Iowa Dept. of Transp. v. Iowa Dist. Court for Bremer County

• Decision Date: 19 July 1995
• Docket Number: No. 94-477,94-477
• Citation: 534 N.W.2d 457
• Parties: IOWA DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION, Plaintiff, v. IOWA DISTRICT COURT FOR BREMER COUNTY, Defendant.
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

Page 457

534 N.W.2d 457

IOWA DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION, Plaintiff, v. IOWA DISTRICT COURT FOR BREMER COUNTY, Defendant.

No. 94-477.

Supreme Court of Iowa.

July 19, 1995.

Thomas J. Miller, Atty. Gen., David A. Ferree, Sp. Asst. Atty. Gen., and Mark Hunacek, Asst. Atty. Gen., for plaintiff.

No appearance for defendant.

Considered en banc.

TERNUS, Justice.

Does a district court have authority in a criminal case to enter an order that in effect prohibits the revocation of the defendant's driver's license by the Iowa Department of Transportation (DOT)? We think it does not. Therefore, we sustain the DOT's petition for writ of certiorari challenging the legality of the district court's order doing so here.

I. Background Facts and Proceedings.

On May 22, 1993, Garry Lee Schumacher was stopped by a police officer for speeding. Schumacher dropped a marijuana pipe on the floor of the patrol car. A subsequent search of his vehicle revealed a plastic bag of marijuana. Schumacher was charged with operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated (OWI) and possession of a controlled substance. See Iowa Code §§ 321J.2, 124.401(3) (1993). On August 27, 1993, Schumacher pled guilty to the possession charge. The court dismissed the OWI charge.

Between the time that Schumacher committed the offense and the time he was convicted, a new law requiring the DOT to revoke the driver's license of any drug offender became effective. See 1993 Iowa Acts ch. 16, § 4. This law, codified at Iowa Code section 321.209(8) (1995), states:

Mandatory revocation. The department shall upon twenty days' notice and without preliminary hearing revoke the license or operating privilege of an operator upon receiving a record of the operator's conviction for any of the following offenses, when such conviction has become final:

....

8. A controlled substance offense under section 124.401....

The DOT sought to apply this new law to Schumacher. Upon learning of Schumacher's conviction for possession of a controlled substance, the DOT notified him that his license was revoked pursuant to section 321.209(8).

Schumacher then filed an application for a nunc pro tunc order in his criminal case. He asked that the district court enter an order that section 321.209(8) did not apply to him because his drug offense was committed before the effective date of the statute. The county attorney consented to the entry of such an order. Six months after Schumacher's conviction, the district court amended its judgment and sentence by adding a statement that the law providing for revocation of drivers' licenses for drug offenses did not apply to Schumacher.

The DOT filed a petition for writ of certiorari challenging the district court's jurisdiction to enter the nunc pro tunc order. Schumacher resisted on behalf of the district court arguing the district court had a duty to consider and decide the applicability of section 321.209(8) in setting an appropriate sentence. He also asserted that the court merely gave effect to the plea agreement between the county attorney and Schumacher which included an understanding that section 321.209(8) would not apply to Schumacher. We find these arguments unpersuasive and hold that the district court had no authority to decide whether section 321.209(8) applied to Schumacher.

II. Scope of Review.

Our review of the district court's action is to correct errors of law. Backstrom v. Iowa Dist. Ct. for Jones County, 508 N.W.2d 705, 707 (Iowa 1993), cert. denied, 511 U.S. 1042, 114 S.Ct. 1566, 128 L.Ed.2d 211 (1994); State v. Iowa Dist. Ct. for Clayton County, 419 N.W.2d 398, 399 (Iowa 1988). We will sustain a writ of certiorari where the district court acted beyond its authority or jurisdiction. Iowa Dep't of Transp. v. Iowa Dist. Ct. for Poweshiek County, 530 N.W.2d 725, 726 (Iowa 1995); Backstrom, 508 N.W.2d at 707.

III. Authority of District Court.

The nunc pro tunc proceeding in this criminal case was in essence a request for a declaratory ruling. Schumacher asked the district court to rule that section 321.209 did not apply to him. We have held that when a party seeks a declaratory judgment on a matter "entrusted exclusively in the first instance to an administrative agency," the court must refuse to issue a ruling unless the action "is indistinguishable in substance from a petition for judicial review and all of the jurisdictional prerequisites for judicial review of agency action" have been met. City of Des Moines v. Des Moines Police Bargaining Unit Ass'n, 360 N.W.2d 729, 730 (Iowa 1985). Declaratory relief is not appropriate "when there is a complete remedy otherwise provided by law that is intended to be exclusive." Id. at 731. We think an exclusive administrative remedy exists for the declaratory relief sought here.

Section 321.209 expressly confers on the DOT the duty to revoke a driver's license when that driver has been convicted of a drug offense. Iowa Code §§ 321.209 ("The department shall ... revoke the license ..." (emphasis added)), 4.1(30)(a) ("The word 'shall ' imposes a duty.") (1993). The DOT's action in revoking a driver's license is agency action within the meaning of Iowa Code section 17A.2(2). Tindal v. Norman, 427 N.W.2d 871, 873 (Iowa 1988) (agency's performance of a statutory duty is "agency action" as defined in section 17A.2(2)). Any person who is adversely affected by agency action may seek judicial review of the agency decision. Iowa Code § 17A.19(1) (1993). Most important, the judicial review provisions of chapter 17A are exclusive. Id.; Hollinrake v. Monroe County, 433 N.W.2d 696, 699 (Iowa 1988) (exclusivity of judicial review provision applies to agency's action in carrying out its statutory duty).

Clearly, Schumacher had an adequate administrative remedy to contest the DOT's revocation of his driver's license. Under chapter 17A, he could seek judicial review of the DOT's decision. Because this remedy is exclusive, the district court had no authority to issue a declaratory ruling unless Schumacher's application for nunc pro tunc order met the procedural prerequisites for judicial review under Iowa Code section 17A.19.

We conclude that Schumacher's application did not meet the statutory prerequisites for judicial review. The primary deficiency in the application is that it did not name the DOT as the respondent as required by Iowa Code section 17A.19(4) (1993) ("The petition for review shall name the agency as respondent...."). Although we have found substantial compliance with this requirement where the agency was simply misnamed, Frost v. S.S. Kresge Co., 299 N.W.2d 646, 648 (Iowa 1980), and where a related department and the executive officer of the agency were named rather than the agency, Buchholtz v. Iowa Department of Public Instruction, 315 N.W.2d 789, 792-93 (Iowa 1982), we cannot find substantial compliance here. Only the parties to the criminal case were named in the caption of Schumacher's application. No employee of the DOT or a related entity was named as a respondent so as to alert the DOT that the application sought relief from agency action. To find substantial compliance here would effectively nullify the requirement that the agency be named as a respondent. Therefore, we hold that Schumacher did not substantially comply with section 17A.19(4). ¹

Without the authority obtained in judicial review proceedings, the district court here was without power to consider Schumacher's application for nunc pro tunc order. This conclusion is similar to our holding in Iowa Department of Transportation v. Iowa District Court for Buchanan County, 504 N.W.2d 897 (Iowa 1993). In that case, the district court in a criminal proceeding directed the DOT to remove from the defendant's driving record a 1982 conviction for operating while intoxicated. Iowa Dist. Ct. for Buchanan County, 504 N.W.2d at 897. The county attorney did not object to the court's order, entered long after the criminal conviction became final. Id. The DOT brought a certiorari action challenging the district court's jurisdiction to enter the order. Id. at 897-98. We concluded that the district court exceeded its authority in ordering the DOT to remove the defendant's conviction from his driving record because there was no statute that gave the district court in a criminal case the power to do so. Id. at 898.

The same reasoning applies here. There is no statute that gives the district court in a criminal proceeding the authority to decide whether a license revocation under chapter 321 is appropriate. The district court here acted illegally in doing so. Mandile v. State, 547 So.2d 1062, 1062 (Fla.Dist.Ct.App.1989) (trial court lacked authority in criminal case to suspend defendant's driver's license under mandatory revocation statute similar to section 321.209; appellate court concluded that only the department of highway safety and motor vehicles has that power); see Commonwealth v. Bassion, 568 A.2d 1316, 1320 (Pa.Super.Ct.1990) (court in criminal case has no authority to enter an order dealing with license suspension proceedings).

IV. Effect of Plea Agreement.

Schumacher argued in his resistance to the petition for writ of certiorari that the district court's nunc pro tunc order merely gave effect to the plea bargain to which the county attorney agreed. However, the actions of the county attorney do not change our conclusion that the district court had no authority to determine whether section 321.209 applied to Schumacher.

There are two ways to view the county attorney's agreement that section 321.209 did not apply here. In one sense, Schumacher may have viewed the county attorney's action as an authoritative decision on whether section 321.209 applies where the drug offense was committed before the effective date of the statute. On the other hand, the county attorney's action could be seen as an agreement to waive a license revocation, which the DOT could otherwise seek, in return for Schumacher's guilty plea....