Analysis: Review of Taskett v. King Broad Rule

When a Washington appellate decision applies a rule announced in that decision retroactively to the parties in that case, the rule will also be applied to all litigants not barred by a procedural rule. Id., at 80. "To apply an appellate decision ‘retroactively’ means to apply its holding to causes of action which arose prior to the announcement of the decision." Id., at 71 (emphasis added).

"[T]here is no balancing the equities to determine whether we should now apply rules which were applied retroactively" in the previous decisions. Id., at 80. Litigants are not to be distinguished for choice-of-law purposes on the particular equities of their claims to prospectivity: whether they actually relied on the old rule and how they would suffer from retroactive application of the new. It is simply in the nature of precedent, as a necessary component of any system that aspires to fairness and equality, that the substantive law will not shift and spring on such a basis.

Id., at 80. (quoting Beam Distilling, 501 U.S. at 543). Consequently, the Robinson court upheld retroactivity as sound and abolished the selective prospectivity analysis in the application of state appellate decisions. Id. Two options are available to a court when adopting a new rule: pure prospective application and retroactive application. Applying the new rule in the case before it necessarily invokes retroactivity.