A Statutory Interpretation Anniversary

The principle that a court should not write into a statute a qualification that the Legislature chose not to include is now a basic tenet of statutory interpretation. But it was seemingly a somewhat new idea on this date in 1952, when the Supreme Court decided Craster v. Board of Commissioners of City of Newark, 9 N.J. 225 (1952).

As Justice Wachenfeld stated in his opinion for the Court, the question in the case was “whether, under the circumstances presented, a person who has qualified under each of two separate pension retirement plans has the privilege of electing the one most beneficial to him.” Plaintiff had been employed as a health officer of the City of Newark for over 36 years (from 1915-61) when, at age 79, he decided to retire. The City expected him to seek pension benefits from the Newark Board of Health Pension Association, but plaintiff expressed his intention to seek instead a larger pension, amounting to 50% of his salary as of his retirement date, made available under R.S. 43:12-1 et seq.

Plaintiff thus petitioned the Board of Commissioners for retirement under the statute. Several weeks later, the Board adopted a resolution finding that since “the Director of the said department in charge of the local health department has determined that by reason of advanced age [plaintiff] is found unfit for the performance of the duties of his aforesaid employment,” plaintiff would be retired on pension as a member of the Pension Association and would be denied a pension under the statute. (The Court would later discount any reliance on that after-the-fact action by the Board).

Plaintiff refused to accept checks sent to him in the amounts determined by the Pension Association. Instead, he sued to obtain retirement benefits under the statute.

The Law Division ruled in favor of plaintiff. The Supreme Court took up the case while it was pending in the Appellate Division, something that happened with some frequency in the early years of the Court.

The issue was how to apply two statutes. A 1913 statute, R.S. 43:18-1 et seq., authorized departmental pension funds, including the Pension Association fund that the City wanted to apply to plaintiff. R.S. 43:12-1 et seq., first enacted in 1923, permitted plaintiff to claim a pension of 50% of his salary at the time of retirement. Plaintiff had joined the Pension Association, but that was before the 1923 statute was adopted, so that “did not and could not
constitute an election between two then existing alternative plans,” Justice Wachenfeld said.

The ultimate question thus was whether the Legislature intended that eligibility under the 1913 statute barred a claim for benefits under the 1923 law. “No such intention is manifested in the wording of either statute.” But in establishing the qualifications for persons who could retire under the plan established by the 1923 statute, the Legislature “did not expressly or by inference exclude those who were or might in the future become eligible under the earlier statute. The court should not write in an additional qualification which the Legislature pointedly omitted in drafting its own enactment.”

The Court did not cite or quote any prior authority that supported that final sentence. That did not necessarily mean that that principle was not already the law, but the absence of any reference to authority has made Craster a leading authority for the idea that courts cannot add qualifications that the Legislature did not include in a statute that it adopted. Craster continues to be cited for that principle, including as recently as last week, in State v. Lopez-Carrera, ___ N.J. ___, ___, 2021 N.J. LEXIS 282, at *64 (March 30, 2021).