§ 6237

Citation: § 6237
Parent Document: Shires Housing, Inc. v. Carolyn S. Brown and William A. Shepard, II, 172 A.3d 1215 (2017)
Jurisdiction: Vermont (state)
Effective Date: 2017-07-21
Original Source: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/4489424/shires-housing-inc-v-carolyn-s-... ↗

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           The trial court’s circular reasoning in Garden Homes Management Corp. ignores our
precedent. A court should look to the agency interpretation to determine the meaning of a statute
only if the court first determines that the statute is ambiguous. See In re Peel Gallery of Fine Arts,
149 Vt. 348, 351, 543 A.2d 695, 697 (1988) (“[W]e only need to look to the administrative
construction of the regulation if the meaning of the words used is in doubt.” (quotation omitted)).
An agency’s incorrect interpretation of a statute does not establish that the statute is ambiguous.
Delozier v. State, 160 Vt. 426, 434, 631 A.2d 228, 232 (1993) (stating that “to the extent that a
rule conflicts with the statute, the rule cannot be sustained”).
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           Moreover, the presence or absence of punctuation should not influence the court’s
construction where, as in this case, the intent of the Legislature may be determined from
consideration of the statute as a whole. Hill, 143 Vt. at 94, 463 A.2d at 234 (“[I]t is the general
rule that punctuation, per se, forms no part of a statute and will not govern its construction as
against the manifest intent of the [L]egislature ascertained from a consideration of the statute as a
whole.”).
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is illogical . . . .”). Here, placing a comma between “rent” and “occurring” would create a dangler

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