pe2 housing v baker, No. 25-cv-5036 (Vt. Super. Ct. 2024)

Citation: pe2 housing v baker, No. 25-cv-5036 (Vt. Super. Ct. 2024)
Parent Document: pe2 housing v baker, No. 25-cv-5036 (Vt. Super. Ct. 2024)
Jurisdiction: Vermont (state)
Effective Date: 2024-11-01
Original Source: https://www.vermontjudiciary.org/media/20324 ↗

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rule does not … provide a license to substitute this Court’s policy
judgments for those of the Legislature. As the leading authority on
statutory construction has cautioned, “the absurd results doctrine should
be used sparingly because it entails the risk that the judiciary will displace
legislative policy on the basis of speculation that the legislature could not
have meant what it unmistakably said.” 2A N. Singer, Statutes and
Statutory Construction § 46.07, at 199 (6th ed.2000). Thus, as one court
has cogently explained, the doctrine merely permits an otherwise
reasonable construction when a plain reading of the statute “would
produce a result demonstrably at odds with any conceivable legislative
purpose.” Taylor–Hurley v. Mingo County Bd. of Educ., 551 S.E.2d 702,
710 (W.Va. 2001); see also Colwell v. Allstate Ins. Co., 2003 VT 5, ¶ 11
(declining to reinterpret terms of statute under absurd results doctrine
where plain reading would not cause it to “fail in its essential purpose”).

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