NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal
correction before publication in the Pacific Reporter. Readers are
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IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF THE STATE OF ALASKA
WILFRED ANOWLIC, )
) Court of Appeals No. A-6677
Petitioner, ) Trial Court No. 2NO-00-0633274 TT
)
v. ) O P I N I O N
)
CITY OF NOME, )
)
Respondent. ) [No. 1555 - November 7, 1997]
______________________________)
Petition for Hearing from the Superior Court,
Second Judicial District, Nome, Ben Esch, Judge.
Appearances: Wilfred Anowlic, Nome, pro se.
No appearance for Respondent.
Before: Coats, Chief Judge, and Mannheimer and
Stewart, Judges.
MANNHEIMER, Judge.
Wilfred Anowlic was convicted in the district court for
making an improper left turn. He appealed his conviction to the
superior court; that court affirmed his conviction. He now
petitions this court to review the superior court's decision. We
grant the petition for hearing and reverse Anowlic's conviction.
From the pleadings and from the superior court's written
decision, it appears that Anowlic was driving within his lane of
travel and was getting ready to make a left turn at an intersection
when a snowmachiner attempted to pass him on the left; the result
was a collision in which the snowmachine struck the front driver's
side of Anowlic's vehicle. Anowlic was cited under 13 AAC
02.200(b)(1) for making an improper left turn.
The regulation in question, 13 AAC 02.200, governs the
making of both right and left turns. In pertinent part, the
regulation reads:
13 AAC 02.200. REQUIRED POSITION AND
METHOD OF TURNING.
(a) Right Turns. Except as provided
in (c) of this section, both the approach for
a right turn, and a right turn, must be made as
close as practicable to the right-hand curb or edge of the roadway.
(b) Left Turns.
(1) The driver of a vehicle intending
to turn left shall approach and make the turn from the extreme
left-hand lane lawfully available to traffic moving in the direction
of travel of the vehicle. Unless conditions prevail which
necessitate other action to assure safety, a vehicle turning to the
left must proceed into the extreme left-hand lane lawfully available
to traffic moving in the same direction as the vehicle on the
roadway being entered.
At Anowlic's trial, the district court found that Anowlic had
violated subsection (b)(1) of this regulation because Anowlic was
not driving his vehicle as close as practicable to the left edge of
his lane when he made the left turn. The district court ruled that,
when subsection (b)(1) requires a driver to make a left turn "from
the extreme left-hand lane lawfully available to [the driver]", this
language implicitly also requires the driver to position his or her
vehicle as close as possible to the left curb or edge of that lane
analogous to the rule for right turns specified in subsection (a)
of the regulation. The district court ruled that Anowlic had
violated this requirement because Anowlic's vehicle was far enough
from the left edge of his lane to allow the snowmachiner to drive
past him on the left: according to Anowlic's petition, the judge
concluded that "there's not supposed to be [enough] room [for] that
to happen".
Anowlic appealed to the superior court, arguing that the
district court had committed legal error when it read a new
requirement into subsection (b)(1) the requirement that a driver
making a left turn position his or her vehicle not just in the left-
most lane, but also as close as possible to the left edge of the
left-most lane. The superior court rejected Anowlic's argument and
affirmed the district court's interpretation of the regulation:
[T]his court cannot believe that the Department
[of Public Safety], in enacting regulations covering turns, intended
that right turns would be made from the right-hand portion of a
vehicle's lane of travel [but that] left turns could be
indiscriminately instituted from wherever [a driver chose] between
the center [of the lane] and the edge of the roadway[.] ... Reason
and common sense mandate that turns be instituted from the portion
of the roadway [closest to] the ultimate direction of travel,
whether it is right or left.
With due respect to the superior court, we disagree.
According to the historical note that accompanies 13 AAC
02.200, this regulation has been in force since before statehood
(that is, since at least 1959). During the intervening four
decades, this regulation has required drivers making right turns to
position their vehicles "as close as practicable to the right-hand
curb or edge of the roadway", but the regulation has not imposed an
analogous obligation on drivers making left turns. This history
indicates that the Department of Public Safety did not intend to
require left turns to be made from the extreme left edge of the
lane.
Whatever the reason (or lack of reason) for the different
rules governing right and left turns, the fact remains that 13 AAC
02.200 does specify different rules for these two types of turns.
Courts must not interpret statutes and regulations at variance with
their wording unless it is apparent that the legislature's or
agency's wording fails to accurately embody the intent of the
statute or regulation. Under Alaska's "sliding scale" approach to
statutory interpretation, the plainer the language of the statute,
the more convincing the evidence of contrary legislative intent must
be. O.R. v. Dept. of Health & Social Services, 932 P.2d 1303, 1310-
11 (Alaska 1997); State v. Alex, 646 P.2d 203, 208 n.4 (Alaska
1982). The regulation at issue in this case plainly specifies
different rules for right and left turns, there is no legislative
history to indicate a different legislative intent, and this
difference in the treatment of right and left turns is not facially
absurd or nonsensical.
For these reasons, we hold that 13 AAC 02.200(b)(1) does
not require a driver making a left turn to position his or her
vehicle at the extreme left edge of the lane. The district court
convicted Anowlic solely on the basis that he had violated this
purported requirement, and the superior court affirmed Anowlic's
conviction because it adopted the district court's erroneous
construction of the regulation. We therefore REVERSE the decision
of the superior court, and we direct the superior court to enter an
order reversing Anowlic's conviction.
