in the program.

On December 29, 1987, Judge Norman and Ms. Gallagher were divorced. The divorce decree stated in part: "As part of the parties' wishes, each shall maintain all vested and survivorship interests in each other's pension and retirement benefits, as well as any present interest in life and health insurance." Although the retirement program permitted Judge Norman to withdraw from participation and collect a lump sum upon his divorce, see D.C.Code § 11-1566(b) (1995), he continued making payments into the fund until he passed away on February 6, 1995.

Two weeks after the judge's death, Ms. Gallagher submitted an application for a survivor annuity to the District of Columbia Office of Personnel. Until the enactment of the Spouse Equity Act ("the Act"), former spouses of District employees were not eligible to receive retirement benefits. Under the Act, however, the District is now required to award retirement benefits to former spouses in compliance with "qualifying court orders," including divorce decrees.¹ Section 1-3003(b) of the Act states that "[t]he Mayor shall comply with any qualifying court order that is issued prior to the employee's retirement," while section 1-3003(c) provides that "[t]he Mayor shall comply with any qualifying court order that is issued after the employee's retirement ... to the extent it is consistent with any election previously executed at the time of retirement by the employee regarding that former spouse."

An exception to the general requirement of compliance with divorce decrees is found in section 1-3003(d), which states that the District "is not obligated to comply with qualifying court orders issued prior to March 16, 1989," the effective date of the Act. Citing this provision, the Director of the Office of Personnel denied Ms. Gallagher's application, claiming that she was not entitled to receive an annuity because she and Judge Norman had been divorced in December 1987. Ms. Gallagher filed an appeal with the Mayor's office. When the Mayor failed to act, she filed suit in the Superior Court against the District and the Director of the Office of Personnel, seeking a declaratory judgment establishing her entitlement to a survivor annuity and a mandatory injunction directing the District to award her an annuity.

In granting Ms. Gallagher's motion for summary judgment, the trial court interpreted section 1-3003(d) as authorizing, though not requiring, the Mayor to grant survivor benefits to former spouses in compliance with pre-Act decrees. Observing that "[t]he purpose of the Spouse Equity Act is to ensure that former spouses, not only widows, receive survivor benefits if that is what a judge intends," the court concluded that Judge Norman intended the annuity to be paid to Ms. Gallagher. Evidence of his intent was found in the language of the divorce decree and in the fact that the judge elected not to withdraw from the survivor annuity program after his divorce, even though he neither remarried nor had any dependent children.² The court also expressed the belief that if the annuity were not awarded to Ms. Gallagher, the District would receive a windfall: "The District should not be allowed to reap a benefit it does not deserve from Judge Norman's failure to realize ... the intricacies of the Spouse Equity Act and the difficulty his former wife might encounter after his death." The court then ordered the Mayor's office to grant Ms. Gallagher a survivor annuity because "[a]ny other result would be an injustice." From that order the District brings this appeal.

II

The outcome of this case turns on the meaning of the words "not obligated to" in section 1-3003(d) of the Spouse Equity Act.³ The District argues that this language prohibits the Mayor from complying with pre-Act divorce decrees. According to the District, section 1-3003(d) creates an explicit exception to the requirement of compliance with court orders, leaving the Act with no effect on orders issued before its effective date. Therefore, says the District, pre-Act decrees are governed by pre-Act law, which did not authorize the Mayor to award survivor benefits to former spouses. Ms. Gallagher, on the other hand, contends that the statute neither forbids nor requires such compliance, but rather leaves it to the Mayor's discretion. She maintains that both the plain meaning and the legislative history of section 1-3003(d) support the conclusion that the Mayor is authorized, albeit not "obligated," to effectuate pre-Act decrees. Therefore, she argues, the Act vests the Mayor with discretion to decide whether, and under what circumstances, to comply with pre-Act decrees.⁴

We review the trial court's construction of the Act de novo, but at the same time we give deference to the interpretation adopted by the agency that administers the Act. See, e.g., Smith v. District of Columbia Dep't of Employment Services, 548 A.2d 95, 97 (D.C.1988) (citing cases). As always, our first task when called upon to choose between two conflicting interpretations of a statutory provision is to examine the statute itself, so as to determine whether its language is ambiguous. "The primary and general rule of statutory construction is that the intent of the lawmaker is to be found in the language that he has used." United States v. Goldenberg, 168 U.S. 95, 102-103, 18 S.Ct. 3, 42 L.Ed. 394 (1897); accord, e.g., James Parreco & Son v. District of Columbia Rental Housing Comm'n, 567 A.2d 43, 46 (D.C.1989); Varela v. Hi-Lo Powered Stirrups, Inc. ., 424 A.2d 61, 64-65 (D.C. 1980) (en banc). Moreover, "[t]he words of the statute should be construed according to their ordinary sense and with the meaning commonly attributed to them." Davis v. United States, 397 A.2d 951, 956 (D.C.1979); accord, e.g., Peoples Drug Stores, Inc. v. District of Columbia, 470 A.2d 751, 753 (D.C.1983) (en banc).

A. The Plain Meaning of Section 1-3003(d)

The District argues that the words "not obligated to" should be construed to mean that the Mayor "may not" comply with pre-Act decrees, while Ms. Gallagher contends that those words mean simply that the Mayor is "not required to" comply with such decrees, though he "may" do so in his discretion. At first glance, Ms. Gallagher's interpretation seems considerably closer to the plain meaning of the statutory language than does the District's.⁵

Ms. Gallagher also maintains that if the Council of the District of Columbia had intended the statute to mean that the Mayor "may not" comply with pre-Act decrees, it could have used language to that effect. Other parts of the Act clearly show that the Council know how to use mandatory (or prohibitory) language when it so desired. For example, the two subsections immediately preceding subsection (d) both use the word "shall" to indicate that compliance with divorce decrees in certain circumstances is mandatory. The Mayor retains no discretion when a decree comes within the ambit of one of those two subsections.⁶ If the Council had used the words "shall not" in subsection (d), it could have similarly eliminated any discretion that the Mayor might have with respect to pre-Act decrees. Alternatively, the Council could have used language similar to that found in section 1-3004(d), which states that "[o]nly former spouses whose marriages were dissolved after March 16, 1989, through divorce, annulment, or legal separation shall be eligible to enroll in the health benefit plans." The fact that sections 1-3003(d) and 1-3004(d) were simultaneously included in the Act adds weight to Ms. Gallagher's argument that the Council's failure to avail itself of either of these options for drafting section 1-3003(d) in mandatory terms was not accidental, but rather reflects an intent to give the Mayor some discretion with respect to awarding survivor...