- 55 - provision explicitly dictates the particular conduct and the timing thereof to which the amendments “shall apply”. According to the express text, receipt of payments after the August 20, 1996, date of enactment falls within the intended scope of the post-SBJPA section 104, unless the explicit exception for a prior binding agreement, court decree, or mediation award is applicable. Here, a final, written, and binding settlement agreement was not entered into until 1996. Petitioner’s situation therefore fails to satisfy the requisites for relief under SBJPA section 1605(d)(2). In that event, SBJPA section 1605(d)(1) explicitly and unambiguously prescribes the temporal reach of the section 104 amendments to the situation at hand. We conclude that Landgraf v. USI Film Prods., supra, would pose no barrier here to application of post-SBJPA section 104. Moreover, less than 2 months after issuing its decision in Landgraf, the Supreme Court decided United States v. Carlton, 512 U.S. 26 (1994). The issue in United States v. Carlton, supra at 27, was the propriety of retroactive application of an amendment to a Federal estate tax statute. In that context, the Supreme Court explained as follows: This Court repeatedly has upheld retroactive tax legislation against a due process challenge. Some of its decisions have stated that the validity of a retroactive tax provision under the Due Process Clause depends upon whether retroactive application is so harsh and oppressive as to transgress the constitutional limitation. The harsh and oppressivePage: Previous 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 Next
Last modified: May 25, 2011