Analysis: Does the Chevron Oil v. Huson case test apply?

Chevron Oil Co v. Huson, 404 U.S. 97, 106-07, 92 S. Ct. 349, 30 L. Ed. 2d 296 (1971) (internal citations and quotation omitted). This is the test Saberhagen invokes. However, the United States Supreme Court has long ago limited the use of the Chevron Oil analysis by rejecting selectively prospective application of new decisional law. James B. Beam Distilling Co. v. Georgia, 501 U.S. 529, 111 S. Ct. 2439, 115 L. Ed. 2d 481 (1991) (holding that it is error to refuse to apply a rule of federal law retroactively after the case announcing the rule has already done so, "principles of equality and stare decisis here prevailing over any claim based on a Chevron Oil analysis"). Beam Distilling, 501 U.S. at 540. Prior to Beam Distilling, courts had three choices in civil matters: pure prospectivity, selective prospectivity, and pure retroactivity.

The "purely prospective method of overruling" occurs when "a new rule is [not] applied . . . to the parties in the law-making decision . . . [t]he case is decided under the old law but becomes a vehicle for announcing the new, effective with respect to all conduct occurring after the date of that decision." Beam Distilling Co., 501 U.S. at 536. Selective prospectivity allowed retroactive application of a newly decided rule to some litigants but not others, based on the equities of the case. Beam Distilling, 501 U.S. at 540-43. Pure retroactive application requires that once a rule is applied to the parties before the court it is applied to all:

Once retroactive application is chosen for any assertedly new rule, it is chosen for all others who might seek its prospective application. The applicability of rules of law is not to be switched on and off according to individual hardship; allowing relitigation of choice-of-law issues would only compound the challenge to the stabilizing purpose of precedent posed in the first instance by the very development of "new" rules.

Beam Distilling, 501 U.S. at 543. Once rung, the bell is not unrung.