00HOUSE BILL NO. 82                                                                                                     
01 "An Act relating to immunity for certain claims arising out of or in connection                                         
02 with the year 2000 date change; and providing for an effective date."                                                   
03 BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF ALASKA:                                                               
04    * Section 1.  FINDINGS AND INTENT.  (a)  The legislature finds that                                                
05   (1)  for decades, business computer programmers around the world generally                                            
06 saved expensive data storage space and data entry time by storing the year as two digits                                
07 instead of four; for example, 1900 would likely have been entered as 00;                                                
08   (2)  as a result of the storing practice, many mainframe and personal computers,                                      
09 software of all kinds, and other equipment that has a microprocessor interpret "00" as the year                         
10 1900 rather than the year 2000, and many of these systems may fail or cause errors for years                            
11 after 1999;                                                                                                             
12   (3)  the year 2000 date change creates an unparalleled challenge to private                                           
13 sector operations, and its effect is imminent, affecting some electronic computing devices well                         
14 before December 31, 1999;                                                                                               

01   (4)  exhaustive preventative efforts are presently underway to identify, test, and                                    
02 develop contingency plans for private sector operations, prioritizing first for mission-critical                        
03 systems, to provide uninterrupted services;                                                                             
04   (5)  even with the best efforts using the resources available to the private sector                                   
05 and with due diligence, the magnitude and the depth of systems affected by the year 2000 date                           
06 change throughout the private sector likely make it impossible to foresee and prevent all                               
07 failures due to the date change;                                                                                        
08   (6)  extensive civil actions based on year 2000 date change failures are                                              
09 anticipated in many areas of general commerce and industry; and                                                         
10   (7)  it is in the public interest that the private sector apply its resources to                                      
11 remediation efforts related to this important year 2000 date change rather than to the costs of                         
12 litigation.                                                                                                             
13  (b)  It is the intent of this Act                                                                                      
14   (1)  to recognize that it is a complex and difficult challenge to prepare private                                     
15 sector electronic devices for the year 2000;                                                                            
16   (2)  to acknowledge that due diligence by the private sector is being used to                                         
17 provide uninterrupted public services to the people of Alaska; and                                                      
18   (3)  to appreciate that even the due diligence described in (2) of this subsection                                    
19 may not suffice to prevent system failures.                                                                             
20    * Sec. 2.  AS 09.65 is amended by adding a new section to read:                                                    
21  Sec. 09.65.260.  Immunity for claims against persons engaged in business                                             
22 arising out of or in connection with the year 2000 date change.  (a)  Except as                                        
23 provided in (b) of this section, a civil action may not be brought against a person                                     
24 engaged in a business for damages caused directly or indirectly by a failure, in                                        
25 connection with the year 2000 date change, of an electronic computing device used in                                    
26 the business.                                                                                                           
27  (b)  The immunity described in (a) of this section does not apply to a business                                       
28 that has 11 or more employees if the person bringing the civil action shows by a                                        
29 preponderance of the evidence that the business failed to use due diligence or good                                     
30 faith efforts to avoid the damages claimed in the civil action.  In this subsection,                                    
31 "employees" means persons employed in each of 20 or more calendar weeks in the                                          

01 calendar year in which the act alleged to have caused the damages occurred.                                             
02  (c)  In this section,                                                                                                 
03   (1)  "business" means a for profit or a nonprofit entity engaged in a                                                
04 trade, service, profession, or activity with the goal of receiving a financial benefit in                               
05 exchange for the provision of services, goods, or other property;                                                       
06   (2)  "electronic computing device" includes any computer hardware or                                                 
07 software, a computer chip, an embedded chip, process control equipment, or other                                        
08 information system that is used to capture, store, manipulate, or process data;                                         
09   (3)  "year 2000 date change" includes processing date or time data from,                                             
10 into, and between the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries, and leap-year                                               
11 calculations; in this paragraph, "processing" includes calculating, comparing,                                          
12 sequencing, displaying, and storing.                                                                                    
13    * Sec. 3.  AS 09.65.260 is repealed January 1, 2006.                                                               
14    * Sec. 4.  APPLICABILITY.  This Act applies to a cause of action arising from any failure                          
15 described in AS 09.65.260, enacted by sec. 2 of this Act, that accrues on or after the effective                        
16 date of this Act but before January 1, 2006.                                                                            
17    * Sec. 5.  This Act takes effect immediately under AS 01.10.070(c).