Title: EUGENE M. WHITE v. STATE OF WYOMING; AND WYOMING STATE HIGHWAY DEPARTMENT

State: wyoming

Issuer: Wyoming Supreme Court

Document:

EUGENE M. WHITE v. STATE OF WYOMING; AND WYOMING STATE HIGHWAY DEPARTMENT1989 WY 221784 P.2d 1313Case Number: 88-291Decided: 12/19/1989Supreme Court of Wyoming
EUGENE M. WHITE, 
APPELLANT (PLAINTIFF),

v.

STATE OF WYOMING; AND WYOMING 
STATE HIGHWAY DEPARTMENT, APPELLEES (DEFENDANTS).

Appeal from the District 
Court, LaramieCounty, Nicholas G. 
Kalokathis, J.

Terry Mackey and 
Robert W. Tiedeken (argued), of Terry W. Mackey, P.C., Cheyenne, for appellant.

George Santini, 
Cheyenne, for amicus curiae Wyoming Trial Lawyers 
Ass'n.

Kenneth G. Vines 
of Vines, Gusea & White, Cheyenne, for appellees. 

Before CARDINE, C.J., and THOMAS, URBIGKIT, MACY 
and GOLDEN, JJ.

CARDINE, Chief 
Justice.

[¶1.]     Appellant, Eugene 
White, brought an action to recover damages for personal injury against the 
Wyoming Highway Department. The district court granted the Highway Department's 
summary judgment motion, holding that appellant's cause of action for the 
negligent maintenance of a highway was barred by W.S. 1-39-120. Appellant now 
challenges the constitutionality of that statute.

[¶2.]     We affirm.

[¶3.]     The Highway Department 
resurfaced Highway 212 in Crook 
County, Wyoming and 
painted a fresh centerline on the road. However, it neglected to repaint the 
white edge line which its resurfacing operations had obliterated. Prior to 
October 7, 1986, Highway Department crews returned to Highway 212 and sprayed a 
tar-like sealant along the shoulder of the road. On the evening of October 7, 
1986, at approximately 10:00 p.m., appellant steered his tractor-trailer to the 
outside of the southbound lane to create more passing room for an approaching 
vehicle and, allegedly mistaking the dark colored sealant for pavement, ran off 
the road and jackknifed his truck. Appellant asserted that the Highway 
Department had been negligent in its maintenance of Highway 212 and in its 
operation of state-owned motor vehicles.

[¶4.]     The Highway Department 
moved to dismiss, arguing that the facts alleged would not support an action for 
negligent operation of a motor vehicle, and that an action for negligent 
maintenance of a highway was barred by W.S. 1-39-120. After converting that 
motion to one for summary judgment, and after hearing appellant's constitutional 
challenge to § 1-39-120 of the Wyoming Governmental Claims Act, the district 
court granted the Highway Department's motion. Appellant now reasserts his 
contention that the State's immunity to suit under § 1-39-120 is contrary to the 
due process and equal protection guaranties of the Wyoming 
Constitution.

[¶5.]     W.S. 1-39-120 
provides:

"(a) The liability 
imposed by W.S. 1-39-105 through 1-39-112 does not include liability for damages 
caused by:

"(i) A defect in the plan 
or design of any bridge, culvert, highway, roadway, street, alley, sidewalk or 
parking area;

"(ii) The failure to 
construct or reconstruct any bridge, culvert, highway, roadway, street, alley, 
sidewalk or parking area; or

"(iii) The maintenance, 
including maintenance to compensate for weather conditions, of any bridge, 
culvert, highway, roadway, street, alley, sidewalk or parking area."

[¶6.]     Appellant has not 
advanced a federal constitutional challenge to this statutory grant of immunity, 
presumably due to the limited review afforded such challenges by the decision of 
the United States Supreme Court in Martinez v. California, 444 U.S. 277, 100 S. Ct. 553, 62 L. Ed. 2d 481 (1980). Appellant contends that the Wyoming 
Constitution places greater constraints on our legislature's power to immunize 
state and local government from tort actions and, therefore, relies upon state 
constitutional prohibition.

[¶7.]     We have observed in 
this regard that the due process and equal protection guaranties of the federal 
Bill of Rights serve as a minimum standard for the protection of individual 
liberties and that the Wyoming Constitution may legitimately expand those 
safeguards. CheyenneAirport Board v. Rogers, 707 P.2d 717, 726 (Wyo. 1985); Nehring v. Russell, 582 P.2d 67, 77 
(Wyo. 1978). 
We have, in fact, recognized such increased protection in a number of cases. For 
example, the more particularized and specific language of our constitution has 
led to the recognition of a fundamental interest in education which is wholly 
absent in federal constitutional jurisprudence. Washakie County School District 
No. One v. Herschler, 606 P.2d 310, 332-33 (Wyo. 1980).

[¶8.]     This court has also 
spoken of certain specific and detailed rights, which would otherwise fall 
within the penumbra of federal equal protection guaranties, as if they had some 
constitutional stature independent of traditional equal protection analysis. See 
Phillips v. ABC Builders, Inc., 611 P.2d 821, 831 (Wyo. 1980) (statutory 
immunity from suit for builders and architects closes the courts to persons 
injured by the protected class, in violation of the specific equal protection 
right granted by Article 1, § 8 of the Wyoming Constitution). Much in the same 
vein, we have accorded special significance to the more particularized wording 
of our due process and equal protection provisions and have implicitly employed 
a more rigorous standard of scrutiny for statutes alleged to contravene those 
rights. Nehring, 582 P.2d  at 77-80 (constitutional guaranty of "uniform 
operation of laws" requires guest statute to be substantially related to 
legislature's announced purpose, despite constitutionality under deferential 
federal standard of equal protection).

[¶9.]     Effectively conceding 
the constitutionality of § 1-39-120 under federal due process and equal 
protection standards, appellant would have us find some substantive state 
constitutional protection of his right to sue the Highway Department. 
Furthermore, in reliance on Nehring, he would have us review § 1-39-120, 
allegedly in contravention of such constitutional protections, by a more 
stringent standard than traditional, "rational basis" scrutiny. We will do 
neither.

[¶10.]  The constitutional right to substantive 
due process and equal protection under the law operates as a general guaranty 
that no individual's entitlement to either property or liberty can be taken by 
the State unless such action is at least rationally related to a concern for the 
welfare of all its people. Certain entitlements, however, are so significant 
that we require a more compelling justification for the State's interference 
with those rights. That is the case with an individual's interests in privacy 
and the association with his family. It is also the case with respect to his 
right to be free from discriminatory classifications based on race, color, or 
national origin. Those entitlements are so significant that the State's 
interference with those rights must be necessary to the accomplishment of a 
compelling interest.

[¶11.]  Appellant does not contend that the 
Wyoming Constitution provides him with any unique protection of this magnitude. 
He does, however, contend that by specifically enumerating certain rights, which 
would otherwise be safeguarded by its more general due process and equal 
protection provisions, that document provides him with protection somehow beyond 
that afforded by normal due process and equal protection analysis. We cannot 
agree. In order to subject W.S. 1-39-120 to something more stringent than 
traditional "rational basis" scrutiny, we would have to find that the Wyoming 
Constitution either forbids such an enactment or grants appellant such a 
significant right as to demand a more penetrating intermediate level of 
scrutiny. As we will show in our following discussion of Article 1, § 8, the 
authority to immunize governmental entities from suit is not forbidden. To the 
contrary, it is, by the constitution, expressly granted to the legislature. Even 
if we were to adopt a three-tiered standard of scrutiny, an intermediate level 
of scrutiny would be inappropriate where, as in this case, the constitutional 
right granted to appellant was conditioned upon the reasonable exercise of 
legislative authority. None of the constitutional provisions cited by appellant 
warrant such scrutiny.

[¶12.]  This court has largely adopted the 
two-tiered scrutiny employed by the federal courts in analyzing substantive due 
process and equal protection challenges. That is, where a statute affects a 
fundamental interest or creates an inherently suspect classification, the court 
must strictly scrutinize that statute to determine if it is necessary to achieve 
a compelling state interest. However, if the statute only affects ordinary 
interests in the economic and social welfare area, the court need only determine 
that it is rationally related to a legitimate state objective. Troyer v. 
Department of Health and Social Services, Division of Vocational Rehabilitation, 
722 P.2d 158, 165 (Wyo. 1986); CheyenneAirport Board, 707 P.2d  at 727; WashakieCountySchool 
District, 606 P.2d  at 333.

[¶13.]  Appellant concedes that no fundamental 
interest or suspect classification is at issue here. Therefore, strict scrutiny 
is inappropriate and, were we to adhere to the two-tiered scrutiny analysis, 
W.S. 1-39-120 need only bear a reasonable relation to the legislature's 
legitimate interest in preserving the economic and social stability of the 
state. Such a standard is highly deferential to the constitutionality of the 
statute. That is, if any conceivable basis exists which will reasonably, 
although arguably, support the enactment, we will assume that the legislature 
has acted in a non-arbitrary and rational manner, and will hold the statute to 
be constitutional. Hoem v. State, 756 P.2d 780, 782-83 (Wyo. 1988); CheyenneAirport Board, 707 P.2d  at 727; Mountain Fuel Supply 
Co. v. Emerson, 578 P.2d 1351, 1355 (Wyo. 1978). In order to avoid the probable 
result of such deference, appellant urges that we adopt an intermediate level of 
scrutiny as advanced in Justice Thomas' specially concurring opinion in Hoem. 
However, appellant's reliance on that opinion is misguided.

ARTICLE 1, § 
8

[¶14.]  At issue in Hoem was the 
constitutionality of the Wyoming Medical Review Panel Act, which required the 
screening of prospective medical malpractice suits. The plaintiff asserted that 
such screening violated her right to equal protection by impeding her access to 
the courts, contrary to Article 1, § 8 of the Wyoming Constitution. Justice 
Thomas noted the similarity between this section and a provision of Kansas' constitution discussed in Farley v. Engelken, 241 
Kan. 663, 740 P.2d 1058, 74 A.L.R.4th 1 (1987). He agreed with the analysis of that court that 
statutory constraints on such a specific equal protection right demanded greater 
justification than deferential, "rational" scrutiny. Thus, he suggested that 
this court, in such an instance, no longer presume that the legislature acted 
rationally but that it conduct a more penetrating examination and determine 
whether the contested classification actually and substantially furthered the 
asserted legislative goals. Hoem, 756 P.2d  at 784-87 (Thomas, J., specially 
concurring, with whom Urbigkit, J., joins).

[¶15.]  Such heightened scrutiny is reminiscent 
of the analysis of this court in Nehring. As noted above, that case dealt with a 
challenge to Wyoming's guest statute. We determined that 
the language of our constitution's equal protection provision, requiring 
"uniform operation" of laws, demanded that the statute bear a substantial 
relationship to its asserted purpose. While Article 1, § 8 was never expressly 
mentioned in that decision, it should be noted that the only constitutional 
issue in the case was whether the guest statute denied citizens uniform access 
to the remedial powers of the courts. Nehring, 582 P.2d  at 78-79. Thus at 
bottom, both Nehring and Justice Thomas' concurrence in Hoem manifest the belief 
that our constitution provides a heightened equal protection guaranty of uniform 
access to judicial relief. We need not decide, however, whether that belief and 
the concomitant support for adoption of an intermediate level of scrutiny are 
presently shared by a majority of this court. The present case is clearly 
distinguishable from both prior decisions.

[¶16.]  We have held that the requirement of 
Article 1, § 34, that all general laws operate uniformly, provides for equal 
protection equivalent to that provided by the Fourteenth Amendment to the 
Constitution of the United 
States. WashakieCountySchool 
District, 606 P.2d  at 332. We have also noted that 
the prohibition against special laws, contained in Article 3, § 27, is a more 
specific equal protection guaranty which enlarges the protections of Article 1, 
§ 34. Phillips, 611 P.2d  at 826. Appellant urges, in effect, that we adopt a 
similar analysis regarding Article 1, § 8. That is, he asserts that, while the 
general guaranty of equal protection demands that the legislature establish only 
arguably reasonable classifications, these more specific protections require 
some greater justification before the legislature may enact a special law or 
impede the people's access to the courts. However, he neglects the limited 
nature of the right granted by Article 1, § 8.

[¶17.]  That section provides:

"All courts shall be open 
and every person for an injury done to person, reputation or property shall have 
justice administered without sale, denial or delay. Suits may be brought against the state in 
such manner and in such courts as the legislature may by law direct." 
(emphasis added)

[¶18.]  We have long held that the second 
sentence of that section grants the legislature the power to determine the 
extent to which the State and its subdivisions are subject to suit. Troyer, 722 
P.2d at 162-63; Worthington v. State, 598 P.2d 796, 800-04 (Wyo. 1979); Hjorth Royalty Co. v. 
Trustees of University of 
Wyoming, 30 Wyo. 309, 222 P. 9 
(1924). For us to hold otherwise would be tantamount to holding the constitution 
unconstitutional. It is noteworthy that the framers of the Wyoming Constitution 
did not include the grant of that power in Article 3 which generally sets out 
the powers, limitations on powers, and duties of the legislature. Rather, they 
chose to establish that power in the Declaration of Rights of Article 1. That 
power was established as a direct limitation on a right of the people, as 
declared in the first sentence of Article 1, § 8.

[¶19.]  Nehring and Hoem dealt with an 
individual's right to have access to the courts with respect to relief sought 
from another person. Appellant, however, seeks such access to bring suit against 
the State of Wyoming. Article 1, § 8 clearly gives no 
unconditional right to sue the State. Because the specific expansion of 
substantive due process and equal protection arguably granted by Article 1, § 8 
does not exist with respect to suits against the State, legislative decisions 
concerning the retention or abrogation of governmental immunity to suit are only 
subject to the reasonableness standard of Article 1, § 34. Thus, appellant 
cannot rely on the rationale of Nehring and the concurrence in Hoem to obtain a 
heightened level of scrutiny.

OTHER CONSTITUTIONAL 
PROVISIONS

[¶20.]  Other provisions of the Wyoming 
Constitution on which appellant relies similarly constrain legislative action 
only to the extent that it is unreasonable. None of those provisions warrants 
resort to an intermediate level of scrutiny to determine the legitimacy of W.S. 
1-39-120. Those provisions state, in pertinent part:

Article 1, § 
2:

"In their inherent right 
to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, all members of the human race are 
equal."

Section 3:

"Since equality in the 
enjoyment of natural and civil rights is only made sure through political 
equality, the laws of this state affecting the political rights and privileges 
of its citizens shall be without distinction of race, color, sex, or any 
circumstance or condition whatsoever other than individual incompetency, or 
unworthiness duly ascertained by a court of competent jurisdiction."

Section 6:

"No person shall be 
deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law."

Section 7:

"Absolute, arbitrary 
power over the lives, liberty and property of freemen exists nowhere in a 
republic, not even in the largest majority."

Section 34:

"All laws of a general 
nature shall have a uniform operation."

Article 3, § 
27:

"The legislature shall 
not pass local or special laws in any of the following enumerated cases, that is 
to say: * * * for limitation of civil actions; * * * granting to any 
corporation, association or individual * * * any special or exclusive privilege, 
immunity or franchise * * *. In all other cases where a general law can be made 
applicable no special law shall be enacted."

Article 10, § 4: 

"No law shall be enacted 
limiting the amount of damages to be recovered for causing the injury or death 
of any person."

[¶21.]  We have held that the personal and 
political rights secured by the equal protection provisions of Article 1, §§ 2 
and 3, are not absolute, and that those sections do not preclude the legislature 
from imposing reasonable restrictions on such rights in the public interest. 
Haskins v. State ex rel. Harrington, 516 P.2d 1171, 1173-74, 70 A.L.R.3d 1171 
(Wyo. 1973). 
Similarly, we have held that legislative restrictions on those rights satisfy 
our constitutional standard of substantive due process unless they are 
unreasonable and arbitrary. CheyenneAirport Board, 707 P.2d  at 726-27. Thus, a 
statute which would be deemed constitutional under the "reasonableness" standard 
of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution also complies with 
the requirements of Article 1, § 6. State v. Laude, 654 P.2d 1223, 1228 
(Wyo. 
1982).

[¶22.]  We reach the same result when analyzing 
such a statute according to the standard of Article 1, § 7, for much of the 
substantive content of § 6 is derived from the language of § 7. See generally 
State v. Langley, 53 Wyo. 332, 84 P.2d 767, 770-71 (1938) (the separate 
inclusion of both § 6 and § 7 in our constitution represented the framers' 
understanding that the concept of due process consisted not only of the 
historically accepted procedural element evident on the face of § 6, but also 
entailed restraints on the passage of substantive laws such that the majority 
could exercise its will against an individual only to the extent that such an 
exercise was reasonable and not arbitrary); Weaver v. Public Service Commission, 
40 Wyo. 462, 278 P. 542, 547-48 (1929) (Article 1, §§ 2 and 7 and the general 
nature of the police power provided in the content of Article 1, § 6, require 
legislative actions to be reasonable, to operate with equality, and to be in the 
service of the public's welfare).

[¶23.]  Appellant's reliance on Article 1, § 34 
and Article 3, § 27 is also unfounded. We have held that these complementary 
provisions do not proscribe reasonable classifications; that they only require a 
statute to operate in a similar manner upon all persons in the same 
circumstances. Meyer v. Kendig, 641 P.2d 1235, 1240 (Wyo. 1982); Mountain Fuel Supply, 578 P.2d  at 1356; May v. 
City of Laramie, 58 Wyo. 240, 131 P.2d 300, 
305-06 (1942). Furthermore, it is obvious that appellant's reliance on these 
provisions is nothing more than a restatement of his equal protection argument, 
for he does not argue that the contested statute constitutes a prohibited 
special law. He merely argues that, as a general law, it must operate uniformly. 
Therefore, our only concern under these provisions is whether any classification 
accomplished by the statute was reasonably related to a legitimate legislative 
goal. Id.

[¶24.]  Finally, appellant asserts that W.S. 
1-39-120, by denying his cause of action, amounts to a limitation on damages in 
contravention of Article 10, § 4 of the Wyoming Constitution. We expressly 
rejected this general argument in Meyer, 641 P.2d  at 1239. Additionally, 
speaking specifically of the Governmental Claims Act, we have held that "Art. 
10, § 4 may prevent the legislature from imposing arbitrary limits on damages, 
but it does not prevent limitations on the types of actions which may be brought 
against the State." Troyer, 722 P.2d  at 163. Thus, this provision is 
inapplicable to the present case.

[¶25.]  Appellant, therefore, has cited no 
provision of the Wyoming Constitution which provides him with protections 
independent of substantive due process and equal protection analysis. Neither 
has he established that he is entitled to anything more than traditional 
rational scrutiny of § 1-39-120.

RATIONAL RELATION TO 
LEGISLATIVE PURPOSE

[¶26.]  Although appellant expends much energy 
disputing the appropriate standard of review of this contested statute, he 
asserts that he must prevail, in any event, even upon the application of the 
deferential "reasonableness" standard of scrutiny. We disagree. Against his 
largely conclusory argument in this regard, the history of the Governmental 
Claims Act and the history of our legislature's response to the much ballyhooed 
"tort/insurance crisis," reveals a clearly reasonable effort to serve the public 
interest. That particular plaintiffs may occasionally be less well served as a 
result of these efforts, cannot be denied. However, neither can we deny that, in 
so doing, the legislature has also attempted to ensure the viability of an 
insurance system that funds most tort compensation and has attempted to ensure 
that the State's prospective liability would not jeopardize its ability to 
provide much needed public services.

[¶27.]  The history of the legislature's actions 
in the specific area of governmental immunity is marked by a continual dialogue 
with the decisions of this court. In Collins v. Memorial Hospital of Sheridan 
County, 521 P.2d 1339 (Wyo. 1974), we held that such immunity was 
waived to the extent that a governmental entity used public funds to insure 
itself against liability. Although we did not speak directly to the general 
issue of immunity, we noted that its application had fallen into wide and 
laudable disrepute and commented specifically upon the inequities of Wyoming's rather 
piecemeal approach to the problem. Id. at 1340-43. At the following legislative 
session, our holding in Collins was enacted into law by 1975 Wyo. Sess. Laws, 
ch. 197, § 1, accompanied both by a requirement that the state purchase 
liability insurance for all law enforcement officers and by a broad 
authorization for the purchase of liability insurance for health care providers. 
Id.; 1975 Wyo. Sess. Laws, ch. 16, § 1. Thus, the 
legislature left the question of immunity largely to the discretion of 
individual governmental entities, providing for the option of waiver by 
authorizing the purchase of insurance and selectively waiving state immunity by 
requiring specific activities to be covered by insurance.

[¶28.]  Such a treatment of the problem, however, 
fell under the criticism of Justice Rose's impassioned dicta in Jivelekas v. 
City of Worland, 546 P.2d 419, 425 (Wyo. 1976), calling for a broad abrogation 
of immunity for all governmental subdivisions. Admittedly, Collins left much to 
be desired. In retrospect, it was in fact a mere stopgap based on our trust that 
governmental entities would continue to insure against liability and on our 
trust that the legislature would take more comprehensive and satisfactory 
measures to resolve the problem.

[¶29.]  This court's disenchantment with the 
doctrine of governmental immunity, along with the pressures to judicially 
abrogate the doctrine, had been held in check largely by our deference to the 
legislature's proper role in determining such issues. Indeed, in Jivelekas 
Justice Raper clearly noted the legislature's obligation to fund both tort 
liability and the many services demanded by our citizens and cautioned that the 
legislature be given time to weigh its difficult economic choices and devise a 
uniform system for handling tort liability. Id. at 433-34 (Raper, J., concurring in part 
and dissenting in part). Unfortunately, circumstances arose that would no longer 
permit such complete deference.

[¶30.]  That is not to say that the criticisms in 
Jivelekas went unheeded. In 1977, the Forty-fourth Legislature enacted House 
Bill 186, which, like the present Governmental Claims Act, provided for a broad 
yet limited waiver of immunity to tort suits and articulated a policy of 
balancing the State's responsibility to tort victims against its many other 
fiscal responsibilities. That act, however, was defeated by gubernatorial veto. 
1977 Digest of House Journals 231-33. With the defeat of that act, all 
governmental entities retained immunity except to the extent, as per Collins, 
they had insured themselves against liability. We were then called upon to 
decide Oroz v. Board of County Commissioners of CarbonCounty, 575 P.2d 1155 (Wyo. 1978) and Worthington 
v. State, 598 P.2d 796 (Wyo. 1979). In both cases, a victim of alleged 
governmental negligence squarely challenged the immunity of an uninsured 
governmental entity.

[¶31.]  In Oroz, we abrogated the immunity of 
local governments to tort actions, grounding our authority to do so upon the 
determination that the immunity of such entities was a court created doctrine 
that we were freely empowered to amend or overrule. In Worthington, however, we 
declined to similarly abrogate the immunity of the State. We noted in that case 
that Article 1, § 8, of the Wyoming Constitution "left to the legislature to 
determine what areas and under what conditions it would consent to suit for 
damages suffered by an individual and under which a recovery might be had by an 
individual for the wrongs of the State." Worthington, 598 P.2d  at 803. Noting also the 
legislature's recent attempts to provide an orderly cure for the unfairness 
inherent in the immunity doctrine, we found it appropriate to defer to those 
efforts and refrain from interfering with the legislative prerogative. 
Id. at 
803-04.

[¶32.]  Those efforts, during the interim between 
Oroz and Worthington, culminated in the passage of a 
comprehensive Governmental Claims Act. The concerns which the legislature 
attempted to balance through that act are best expressed in W.S. 1-39-102, which 
states in part:

"The Wyoming legislature 
recognizes the inherently unfair and inequitable results which occur in the 
strict application of the doctrine of governmental immunity and is cognizant of 
the Wyoming Supreme Court decision of Oroz v. Board of County Commissioners 575 P.2d 1155 (1978). It is further recognized that the state and its political 
subdivisions as trustees of public revenues are constituted to serve the 
inhabitants of the state of Wyoming and furnish certain services not 
available through private parties and, in the case of the state, state revenues 
may only be expended upon legislative appropriation. This act is adopted by the 
legislature to balance the respective equities between persons injured by 
governmental actions and the taxpayers of the state of Wyoming whose revenues 
are utilized by governmental entities on behalf of those taxpayers."

In the service 
of this purpose, the act set out the limits of governmental liability and 
established claim procedures. However, it also required the State to purchase 
insurance to cover its liability, provided for periodic review of the State's 
claim history under that coverage, and required the State to conduct actuarial 
and risk management studies. 1979 Wyo. Sess. Laws, ch. 157, §§ 1, 7. 
Additionally, as a safeguard against unwarranted claims, the act from its 
inception has sharply restricted the ability of governmental entities to settle 
claims without an investigation and a determination that the claimant was 
entitled to relief. See W.S. 1-39-115 and its attendant history. Thus the act, 
in its waiver of immunity, has relied heavily on the maintenance of insurance 
and has sought to control the costs of that insurance both through the 
prevention of risks and the litigation of baseless claims.

[¶33.]  These management techniques, however, 
gradually became inadequate to the task of providing affordable insurance 
funding for the State's potential tort liabilities. By the time the Forty-eighth 
Legislative Session convened in 1986, the State had been impacted by the 
so-called "tort/insurance crisis," then sweeping this nation. Governor 
Herschler, in his address to both houses of the legislature, noted the inability 
of both government and the private sector to maintain affordable insurance 
coverage against potential tort liability. The governor urged the legislature to 
consider permanent measures which might make the extent of such liability more 
predictable and specifically called for a variety of interim actions which would 
address problems created by the Governmental Claims Act. Among such suggestions 
were the elimination of liability related to the construction and maintenance of 
highways and the creation of governmental self-insurance funds. 1986 Digest of 
House Journals 7-10. The legislature answered this call on a variety of 
fronts.

[¶34.]  In addition to measures directed 
specifically towards governmental tort liability, the Forty-eighth Legislature 
enacted a number of "tort reforms" designed to expedite litigation and, by 
either limiting liability exposure or making it more predictable, make certain 
risks more insurable. Among the reforms enacted into the 1986 Wyoming Session 
Laws are the following: ch. 4 (providing for sanctions against the submittal of 
baseless pleadings); ch. 5 (providing for the dismissal of actions on the basis 
of a defendant's affidavit of non-involvement, providing that such an affidavit 
may be filed in lieu of an answer, and permitting a plaintiff limited discovery 
for the purpose of rebutting that affidavit); ch. 24 (repealing joint and 
several liability); ch. 45 (clarifying the burden of proof and standard of care 
to be established in medical malpractice cases); ch. 48 (limiting liability for 
amateur rodeos sponsored by public schools and non-profit organizations); ch. 92 
(requiring the screening of medical malpractice claims prior to filing suit); 
and ch. 100 (eliminating liability for the executive decisions of governmental 
agencies and non-profit corporations).

[¶35.]  More specifically directed at the problem 
of governmental liability, 1986 Wyoming Session Laws, chs. 74 and 81, 
established a program of self-insurance for the State and made participation in 
that program available to local governmental entities. The intent of the 
legislature with respect to that program is articulated in W.S. 1-41-101, which 
provides:

"The legislature 
recognizes that certain liability insurance policies of the state of Wyoming 
have been cancelled, that no responsive bids have been received and that there 
exists a need to develop a method to handle claims brought under the Wyoming 
Governmental Claims Act and arising under federal law. The legislature declares 
that the appropriate remedy is to create an account for self-insurance of the 
state and to provide for a loss prevention program. It is the intent of the 
legislature that the self-insurance account shall be operated on an actuarially 
sound basis. The legislature further declares that its intent is that the 
availability of commercial liability insurance coverage shall be explored 
considering the possibility that the insurance industry can provide coverage in 
the future that is less expensive than the costs of providing a loss prevention 
program and paying for claims out of the self-insurance account."

Consistent with 
the expressed intent that this fund function merely as an interim alternative to 
the purchase of commercial insurance, the legislature provided for the automatic 
repeal of the self-insurance program, effective June 30, 1988. However, the 
continued unavailability of insurance required the extension of the program 
until June 30, 1990. 1988 Wyo. Sess. Laws, chs. 19, 63.

[¶36.]  Finally, and most pertinent to the 
present case, the legislature also responded to Governor Herschler's address by 
eliminating governmental liability for defects in the design, construction and 
maintenance of streets and highways. 1986 Wyo. Sess. Laws, ch. 89. We note in 
this regard the governor's opinion in that address that such a reinstatement of 
immunity would not preclude the legislature from later waiving immunity for 
specific claimants whose injuries were allegedly caused by the negligent 
maintenance of highways. It is not certain that this opinion played any part in 
the legislature's final decision. It certainly is not relevant to any issue 
raised or to our decision in this case.

[¶37.]  We do observe, however, that the contents 
of the governor's address, when read in conjunction with the contents of this 
appellate record and considering the specific areas of tort law which the 
legislature considered ripe for reform, amply reveal the reasonableness in the 
legislature's reinstatement of immunity with respect to highway maintenance. The 
record reveals, concerning the period between the passage of the Governmental 
Claims Act and the 1986 legislative session, the following noteworthy 
items:

1. The majority of claims 
filed against the State (75%-90%) related to the design, construction and 
maintenance of the State's highway system.

2. In addition to 
purchasing insurance, the legislature appropriated $750,000 to the Attorney 
General's office to pay claims under the Claims Act, one-third of which was set 
aside to cover litigation fees and expenses.

3. During that period, 
and as of July 21, 1988, the Highway Department defended eighty-six lawsuits, 
claiming a total of $100,333,158.22 in damages. Seventy of those suits resulted 
in awards or settlements totalling $1,654,485.22. Sixteen of the suits were 
still pending, exposing the State to a potential liability of 
$9,398,203.67.

4. During that same 
period, the Highway Department handled an additional thirty-five claims for a 
total of $7,864,051.80 that did not result in a lawsuit. Two were pending, in a 
total amount of $23,210.92. The other claims resulted in a total payment of 
$10,000.

5. Of the one hundred 
three claims that had been finalized, fifty-eight claimants received 
nothing.

[¶38.]  While the sheer expanse of our state's 
highway system might to some extent account for the disproportionate amount of 
claims relating to this one area of governmental activity, the fact that the 
State has avoided liability on so many of those claims suggests a different 
conclusion. When one considers that joint and several liability still existed 
during this period and that under this doctrine the State, though one percent 
negligent, might be required to pay a total judgment, we think it not 
unreasonable for the legislature to assume that, in many of these cases, the 
State had merely become a convenient deep pocket.

[¶39.]  We are all too aware that a highway 
accident may cause damages costing far in excess of what the injured and their 
insurance policies are capable of paying. Under the original provisions of the 
Governmental Claims Act, however, an often faultless Highway Department was 
hauled into court and held answerable for all of the claimed loss. While the 
record shows that the State was able to avoid liability in a great number of 
instances, the costs to the taxpayer of such vulnerability cannot be tallied 
merely by reference to the cases successfully defended by the State. The 
monetary costs of litigation and the related costs of diverting the human 
resources of government from otherwise beneficial endeavors must also be 
calculated. It is not unreasonable for the legislature to determine that these 
costs outweigh the benefits of continued liability for highway maintenance. We 
cannot say it is unreasonable for the legislature to decide that the most 
efficient use of public monies requires assertion of immunity in these 
circumstances.

[¶40.]  We hold, therefore, that the passage of 
W.S. 1-39-120, providing immunity from suit for design, construction and 
maintenance of highways, bears a reasonable relation to the legitimate 
legislative objectives of conserving public funds and preserving a fair and 
viable system of compensating persons injured by governmental actions. There is 
no constitutional infirmity in that statute.

[¶41.]  Affirmed.

URBIGKIT, Justice, 
dissenting.

[¶42.]  The people of Wyoming should understand 
what this decision could someday give them. If the day comes when a school bus 
loaded with young Wyoming students is hit by a careless snowplow operator and 
many of those children are killed or injured so badly that they will need 
medical attention for the rest of their lives, the state may be permitted to 
deny any remedy to those injured.1 I would refuse to permit the 
injured students or their parents to be locked out at the courthouse 
door.

[¶43.]  Abraham Lincoln, fighting more battles 
than simply slavery and secession, said:

"It is as much the duty 
of Government to render prompt justice against itself in favor of citizens as it 
is to administer the same between private individuals. The investigation and 
adjudication of claims in their nature belong to the judicial department."[2]

 

[¶44.]  This majority claims the governmental 
immunity statute recently passed by the Wyoming legislature does not violate the 
Wyoming citizen's rights to equal protection, due process or access to the 
courts. For the reasons which follow and form the basis of my dissent, I believe 
the majority is gravely mistaken.

I. 
INTRODUCTION

[¶45.]  The majority speaks of an "individual's 
entitlement" to property or liberty when locating the functions assigned to our 
constitutional assurances to due process and equal protection of the laws. That 
language alone telegraphs the outcome before it arrives at the conclusion. When 
rights to equal protection of the laws, due process, access to courts and the 
prohibition against special legislation, designed to foreclose any decision by a 
jury to set the remedy, are recharacterized as "entitlements," the result is 
automatic. That the government can do no legal wrong appears to be common sense 
under the old jurisprudential notion that one simply has no right to 
"entitlements."

[¶46.]  I see the interest to liberty or property 
as a right, not some "entitlement" bestowed upon the citizen by the government. 
Many have argued throughout history that government was instituted to secure the 
rights of the people.3 I am among those who agree. In 
doing so, I understand such rights to be prior to government, not gifts from 
government, and therefore not properly characterized as 
"entitlements."

[¶47.]  The State of Wyoming was not in the 
vanguard in progression to answer the anachronism of sovereign and governmental 
immunity;4 but with its current legislation 
buttressed by this decision, Wyoming achieves a position at the point of near 
solitary regression. Compare Jivelekas v. City of Worland, 546 P.2d 419 (Wyo. 
1976); Davis v. Board of County Com'rs of Carbon County, 495 P.2d 21 (1972), 
overruled sub nom. Collins v. Memorial Hospital of Sheridan County, 521 P.2d 1339 (Wyo. 1974); Maffei v. Incorporated Town of Kemmerer, 80 Wyo. 33, 338 P.2d 808, reh'g denied 80 Wyo. 33, 340 P.2d 759 (1959), overruled sub nom. Collins v. 
Memorial Hospital of Sheridan County, 521 P.2d 1339 (Wyo. 1974); Price v. State 
Highway Commission, 62 Wyo. 385, 167 P.2d 309 (1946); and Evans v. Board of 
County Com'rs of El Paso County, 174 Colo. 97, 482 P.2d 968 (1971); with State 
v. Stovall, 648 P.2d 543 (Wyo. 1982); Oroz v. Board of County Com'rs of Carbon 
County, 575 P.2d 1155 (Wyo. 1978); and South Cheyenne Water and Sewer Dist. v. 
Stundon, 483 P.2d 240 (Wyo. 1971).

[¶48.]  In broad thesis for dissent as the 
majority directly displaces the progression and optimism of Stovall, 648 P.2d 543; Oroz, 575 P.2d 1155; and Jivelekas, 546 P.2d 419, I dissent for three 
reasons: (1) governmental and sovereign immunity in broad categories are 
anachronisms and particularly so where as now either first created or recently 
restored and cannot fit within the basic principles of constitutional 
government; (2) the wrong standard of review is used to permit the legislature 
to deny a remedy for wrongful injury or death; and (3) 1986 Wyo. Sess. Laws ch. 
89 (Chapter 89) should fail even under the loosest standard of review - the 
rational relationship test. Its invidiously discriminatory classifications, 
designed to withhold remedies for injury caused by government, cannot be 
justified constitutionally.

[¶49.]  The issue in this case is simple. Should 
the victims bear the financial burdens of governmental wrongdoing or should the 
government? Economic convenience is no constitutional license to deny a remedy 
or justice to the injured.

[¶50.]  More fundamental to jurisprudence than 
governmental immunity is the notion that the law suffers no wrong without a 
remedy. It cannot be countenanced philosophically or constitutionally that the 
broken body or destroyed life is no legal wrong when caused by a governmental 
employee. I dissent because Chapter 89 and approving majority opinion: (1) 
violates basic principles of American justice; (2) ignores and offends Wyoming's 
constitutional guarantees of rights for the wrongfully injured; and (3) retreats 
to an outdated and rejected standard for constitutional validation of 
fundamental rights for body and life. The construction of Chapter 89 given by 
the majority makes this Wyoming judiciary the protector of property against an 
involuntary taking, but not the protector of a person's body or life against a 
negligent maiming or killing. This to me is incredible.

[¶51.]  The utter lack of justification for 
immunity was articulately expressed by Justice Robert R. Rose, Jr. in Jivelekas, 
546 P.2d  at 429-31 and again in special concurrence in Oroz, 575 P.2d at 
1161:

Furthermore, as explained 
in Jivelekas, supra, 429-431, Article 1, § 8, Wyoming Constitution, should not 
prevent such a total abrogation in light of the thrust of that provision and the 
decisions of this court which have touched and concerned its applicability. 
Notwithstanding the failure of the majority to speak to the abrogation of the 
State's immunity in this decision, I am confident that, even if the opinion's 
scope is not broad enough to include the State, nevertheless, the curtain is 
slowly but surely falling on this illogical and inexcusable chapter of legal 
history in Wyoming. Whether the final lines of this tragic drama will be read 
and acted upon by this court or by the legislature remains to be seen, but in 
fairness to those who are hurt by the agents of the State but may still be left 
without a remedy, the day of their relief cannot be far away.

[¶52.]  My life long battle against the injustice 
which comes with decoupling liability from negligence began in litigation - 
Davis, 495 P.2d 21 and Awe v. University of Wyoming, 534 P.2d 97 (Wyo. 1975); 
continued in the legislature until the enactment of the state governmental 
claims act, W.S. 1-39-101 through 1-39-120, see Stovall, 648 P.2d 543; and now 
to appellate adjudication. The observable affront of injustice does not change 
with the perspective. With such total disagreement with the majority, it is 
necessary to expressively discern the scope and constitutional complexities of 
W.S. 1-39-120 as packaged into the state torts claim act by House Bill No. 44, 
Chapter 89, the so-called tort crisis of the mid-decade.5

II. STATISM. THE ISSUE IS 
ADJUDICATION FOR A POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

[¶53.]  The encircling issue is statism - the 
imperial majesty of the central authority within which responsibility for its 
actions through agents of that crown are not to answer for damage and injury to 
its citizens.6 The further concern is my distaste 
for any constitutional construction now advanced in result by the majority which 
only protects sanctity of property, but not body or life. These conflicts are as 
old as the societies and not accurately confined within dogmas that the king can 
do no wrong. It encompasses a fundamental political conflict between those 
directed towards the ephemeral power of government and the eternal right of 
property as contrasted with more modernized ideas of rights of the individual to 
life and liberty as a territorial imperative for ego and self to be defended 
against a two-pronged invasion by property priority and the all-dominating 
government. Pragmatically confined paradigms in cost-benefit criteria to deny 
safety and inflict loss on the injured hardly fit into constitutional 
responsibility of government for access to justice and equal protection for 
redress from injury.

[¶54.]  Governmental and sovereign immunity 
become manipulated symbols to justify predictable results desired by 
preconceived economic and societalistic persuasions. The wail to protect the 
state from jury over-compensation to the injured reached its crescendo atop the 
legislative and judicial failure to correct the admitted inequities in the 
failure of justice.

[¶55.]  In recent times, this court has been 
called to enforce the state constitution in significant regard four times and 
has not previously flinched. It is unfortunate that this majority does so now 
when the legislature says the state is not responsible when government agents 
negligently or carelessly cause injury or death.7

[¶56.]  The judicial notion of governmental and 
sovereign immunities is found in Russell v. Men of Devon, 2 Term Rep. 671, 100 
Eng. Rep. 359 (1788). The current apologists who continue to argue for 
governmental and sovereign immunities despite the openly admitted injustices 
should perhaps note that Men of Devon was overruled in England in 1890. Jaffe, 
Suits Against Governments and Officers: Sovereign Immunity, 77 Harv.L.Rev. 1 
(1963); Reeves, Leviathan Bound - Sovereign Immunity in a Modern World, 43 
Va.L.Rev. 529 (1957). Sovereign immunity as a declaration of the authority of 
the state differs from governmental immunity as given to local units of 
government in both justification and composition. Likewise, historical 
differentiations are found between governmental and proprietary functions and 
somewhat offset are the distinguishable discretionary and ministerial activities 
and the more logical and realistic comparisons and separations of the planning 
activity from the maintenance and preservation governmental function. 
Recognition is also required of the difference between sovereign immunity as 
immunity for the state, while liability of state employees cannot be accorded an 
identical insulation or absolution constitutionally. University of Louisville v. 
O'Bannon, 770 S.W.2d 215 (Ky. 1989). The court in O'Bannon justified a 
reinstated sovereign immunity to the university, but held that the extension to 
the medical facility would involve unconstitutionally impermissible absolution 
of existing common law rights of action for personal injury. Kaisner v. Kolb, 
543 So. 2d 732 (Fla. 1989) and Comment, The Role of the Courts in Abolishing 
Governmental Immunity, 1964 Duke L.J. 888 (1964). The importance derived from 
the broad application of Chapter 89 comes in part from the fact that Wyoming has 
never before had a comparably broad scope of immunity within the Wyoming justice 
delivery tort system. This is not only a new but a great day for injustice. No 
less than reapportionment, this denial of citizen's rights is singularly 
regrettable.

III. HISTORY OF WYOMING 
LAW

[¶57.]  The Wyoming Constitution makes clear that 
government is not an end in itself - it is derivative in rightful existence as 
founded upon the power of the people and extended in structure only with 
constitutional authorization and justification.

All power is inherent in 
the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority, and 
instituted for their peace, safety and happiness; for the advancement of these 
ends they have at all times an inalienable and indefeasible right to alter, 
reform or abolish the government in such manner as they may think 
proper.

Wyo. Const. art. 
1, § 1.

[¶58.]  This majority result, which 
constitutionalizes the denial of a remedy for a wrong only at the hands of the 
state, can hardly be said to follow inevitably from the labyrinth of Wyoming 
governmental and sovereign immunity case law. I am astounded how deaf the 
judicial ear can be to a victim's cries for justice.

[¶59.]  In Ricketts v. Crewdson, 13 Wyo. 284, 79 P. 1042 (1905), this court originally recognized the exercise of discretion in 
tax assessment to be absolved from judicial review where only arbitrary or 
dishonest conduct could raise litigable issues. Thereafter, in Opitz v. Town of 
City of Newcastle, 35 Wyo. 358, 249 P. 799 (1926) (now superceded apparently by 
this present legislation), liability was approved for failure in use by the city 
of reasonable care to keep the streets safe for public travel. In Weaver v. 
Public Service Commission of Wyoming, 40 Wyo. 462, 479, 278 P. 542 (1929), Chief 
Justice Blume recited:

But the state does not 
own the highways in that capacity; these exist, or at least are maintained, 
solely by reason of the taxes paid, and contributions made, by private 
individuals and corporations, including private carriers. Highways exist for the 
benefit of the members of the public at large, and the only right which the 
state has to regulate or prohibit their use must be sought in the police power 
of the state to promote the safety, peace and general welfare of the 
people.

The critical 
question in conceptualizing this thesis of Chief Justice Blume in Weaver is 
whether the obligation of the state accords a compensable responsibility for its 
failure of performance. Case history then follows with the Utah Construction 
Company cases as questioning obligation to pay for the construction required. 
Utah Const. Co. v. State Highway Commission, 45 Wyo. 403, 19 P.2d 951 (1933) and 
State Highway Commission v. Utah Const. Co., 278 U.S. 194, 49 S. Ct. 104, 73 L. Ed. 262 (1929). Compare in more modern review, State Highway Com'n of Wyoming 
v. Brasel & Sims Const. Co., Inc., 688 P.2d 871 (Wyo. 1984) and Brasel & 
Sims Const. Co., Inc. v. State Highway Com'n of Wyoming, 655 P.2d 265 (Wyo. 
1982).

[¶60.]  The depression years in Wyoming and the 
pervasive fair trade legislation which was generally then enacted called Chief 
Justice Blume, in State v. Langley, 53 Wyo. 332, 84 P.2d 767 (1938), to again 
analyze the foundations of our society and the basis of our judicial 
responsibility. The anxiety today circulating about the so-called insurance 
crisis cannot be compared to the level of trouble enveloping everyone during the 
depression years. The Wyoming justices of that era did not allow that heavy 
anxiety to detract their navigational fix on the constitution. 

[¶61.]  Nearly every law abridges individual 
freedom of action to a more or less extent. In nearly all instances when one is 
enacted, it gives rise, or may give rise, to a conflict between such freedom on 
the one hand, and the power of the legislature to abridge it on the other. The 
solution of the conflict is judicial in its nature. Courts must be, and are, 
whether willingly or not, the ultimate arbiters as to whether or not there is, 
in a particular case, an unwarranted invasion of the guaranteed rights above 
mentioned. 11 Am.Jur. 1087. They have found that solution, - the only one 
possible or just under the circumstances - in the standard of reasonableness. 6 
R.C.L. 236; 11 Am. Jur. 1073-1074. That standard is indefinite. What is 
reasonable depends on the facts and circumstances. 11 Am.Jur. 1074; 6 R.C.L. 
236, 239; 19 R.C.L. 807. Paine's thought that, as civilization progresses, men 
will more and more regulate their own affairs has not proved itself correct. 
Altruism has not proceeded that far. History is replete with the wreckage of 
rules of private law. It would be no less than surprising, if it were otherwise 
in the field of public law. As the number of people increases, as trade 
develops, as civic centers become crowded, as society becomes more complex, more 
and more problems arise which must be solved, and the freedom of movement and of 
action of the individuals must be harmonized with equal rights for all. This is 
not always easy to do. Certain rules have been laid down to help.

[¶62.]  In order that a statute may be valid, the 
purpose, aim, or end thereof must be within the scope of purview of the police 
power, and in furtherance thereof; the means adopted must be reasonable and not 
arbitrary, and must be appropriate for the accomplishment of the end in view; in 
other words, there must be a substantial connection between the purpose in view 
and the actual provisions of the law.

Id. at 343-44, 
84 P.2d 767.

[¶63.]  In a carefully constructed analysis, this 
court in Ramirez v. City of Cheyenne, 34 Wyo. 67, 241 P. 710 (1925) determined 
that the City of Cheyenne could be responsible in a damage award for the 
negligent maintenance of a swing in the public park.

[¶64.]  This court observed:

[M]ost of the courts of 
this country, on one ground or another, have held cities liable for negligence 
in failing to keep their streets in a safe condition for travel. While such 
liability is sometimes declared by statute, it is often imposed in the absence 
of statute, and in the latter class of cases the right to damages is usually 
sustained as an exception to the general rule that exempts the city from 
liability for negligence in the performance of governmental or public 
duties.

Id. at 78, 241 P. 710.

[¶65.]  Following Opitz and Ramirez, this court 
again considered municipal liability in Wilson v. City of Laramie, 65 Wyo. 234, 
199 P.2d 119 (1948), where a Caterpillar tractor used in performing a 
"governmental function" of lowering a street grade got loose and rolled down the 
hill causing injury.

That the unfortunate 
accidents to the children involved in this case are to be deplored goes without 
saying. That there is a great deal of merit in the contention that immunity from 
liability for negligence on the part of governments and governmental agencies 
should be abolished cannot be questioned. But whether the courts should do so on 
their own motion is a matter of grave doubt.

Id. at 249, 199 P.2d 119.

[¶66.]  This case establishes immunity for 
equipment constructing roads where immunity for the roads and their usage did 
not exist. Adding to Wyoming's law on immunities is Merrill v. Bishop, 69 Wyo. 
45, 237 P.2d 186 (1951), where action against the constitutional state water 
commissioner and other state water officials was not an action against the state 
but only a maintainable action based on the tort of the officials 
themselves.

[¶67.]  But in Ellis v. Wyoming Game & Fish 
Commission, 74 Wyo. 226, 286 P.2d 597 (1955), the action against the Governor 
and other state officials for damages during the seizure of beaver pelts was 
determined to be an action against the state in a governmental function and, 
lacking approval of the state, could not be maintained. See likewise Hjorth 
Royalty Co. v. Trustees of University of Wyoming, 30 Wyo. 309, 222 P. 9 (1924), 
where a quiet title action could not be maintained by a citizen against the 
university to determine interest in their property.

[¶68.]  Unfortunately then, automobile driver 
Price, on March 13, 1944, ran into a Wyoming Highway Department snowplow and 
after a demurrer to the complaint was sustained, immunity reappeared before this 
court. A lack of legislative consent to suit justified the deletion of the state 
as a party. Price, 167 P.2d 309. This court then added contributory negligence 
as a matter of law for justification for the dismissal to also include claims 
against the highway superintendent and snowplow driver. See likewise Osborn v. 
Lawson, 374 P.2d 201 (Wyo. 1962). A curious decision in Harrison v. Wyoming 
Liquor Commission, 63 Wyo. 13, 177 P.2d 397 (1947) defined that the proprietary 
activities of the state in the sale of liquor were actually governmental and 
lacking permissive legislation, rendered the business agency immune from 
suit.

[¶69.]  In Savage v. Town of Lander, 77 Wyo. 157, 
309 P.2d 152 (1957), plaintiff, after parking, stepped out of the car into a 
gutter drain inlet, fell and was severely injured. The directed verdict brought 
the escape of governmental immunity to the supreme court for an analysis 
differentiating between the planning criteria of a public improvement and 
negligence in maintenance so that:

To recapitulate, we find 
that the gutter drain was built according to a plan approved by the town of 
Lander, that the plan was not so inherently dangerous that the trial court could 
as a matter of law deem its construction to be negligent, that there was some 
evidence of defendant's negligence in the maintenance of the gutter drain but 
there was no proof whatever that such neglect caused plaintiff's 
injury.

Id. at 175, 309 P.2d 152.

[¶70.]  This first sequence of Wyoming cases 
ended with Maffei, 338 P.2d 808 as an action for wrongful death of decedent 
through contended negligence of the town's officer directing him to assist in 
pursuit of a felon. A demurrer to the complaint was sustained, plaintiff 
appealed, and the decision was affirmed on the basis that the municipality was 
immune from liability when exercising its governmental function with immunity 
unwaived even by procurement of liability insurance. Consequently, the insurance 
company escaped liability responsibility within its stated insurance coverage by 
assertion of a governmental immunity defense.

[¶71.]  The platitudes were again 
forthcoming:

Although we must hold 
that in the present state of the law of this State, the town of Kemmerer is 
immune from liability to the family of the deceased, we are not insensible that 
this may be inequitable. The deceased may have naturally joined in aid of the 
local policeman and suffered death as a consequence. In this view, Mr. Maffei 
was acting in a commendable manner and as might be desired of all good citizens. 
In not dissimilar circumstances our legislature has seen fit to take notice of 
some shortcomings in our law and have enacted separate laws for the relief of 
bereaved families. It is our misfortune in a case such as this that we are not 
privileged to respond to the dictate of our sympathies, but must stay with the 
law as we find it.

Id. at 818. The 
author of the opinion did not consider the constitutionality of special 
legislation "for the relief of bereaved families." Id. at 818. See Section X of 
this dissent, infra, which addresses the Wyoming constitutional prohibition of 
special legislation.

IV. MODERNIZATION OF 
WYOMING LAW

[¶72.]  The broad scope of Chapter 89 can only be 
related to its scope of operation to all units of government. I will not secrete 
from its text the limited arena which the legislature should have properly and 
probably constitutionally addressed of design defects and functional 
obsolescence by criteria changes. Neither of those subjects have anything to do 
with failure of a repair crew to mark the edge of this narrow and recently 
resurfaced highway so that the nighttime driver can tell where the edge of the 
road ends. The broad sweep of this legislation in creation of immunity according 
to place requires a similarly broad analysis for proper judicial 
review.

[¶73.]  Within this perspective, it has to be 
recognized that a significant number of historically emplaced and existent 
Wyoming decisions as to driveway, parking and sidewalk liabilities are now 
reversed by the legislative withdrawal of responsibility for government's 
negligence.

[¶74.]  I am also attentive to the special 
concurrence of Chief Justice Guthrie in Jivelekas, 546 P.2d at 433:

I concur in the result 
hereof based upon the failure of plaintiffs to prove that any actions of the 
city were the proximate cause of the injury and agree that the doctrine of res 
ipsa loquitur does not aid plaintiffs. I withhold my agreement, without 
expression of my views, from that portion of the opinion which discusses 
sovereign immunity for the reason that I deem it improper and unnecessary of 
decision to reach this question because of the disposal made upon these first 
two grounds. * * * Nor am I satisfied that the immunity doctrine as applied to 
governmental subdivisions, such as counties, school districts, and 
municipalities, has the same origin and roots as, or is identical to, that of 
the sovereign immunity of the State, and would express no view thereon at this 
time.

[¶75.]  Even Justice Raper, in his dissent in 
Jivelekas, 546 P.2d  at 434, recognized the appropriateness of 
change:

It is not the duty nor 
the function of this or any court to tell a legislature how to perform its 
legislative function. The strength of Justice Rose's opinion, though I disagree 
that we should allow it, should be a warning that legislative action may be 
well-advised. It is preferable to start with a sound plan, such as only an 
example, the Federal Tort Claims Act, than for this court to say, "do it," in 
the absence of any machinery to place an ordered change into sensible 
effect.

[¶76.]  Governmental immunity was abolished in 
Oroz, 575 P.2d  at 1158 (footnote omitted) by Chief Justice Guthrie's continuing 
scholarship:

We hold that the immunity 
from tort liability heretofore judicially conferred upon counties (municipal 
corporations, school districts, and other subdivisions of government) is 
abrogated. Henceforth, the rule is liability - the exception is immunity, Holytz 
v. City of Milwaukee, supra [17 Wis.2d 26, 115 N.W.2d 618, 620]. The removal of 
immunity, however, does not mean that a governmental entity is liable for all 
harm that results from its activities. It does not impose absolute or strict 
liability, but merely subjects it to the same rules as private persons or 
corporations if a duty has been violated and a tort has been committed. * * * 
This decision, however, is not to be interpreted as imposing liability upon a 
governmental body for acts or omissions in the exercise of its legislative or 
judicial or quasi-legislative or quasi-judicial functions, Hargrove v. Town of 
Coca Beach, supra, 96 So. 2d  at 133; Holytz v. City of Milwaukee, supra, 115 N.W.2d  at 618. We herein specifically reverse all prior decisions of this court 
which hold or suggest that a county or other such political subdivision has or 
enjoys an immunity from tort liability.

[¶77.]  Justice Raper also recognized the tide of 
events:

While the whole court 
does not join in saying so, at this point and time, it appears to me that the 
handwriting is on the wall and the legislature might be well advised to prepare 
the State and arrange for funding of proper tort claims against it. The court by 
its opinion is taking immunity away from the county. A county is a unit and arm 
of State government, by which many functions of state administration are 
decentralized, such as tax assessment and collection through the county assessor 
and treasurer; enforcement of the State's laws, through a county sheriff and a 
prosecuting attorney; supervision of elections through the county clerk; support 
for the State's judicial system, through the clerks of court and furnishing of 
court facilities by county commissioners; a local network of roads, forming a 
part of the State's highway system, through county commissioners; legislative 
apportionment by county and combinations of counties, etc., etc. The court may 
have reached the State through the county.

Id. at 
1161.

[¶78.]  The winds of change were blowing as the 
second period of legislative analysis of governmental and sovereign immunity 
arrived to continue in a definable fashion until now reversed as full retreat 
develops with this present case. In Lore v. Town of Douglas, 355 P.2d 367 (Wyo. 
1960), the city was liable for negligent maintenance of sewer lines. Next 
followed Bulova Watch Co. v. Zale Jewelry Co. of Cheyenne, 371 P.2d 409 (Wyo. 
1962), which reversed Langley, 84 P.2d 767, in holding that another fair trade 
law was unconstitutional as violative of due process and equal protection. Bell 
v. Gray, 377 P.2d 924 (Wyo. 1963) determined that insurance salesman exemption 
constituted an unconstitutional discrimination. However, in Chavez v. City of 
Laramie, 389 P.2d 23 (Wyo. 1964), road construction caused damage to the 
plaintiff and invaded a governmental function for which the municipality was not 
answerable in tort for their negligently caused damage. Directly contrary in 
Fanning v. City of Laramie, 402 P.2d 460 (Wyo. 1965), a discerned duty to 
maintain a street sign waived immunity defense. South Cheyenne Water and Sewer 
Dist., 483 P.2d 240 followed that a governmental instrumentality of a sewer 
district was liable for sewer backup damage. In Town of Douglas v. York, 445 P.2d 760 (Wyo. 1968), this court found the Town of Douglas liable for a range 
fire which was started by a fire at the town dump. The Town of Douglas had 
charged for trash disposal and was as liable as a corporation would have 
been.

[¶79.]  Admittedly, the case law has been 
inconsistent. In Davis, 495 P.2d 21, the county was shielded by governmental 
immunity from responsibility for the injuries it had negligently caused. Retail 
clerks attempted an unsuccessful declaratory judgment against the University of 
Wyoming in a labor dispute in Retail Clerks Local 187 AFL-CIO v. University of 
Wyoming, 531 P.2d 884 (Wyo. 1975). This court's conclusion in that case was 
there was no statutory waiver permitting this litigation. In Awe, 534 P.2d 97, a 
dormitory was rented for the summer season to visiting families for classroom 
attendance. Sovereign immunity and improper notice denied adjudication of the 
dangerousness of the college facility which caused a serious window fall injury. 
Conversely in Collins v. Memorial Hospital of Sheridan County, 521 P.2d 1339 
(Wyo. 1974), we determined that the purpose of insurance constituted a waiver of 
immunity, at least to the amount of the insurance coverage, and recognized that 
in response to Maffei, a statute had been enacted. The case was directly 
contrary to Maffei as perhaps explained by the change in membership of the court 
that had occurred. Jivelekas, 546 P.2d 419 was the beginning of the end with the 
academic and enthusiastic attack by Justice Rose, although his opposition to 
immunity was not the basis of case decision within the panel of the court then 
sitting. In Town of Jackson v. Shaw, 569 P.2d 1246 (Wyo. 1977), a successful 
verdict for the falsely arrested plaintiff was affirmed. The end to governmental 
immunity then came in Oroz, 575 P.2d 1155, which specifically reversed Davis, 
495 P.2d 21 and buried governmental immunity as an outdated and discarded 
judicial conception. Sovereign immunity remained in question, although Justice 
Rose, in concurrence, persuasively observed for a period of time as now ending 
with the enactment of Chapter 89:

In my judgment, however, 
the opinion should have specifically embraced such abrogation of governmental 
and sovereign immunity as would include the State of Wyoming. As the opinion now 
stands, the subject of the State's immunity is not precisely considered, even 
though the language may be broad enough to abrogate the State's sovereign 
immunity. My views on this subject are sufficiently set forth in Jivelekas v. 
City of Worland, Wyo., 546 P.2d 419, and need not be reiterated here. Suffice it 
to say that I am unable to recognize any substantive distinction between the 
so-called doctrines of sovereign and governmental immunity which would justify 
separate treatment by this court. See, Muskopf v. Corning Hospital District, 55 Cal. 2d 211, 11 Cal. Rptr. 89, 359 P.2d 457 [(1961)]; and Holytz v. City of 
Milwaukee, 17 Wis.2d 26, 115 N.W.2d 618. Furthermore, as explained in Jivelekas, 
supra, 429-431, Article 1, § 8, Wyoming Constitution, should not prevent such a 
total abrogation in light of the thrust of that provision and the decisions of 
this court which have touched and concerned its applicability. Notwithstanding 
the failure of the majority to speak to the abrogation of the State's immunity 
in this decision, I am confident that, even if the opinion's scope is not broad 
enough to include the State, nevertheless, the curtain is slowly but surely 
falling on this illogical and inexcusable chapter of legal history in Wyoming. 
Whether the final lines of this tragic drama will be read and acted upon by this 
court or by the legislature remains to be seen, but in fairness to those who are 
hurt by the agents of the State but may still be left without a remedy, the day 
of their relief cannot be far away.

Oroz, 575 P.2d  
at 1161 (emphasis in original).

[¶80.]  It is sad to observe that the Wyoming 
Governmental Claims Act, W.S. 1-39-101 through 1-39-119, has been subjected to a 
barrage of legislative efforts to diminish the delivery of justice to the 
negligently injured. See Worthington v. State, 598 P.2d 796 (Wyo. 1979) and 1982 
Wyo. Sess. Laws ch. 24. Oyler v. State, 618 P.2d 1042 (Wyo. 1980) invoked a 
factual development of a ministerial discretionary test as to the immunity of 
the state employee and required a reversal of the previously granted summary 
judgment. Connett v. Fremont County School Dist. No. 6, Fremont County, 581 P.2d 1097 (Wyo. 1978) required reversal of summary judgment on appeal in analysis of 
the duty of the school to supervise the activities of the student as raising a 
question of negligence. O'Donnell v. City of Casper, 696 P.2d 1278 (Wyo. 1985), 
was a street maintenance invoking obvious danger rule and potential liability of 
the municipality. Stovall, 648 P.2d 543, was a public facilities segment of the 
tort claims act which discerned and determined that the highway constituted a 
public facility. Conversely, Hurst v. State, 698 P.2d 1130 (Wyo. 1985) was a 
discretionary aspect of parole board responsibility invoking a governmental 
immunity justification.

[¶81.]  Two final cases of this court require 
recognition. Troyer v. State, Dept. of Health and Social Services, Div. of 
Vocational Rehabilitation, 722 P.2d 158 (Wyo. 1986) presented the inquiry 
whether the construction of an elevator for the handicapped constituted a 
function as a health care provider. The court also, in current analysis, found 
that the closed-end immunity approach adopted in Wyoming as similar to New 
Mexico was constitutional. The issue not answered in concept or ratio decidendi 
is whether, after rights to recover for negligently inflicted injury have been 
given by statutory extinguishment of immunity, the legislature can then recreate 
the defensive barrier to justice for irrationally segmented activities. Finally 
in Hoem v. State, 756 P.2d 780, 784 (Wyo. 1980), this court, as now denied in 
application by the majority in present review, adopted the heightened scrutiny 
test. It is apparent that this majority disregards what was intrinsic a year ago 
in Hoem, 756 P.2d  at 785 under the special concurrence by Justice 
Thomas:

The "heightened scrutiny" 
standard, which it applied, eschews a presumption of constitutionality, which 
must be overcome by one who challenges the statute when the rational basis test 
is invoked and requires greater justification for the classification. At the 
other end of the spectrum, the standard also eschews the heavy burden of proof 
placed on the state to demonstrate a compelling state interest, which the 
"strict scrutiny" standard requires. Instead, as explained by the Kansas court 
[Farley v. Engelken, 740 P.2d 1058 (Kan. 1987)], the "heightened scrutiny" 
standard requires "the statutory classification to substantially further a 
legitimate legislative purpose." In reaching this determination, the "heightened 
scrutiny" analysis requires that the interests of the burdened class be balanced 
against those of the benefited class, in the context of the legislative purpose. 
This standard peculiarly is applicable in an instance such as this, which does 
not involve any political question of importance to the state but essentially 
touches upon private interests. Utilization of the "heightened scrutiny" 
standard in this case seems eminently fair.

[¶82.]  I concurred with Justice Thomas in Hoem, 
but the challenged legislation in that case was unconstitutional by even a 
rational basis test as now applied to Chapter 89 that it

cannot be sustained under 
the "heightened scrutiny" test. Setting apart victims of [highway accidents] 
from victims of other tortious conduct as a separate class is patently unrelated 
to any reasonable or rational state purpose, nor can it be justified by any 
state of facts that reasonably might be conceived. Of a certainty, there is no 
legitimate legislative purpose for this classification that would survive the 
"heightened scrutiny" test.

Hoem, 756 P.2d  
at 785.

V. CHAPTER 89 - WHAT IT 
DOES TO THE WYOMING GOVERNMENTAL CLAIMS ACT

[¶83.]  Wyoming stood way back in progress to 
eliminate the parasitic deterrent of immunity which withheld fairness and 
justice for the injured individual, but the state now reverses field to move 
against the tide for restoration of injustice. It is not the old platitudes 
soundly denuded by Edwin M. Borchard and perhaps 500 other writers in text and 
law journal articles, but a new summons that Wyoming is now called to 
constitutionally face by this reversed legislative direction toward central 
authority and statism against interest of the wrongfully injured 
individual.

[¶84.]  The principle thesis of this dissent, 
borne by an aversion to monarchy, dictatorship or any centralized autocracy as a 
feudalistic bureaucracy, is a question of how society can constitutionally step 
back into the morass. In the face of the clear commands of the Wyoming 
Constitution, I conclude that it cannot be done this way.

[¶85.]  Chapter 89, as it relates to this one 
vehicle rollover after highway patching activities, cannot be constitutionally 
pulled out and excluded from the scope of the statutory intercession used to 
generally deny potential relief to any injured highway user.

[¶86.]  The Wyoming Governmental Claims Act8 as proudly announced in the 1979 
enactment, 1979 Wyo. Sess. Laws ch. 157, stated in part:

1-39-102. Purposes of 
act.

(a) The Wyoming 
legislature recognizes the inherently unfair and inequitable results which occur 
in the strict application of the doctrine of governmental immunity and is 
cognizant of the Wyoming Supreme Court decision of Oroz v. Board of County 
Commissioners, 575 P.2d 1155 (1978). It is further recognized that the state and 
its political subdivisions as trustees of public revenues are constituted to 
serve the inhabitants of the state of Wyoming and furnish certain services not 
available through private parties and, in the case of the state, state revenues 
may only be expended upon legislative appropriation. This act is adopted by the 
legislature to balance the respective equities between persons injured by 
governmental actions and the taxpayers of the state of Wyoming whose revenues 
are utilized by governmental entities on behalf of those taxpayers. This act is 
intended to retain any common law defenses which a defendant may have by virtue 
of decisions from this or other jurisdictions.

(b) In the case of the 
state, this act abolishes all judicially created categories such as 
"governmental" or "proprietary" functions and "discretionary" or "ministerial" 
acts previously used by the courts to determine immunity or liability. This act 
does not impose nor allow the imposition of strict liability for acts of 
governmental entities or public employees.

[¶87.]  The act, after a rocky pathway from 
conception to ultimate passage, achieved only by continued unrelenting effort, 
has since been subject to almost annual dilution9.

[¶88.]  The initial governmental claims act, 1979 
Wyo. Sess. Laws ch. 157, embraced driveways and walkways in highway, city, 
county and educational institutions within a public facility 
category:

1-39-111. Liability; 
public facilities.

A governmental entity is 
liable for damages resulting from bodily injury, wrongful death or property 
damage caused by the negligence of public employees while acting within the 
scope of their duties in the operation or maintenance of public facilities 
within the jurisdiction of the employing governmental entity.

See Stovall, 648 P.2d 543. The legislature of 1986, in attacking rights to redress of the citizen 
for negligent injury in fault of the governmental instrumentality (as a year, 
not a good one for the basic act), did two material things. First, in section 
one, exclusions from waiver of immunity were adopted:

Section 1. W.S. 1-39-120 is 
created to read:

1-39-120. Exclusions from 
waiver of immunity; highways, etc.

(a) The liability imposed 
by W.S. 1-39-105 through 1-39-112 does not include liability for damages caused 
by:

(i) A defect in the plan 
or design of any bridge, culvert, highway, roadway, street, alley, sidewalk or 
parking area;

(ii) The failure to 
construct or reconstruct any bridge, culvert, highway, roadway, street, alley, 
sidewalk or parking area; or

(iii) The maintenance, 
including maintenance to compensate for weather conditions, of any bridge, 
culvert, highway, roadway, street, alley, sidewalk or parking area.

1986 Wyo. Sess. 
Laws ch. 89, § 1.

[¶89.]  Then, for whatever reason not discernible 
in any record available, the act in section three also repealed W.S. 1-39-111 
which created the non-immunity category of public facilities. Consequently, 
unless a bridge, culvert, highway, roadway, street, alley, sidewalk or parking 
area can be put within motor vehicles, aircraft or watercraft, W.S. 1-39-105; a 
building, recreation area or public park, W.S. 1-39-106; an airport, W.S. 
1-39-107; a public utility, W.S. 1-39-108, which includes gas, water, electric, 
solid or liquid waste collection, heating and ground transportation; or a 
medical facility, W.S. 1-39-109; there is little (except perhaps snow plows and 
school buses) available in present law upon which the exemptions provided in 
W.S. 1-39-120 can react.10 This is symptomatic of the 
moribund residue left to protect citizens from the negligent deprecations of 
agents of government. There is no justification to serve for levels of 
comparison.

[¶90.]  Specifically, the 1986 act repealed Oroz, 
575 P.2d 1155 from which justification for passage of the basic act had been 
obtained, even though the philosophical standard and the case citation of Oroz 
still remain in the statutory text. Also rejected in broad category of walkways 
and driveways of our society was the further statutory recognition:

[T]he state and its 
political subdivisions as trustees of public revenues are constituted to serve 
the inhabitants of the state of Wyoming and furnish certain services not 
available through private parties and, in the case of the state, state revenues 
may only be expended upon legislative appropriation. This act is adopted by the 
legislature to balance the respective equities between persons injured by 
governmental actions and the taxpayers of the state of Wyoming whose revenues 
are utilized by governmental entities on behalf of those taxpayers. This act is 
intended to retain any common law defenses which a defendant may have by virtue 
of decisions from this or other jurisdictions.

1979 Wyo. Sess. 
Laws ch. 157, § 1.

[¶91.]  No funeral for the progressive philosophy 
was provided by even the good sense to delete the case reference when statutory 
repeal was pursued. Other cases the legislature reversed for denial of further 
liability would include: O'Donnell, 696 P.2d 1278; Stovall, 648 P.2d 543; as 
well as the prior cases of Town of Douglas, 445 P.2d 760; Fanning, 402 P.2d 460; 
Quest v. Town of Upton, 36 Wyo. 1, 252 P. 506 (1927); and Opitz, 249 P. 799. Cf. 
Oyler, 618 P.2d 1042; State v. Dieringer, 708 P.2d 1 (Wyo. 1985); and Hamlin v. 
Transcon Lines, 697 P.2d 606, reh'g denied 701 P.2d 1139 (Wyo. 
1985).

[¶92.]  It is indicated in the minutes of the 
joint judicial committee which are included in this record that the original 
purpose of Chapter 89 was to restore governmental immunity for highway 
maintenance and design. If that was the justification for what was done, the 
tools used included both meat ax and chain saw as all of the places for driving 
and walking in this state became included in the created immunized zone of 
irresponsibility. That reach is from windrowed snow to summer potholes.11

[¶93.]  The effect of Chapter 89 is to excise out 
of a citizen's right for recovery for wrongful injury by agents of government a 
place exception, but one unfortunately where the greatest exposure to harm 
exists where you can walk or drive outside. This created exception has a 
classification basis only related to place - outside the door immunity - inside 
the door liability. It does not present consideration of design versus 
maintenance defects, nor does it anticipate the difference between governmental 
or propriety functions and discretion or ministerial acts, since those 
characters of differentiation of scope of responsibility of society have been 
specifically eliminated by the initial governmental claims act itself. The 
placement in excused responsibility for fault and negligence lacks absence of 
analysis of the difference between passive and active negligence or wrongfulness 
sounding within the character of a lack of care compared to willful and gross 
misconduct. Furthermore, Chapter 89 discriminatorily creates a character of 
governmental immunity, which had never existed in this state, while at the same 
time restoring sovereign immunity to the State Highway Department as a separate 
function. Finally, craftsmanship in statutory composition is absent by leaving 
in question reflected immunity of the agent for absolution from his own 
negligence as a theory related to institutional immunity for the governmental 
unit by which he may be employed. In text, the employee exclusion within the 
scope of duty of W.S. 1-39-104 requires relation to W.S. 1-39-120, which only 
includes exceptions applied to W.S. 1-39-105 through 1-39-112.

VI. STANDARD OF 
REVIEW

[¶94.]  It is not necessary to challenge the 
closed-end tort claims system adopted by the state legislature in 1979 to 
eliminate sovereign immunity to now constitutionally reject Chapter 89. This is 
true no matter how unjustified or unreasonable as well as illogical the denial 
of recovery to the individual for the deprecations upon his body by agents of 
the government might be since applied immunity has an existence by historical 
recitation of stare decisis. However, like the rotten stump or an outdated 
building as a non-conforming use, this rejected and irresponsible concept need 
not be immediately removed or destroyed. However, it should neither be recreated 
nor restored to press back against a constitutional right of membership of 
society to require their detachment from compensation for bodily injury or 
death. Secondly, the entrenchment as set forth in the enacted statute lacks 
sufficient justification to withstand constitutional inquiry when examined upon 
the table of justice provided by limitations in the Wyoming Constitution on what 
the legislature can do to harm or injure its citizens. Just as immunization from 
responsibility promotes irresponsibility, absolution from liability for 
negligence justifies carelessness and moralizes injury and death for someone 
else to be "only one of those things" for which tortfeasor responsibility is 
foreclosed.

[¶95.]  The circumstance as found in this case 
that a narrow highway exists cannot be compared to failure to install drop off 
notices or differentiating markers to warn the user when resurfacing creates an 
obvious greater zone of danger to the driving customer for whom the highway 
system exists. Similarly, a broken sidewalk can be rendered safer by patching or 
signs even if not immediately replaced. There is nothing wrong with the 
requirement to defend as a salutary opportunity for the citizen to assert his 
claim to justice. In applying a place test for both created and reapplied 
immunity, the legislature in Chapter 89 selected an irrational difference to 
define a result without functional justification except as directed to deny 
justice within the special territory identified for that insulation from 
responsibility - walkways and driveways outside of buildings.

[¶96.]  I would first challenge this court in 
dissent in requiring that a heightened scrutiny of responsibility be applied 
when recovery for death or injury of a person is to be cognitively involved as a 
protection compared to property which remains unquestionably within the most 
strict scrutiny review. When sovereign immunity to take ranch property and 
trucking equipment without payment is justified, I could relate to a test of 
only a reasonable basis for physical injury or damaged life to be equally 
protected. Otherwise, I do not. This court procedurally and comprehensively 
perceives by the test of heightened scrutiny to test the validity of a medical 
review panel. No less important is the absolution of government for 
responsibility for the negligent infliction of injury or death. The generic 
problem broadcast from the crescendo of cases addressing the test for review in 
question of denial of basic constitutional rights, including due process and 
equal protection, is the poorly disguised fact that the test, if first chosen, 
is to justify the dispositional result intended.

[¶97.]  Consequently, the analysis in cases 
begins with comment that this contention of denial only justifies the modest or 
minimal support of reasonableness and communicates no matter what is involved, 
the supplicant has been denied. If heightened scrutiny is addressed as a test, 
the rationality and totality will be given analysis and the third or highest 
scrutiny denomination means a perceived basis for discrimination exists to be 
corrected by judicial relief. Compare for example the rights to education, San 
Antonio Independent School Dist. v. Rodriquez, 411 U.S. 1, 93 S. Ct. 1278, 36 L. Ed. 2d 16, reh'g denied 411 U.S. 959, 93 S. Ct. 1919, 36 L. Ed. 2d 418 (1973) 
(White and Marshall, JJ., dissenting), which reaches the fundamental societal 
existence of either a free enterprise system of industry or a democratic 
organization of representative government with equal rights of a female to serve 
as an executor or personal representative which, although the right will never 
be denied, the future of the nation is not invested. Reed v. Reed, 404 U.S. 71, 
92 S. Ct. 251, 30 L. Ed. 2d 225 (1971). I do not differentiate the right to freedom 
from or compensation for loss of limb or life as less important than the right 
to vote. Zablocki v. Redhail, 434 U.S. 374, 98 S. Ct. 673, 54 L. Ed. 2d 618 (1978); 
the right to fairness in procedures before governments which may deny life, 
liberty or property; Sugarman v. Dougall, 413 U.S. 634, 93 S. Ct. 2842, 37 L. Ed. 2d 853 (1973); United States v. Kras, 409 U.S. 434, 93 S. Ct. 631, 34 L. Ed. 2d 626 (1973) (Stewart J., dissenting); Boddie v. Connecticut, 401 U.S. 371, 91 S. Ct. 780, 28 L. Ed. 2d 113 (1971), requirement for indigent to prepay 
divorce proceeding filing fees; but although divorce is fundamental, bankruptcy 
is not; Goldberg v. Kelly, 397 U.S. 254, 90 S. Ct. 1011, 25 L. Ed. 2d 287 (1970); 
Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U.S. 618, 89 S. Ct. 1322, 22 L. Ed. 2d 600 (1969), the 
right to marry; Harper v. Virginia State Bd. of Elections, 383 U.S. 663, 86 S. Ct. 1079, 16 L. Ed. 2d 169 (1966), right to freedom of speech; McLaughlin v. 
State of Florida, 379 U.S. 184, 85 S. Ct. 283, 13 L. Ed. 2d 222 (1964), prohibiting 
interracial cohabitation; National Ass'n for Advancement of Colored People v. 
State of Alabama, 357 U.S. 449, 78 S. Ct. 1163, 2 L. Ed. 2d 1488 (1958), right to 
travel interstate. Likewise, I can here, in life and body, find equivalency with 
employment of a residential alien in the state's competitive classified civil 
service or to take the bar examination, Memorial Hospital v. Maricopa County, 
415 U.S. 250, 94 S. Ct. 1076, 39 L. Ed. 2d 306 (1974); Application of Griffiths, 
413 U.S. 717, 93 S. Ct. 2851, 37 L. Ed. 2d 910 (1973), or a year's residence in the 
county for hospitalization or medical care at county expense.

[¶98.]  The issue at stake is not whether due 
process in federal or state constitutional context creates a claim in tort. Cf. 
Davidson v. Cannon, 474 U.S. 344, 106 S. Ct. 668, 88 L. Ed. 2d 677 (1986) and 
Daniels v. Williams, 474 U.S. 327, 106 S. Ct. 662, 88 L. Ed. 2d 662 (1986). Here we 
have a statute which dispossesses the Wyoming judiciary from affording relief to 
the victims of tortious conduct where the harm happens in a circumstance 
selected by place and the actor is some type of state employee. Although the 
continuity of the United States Supreme Court cases relating to constitutional 
rights to recover for injury and death is minimal or unprotected while property 
rights have been given a broad constitutional respect, it makes little or no 
sense in metaphysical recognition of self and body. The direct failure here is 
logic to sustain the constitutionality of this character of denied justice for 
the individual. See De Ayala v. Florida Farm Bureau Cas. Ins. Co., 543 So. 2d 204 
(Fla. 1989). Like denial of worker's compensation benefits there, denied right 
to recover here justifies the judicial heightened scrutiny.

[¶99.]  Efforts to justify immunization of 
negligence when committed by public officials in their exercise of 
responsibilities for roadways and walkways cannot be logically related to the 
discretional processes inextricably involved in dealing with the minds of people 
by parole and probation officers where uncertainty is the only constant. Hurst, 
698 P.2d 1130; Martinez v. State of California, 444 U.S. 277, 100 S. Ct. 553, 62 L. Ed. 2d 481, reh'g denied 445 U.S. 920, 100 S. Ct. 1285, 63 L. Ed. 2d 606 (1980). 
In one, we consider fault and carelessness as measured generally for activity. 
The other is decisional in function without standards of right or wrong in the 
intangibles of exercised professional responsibility. I can find the 
discriminatory denial of access to the courts and rights to have compensation 
for wrongfully caused injuries as a prohibited territory for legislation when 
within its face the enactment encroaches upon specific prohibitions of the 
Wyoming Constitution and that the inquiry requires the more exacting judicial 
scrutiny initially conceived in United States v. Carolene Products Co., 304 U.S. 144, 152 n. 4, 58 S. Ct. 778, 784 n. 4, 82 L. Ed. 1234 (1938). A liberal 
construction of the rights of citizens is justified, Federal Housing 
Administration, Region No. 4 v. Burr, 309 U.S. 242, 60 S. Ct. 488, 84 L. Ed. 724 
(1940). It is a "`wholesome sight to see [government] * * * answering for its 
torts'" and responsible for every act done without legal justification. Great 
Northern Life Ins. Co. v. Read, 322 U.S. 47, 59, 64 S. Ct. 873, 879, 88 L. Ed. 1121 (1944) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting) (quoting 3 Maitland, Collected Papers, 
263). See also United States v. Aetna Casualty and Surety Co., 338 U.S. 366, 70 S. Ct. 207, 94 L. Ed. 171 (1949).

[¶100.]            
I agree with Justice Stevens in his citation quoting Judge Cardozo that 
"`[n]o sensible reason can be imagined why the State, having consented to be 
sued, should thus paralyze the remedy.'" Finley v. United States, ___ U.S. ___, 
109 S. Ct. 2003, 2023, 104 L. Ed. 2d 593 (1989) (quoting Anderson v. John L. Hayes 
Const. Co., 243 N.Y. 140, 147, 153 N.E. 28, 29 (1926)). I choose also to be 
guided by the wisdom of Judge Cardozo quoted in Finley. Furthermore, I speak 
strongly in recognition of the philosophic validity of present challenge: "The 
freshness of error not only deprives it of the respect to which long-established 
practice is entitled, but also counsels that the opportunity of correction be 
seized at once, before state and federal laws and practices have been adjusted 
to embody it." South Carolina v. Gathers, ___ U.S. ___, 109 S. Ct. 2207, 2218, 
104 L. Ed. 2d 876, reh'g denied ___ U.S. ___, 110 S. Ct. 24, 106 L. Ed. 2d 636 (1989) 
(Scalia, J., dissenting).

A more [or most] 
principled approach would involve a brief look at the goals of tort law. For the 
law of unintentional harms, there are two major goals. One is to compensate 
individuals who have been injured in accidents and who were not responsible for 
the accident in any significant sense. Thus, the injured individuals are victims 
of external forces, and they deserve compensation. * * *

The second major goal is 
to influence actors - often businesses [or here, government] - to behave in ways 
that society desires.

Fox, A Century 
of Tort Law, Trial, July 1989 at 78, 87. I would add a third goal - protection 
of you and me.

After the years in which 
the strict scrutiny-invalidation and minimal scrutiny-nonintervention 
correlations were virtually perfect, the pattern has suddenly become unsettled. 
After an era during which the "mere rationality" requirement symbolized virtual 
judicial abdication, the Court - following personnel changes in a 
noninterventionist direction - has suddenly found repeated occasions to 
intervene on the basis of the deferential standard.

Gunther, The 
Supreme Court 1971 Term - Foreword: In Search of Evolving Doctrine on a Changing 
Court: A Model for a Newer Equal Protection, 86 Harv.L.Rev. 1, 19 
(1972).

VII. OUTDATED, OUTWEIGHED 
AND UNJUSTIFIED REINCARNATION OF PAST MISTAKES

[¶101.]            
United States Supreme Court Justice John Marshall wrote:

In the 3d vol. of his 
Commentaries (p. 23), Blackstone states two cases in which a remedy is afforded 
by mere operation of law. "In all other cases," he says, "it is a general and 
indisputable rule, that where there is a legal right, there is also a legal 
remedy by suit, or action at law, whenever that right is invaded." And 
afterwards (p. 109, of the same vol.), he says, "I am next to consider such 
injuries as are cognisable by the courts of the common law. And herein I shall, 
for the present, only remark, that all possible injuries whatsoever, that did 
not fall within the exclusive cognisance of either the ecclesiastical, military 
or maritime tribunals, are, for that very reason, within the cognisance of the 
common-law courts of justice; for it is a settled and invariable principle in 
the laws of England, that every right, when withheld, must have a remedy, and 
every injury its proper redress."

The government of the 
United States has been emphatically termed a government of laws, and not of men. 
It will certainly cease to deserve this high appellation, if the laws furnish no 
remedy for the violation of a vested legal right. If this obloquy is to be cast 
on the jurisprudence of our country, it must arise from the peculiar character 
of the case.

It behooves us, then, to 
inquire whether there be in its composition any ingredient which shall exempt it 
from legal investigation, or exclude the injured party from legal redress. In 
pursuing this inquiry, the first question which presents itself is, whether this 
can be arranged with that class of cases which come under the description of 
damnum absque injuria; a loss without an injury.

Marbury v. 
Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 163-64, 2 L. Ed. 60 (1803).

[¶102.]            
It was Langford v. United States, 11 Otto 341, 101 U.S. 341, 343, 25 L. Ed. 1010 (1879) which rejected the old English notion of the royalty that "the 
King can do no wrong" as a basis for creating immunity. "It is not easy to see 
how the first proposition can have any place in our system of government. We 
have no king to whom it can be applied." Id. at 343.

In United States 
v. Lee, 106 U.S. 196, 220, 1 S. Ct. 240, 260, 27 L. Ed. 171 (1882), limited to 
unconstitutional taking sub nom. Malone v. Bowdoin, 369 U.S. 643, 82 S. Ct. 980, 
8 L. Ed. 2d 168 (1962), that court said:

Courts of justice are 
established, not only to decide upon the controverted rights of the citizens as 
against each other, but also upon rights in controversy between them and the 
government; and the docket of this court is crowded with controversies of the 
latter class.

The extended 
dissent in Lee was not to be lightly relinquished. Lee was followed by 
Kawananakoa v. Polyblank, 205 U.S. 349, 353, 27 S. Ct. 526, 527, 51 L. Ed. 834 
(1907), where Justice Holmes asserted:

A sovereign is exempt 
from suit, not because of any formal conception or obsolete theory, but on the 
logical and practical ground that there can be no legal right as against the 
authority that makes the law on which the right depends. * * *

* * * A suit presupposes 
that the defendants are subject to the law invoked. Of course it cannot be 
maintained unless they are so. But that is not the case with a territory of the 
United States, because the Territory itself is the fountain from which rights 
ordinarily flow.

[¶103.]            
Any vision that law is logic is dispelled by a journey through the 
forensic history of immunity case law. The spectacle of misapplied dictum and 
unjustified legal theories demonstrates that immunity exists despite the fact 
that it is not historically justified or moralistically sustainable. There is no 
subject in the law which has accumulated such weight of scholastic condemnation 
for unnumbered decades. Yet like a spore or a virus, it refuses to die. The 
curiosity of immunity in a democratic society is that it survives in the fashion 
it has, and now in Wyoming, mutates to redevelop without scholarship or logical 
justification, except a continued repetition as if by restatement the initial 
concept achieves a validity unsupportable within the concept itself. 
Characterized from the Men of Devon,12 the menu provided is that somehow 
in logic there is no harm unless a remedy exists.

[¶104.]            
Pain, bodily damage or death as an activity only exists in the actuality 
of the adjudicatory system if the wrongdoer, as in immunity, the 
instrumentalities of the state, can be called to respond for fault. It is 
curious that those who rail against the state, in favor of the individual, 
become strangly silent when that individual who has been maimed by the 
government asks for justice. Their slogan no doubt becomes, "Ask not what bills 
your country can pay for you, ask what bills you can pay for your 
country."

[¶105.]            
The critical failure is the misunderstanding of the essence of a free 
society and the individual's right within the society to be protected from 
unjustified harm by the government which those individuals have created and now 
maintain.13 The erroneous historical basis and 
ignoble moral justification of the immunities has given this parcel of the body 
of the law the heaviest criticism and disapproval of any subject within modern 
jurisprudence. Described at best as an abnormality or absurdity, it is more 
commonly recognized as an anachronism for modern society.

As a result of feudal 
theory, then, we have the basis for much of the present-day theory of 
irresponsibility of the State. This theory, holding that the King can do no 
wrong; that he is irresponsible before the law of man; that he cannot be sued; 
but that the right of supplication exists, bears a close resemblance to certain 
contemporary ideas which will be discussed presently.

In order to explain and 
justify the important changes that resulted from the downfall of the feudal 
system, with the waning power of the great nobles and the increased power of the 
sovereign, ingenious doctrines were developed by political theorists, 
theologians, and judges. The chief of these defined sovereignty, personified the 
Crown as the state, and applied the principle that the King can do no 
wrong.

Blachly and 
Oatman, Approaches to Governmental Liability in Tort: A Comparative Study, 9 Law 
and Contemp.Probs. 181, 183 (1942). It surely is established for immunity, both 
governmental and sovereign, that the head waters of its utilization and 
retention is not logic - it is inertia, greed and political philosophy. For a 
wide variety of reasons, its residual remnants and contrails outlast modern 
theories of social responsibility which have invoked social security, worker's 
compensation and unemployment compensation, not to mention aid to dependent 
children, guarantees for educational opportunity, as well as equal opportunities 
and confined rights of all citizens to vote. Immunity beyond that necessary for 
ministerial, discretionary, legislative, or judicial functions is no more than a 
reincarnation of past mistakes - now both legislative and judicial.

VIII. PRECEDENT AVAILABLE 
FOR COMPARISON

[¶106.]            
A comprehensive review persuades me that in constitutional accommodation 
and democratic government idealism of the worth of the individual, Wyoming 
improvidently and precipitously moves backwards and out of constitutional 
justification.

[¶107.]            
In Stone v. Arizona Highway Commission, 93 Ariz. 384, 381 P.2d 107, 109 
(1963), the Arizona Supreme Court, in abolishing governmental immunity, first 
initiated in Hernandez v. County of Yuma County, 91 Ariz. 35, 369 P.2d 271, 272 
(1962), quoted:

"It requires but a slight 
appreciation of the facts to realize that if the individual citizen is left to 
bear almost all the risk of a defective, negligent, perverse or erroneous 
administration of the state's functions, an unjust burden will become graver and 
more frequent as the government's activities are expanded and become more 
diversified."

See also in 
considering a standard of review for access to the courts, Kenyon v. Hammer, 142 
Ariz. 69, 688 P.2d 961 (1984). Annotation, Rule of Municipal Immunity From 
Liability For Acts in Performance of Governmental Functions as Applicable in 
Case of Personal Injury or Death as Result of a Nuisance, 75 A.L.R. 1196, 1196 
(1931) has a classic observation for the sociological aspects of sovereign 
immunity:

The whole doctrine of 
governmental immunity from liability for tort rests upon a rotten foundation. It 
is almost incredible that in this modern age of comparative sociological 
enlightenment, and in a republic, the medieval absolutism supposed to be 
implicit in the maxim, "the King can do no wrong," should exempt the various 
branches of the government from liability for their torts, * * *.

[¶108.]            
The New Mexico Supreme Court agreed:

We concede that there was 
ample authority which influenced our predecessors in adopting and upholding the 
doctrine of sovereign immunity. We also say that there is better reasoned 
authority to overturn it. We simply conclude that its continuance is causing a 
great degree of injustice.

* * * * * *

`"`It is fundamental to 
our common law system that one may seek redress for every substantial wrong. 
"The best statement of the rule is that a wrongdoer is responsible for the 
natural and proximate consequences of his misconduct. . . ."' Battalla v. State, 
10 N.Y.2d 237, 240, 219 N.Y.S.2d 34, 36, 176 N.E.2d 729, 730 
(1961)."'

Hicks v. State, 
88 N.M. 588, 544 P.2d 1153, 1156-57 (1975) (quoting Niederman v. Brodsky, 436 
Pa. 401, 403, 261 A.2d 84, 85 (1970)).

[¶109.]            
It is apparent that some retreat did occur in New Mexico by passage of 
the closed-end state tort claims act, but even that regression could not serve 
to justify the doubly regressive effect ulcerated onto justice for the injuries 
whenever now inflicted by this state. Garcia v. Albuquerque Public Schools Bd. 
of Ed., 95 N.M. 391, 622 P.2d 699 (1980). The Colorado court in Evans, 482 P.2d  
at 969-70 (footnotes omitted) related:

The monarchical 
philosophies invented to solve the marital problems of Henry VIII are not 
sufficient justification for the denial of the right of recovery against the 
government in today's society. Assuming that there was sovereign immunity of the 
Kings of England, our forebears won the Revolutionary War to rid themselves of 
such sovereign prerogatives.

* * * [T]he doctrines of 
sovereign and governmental immunity have been made by the courts and, when it 
appears that these rules were wrong when made and wrong currently, the courts 
should abolish the rule.

[¶110.]            
In Washington, sovereign immunity was generally repealed by an 
enlightened legislature. See Paulson v. Pierce County, 99 Wn.2d 645, 664 P.2d 1202 (1983), even though the court thereafter only applied a minimum scrutiny 
test for classification. See however Hunter v. North Mason High School, 85 Wn.2d 810, 539 P.2d 845, 851 (1975) assessing in equal protection terms the invalidity 
of a non-claims statute in quoting from L. Levy, Judgments: Essays on American 
Constitutional History 18 (1972):

"The Constitution deals 
with great powers, many of them undefined, but they are decentralized, separated 
and distributed, checked and balanced, limited and prohibited. At the same time, 
most notably through the Bill of Rights and the great Reconstruction amendments, 
the Constitution requires that the game shall be played freely and fairly, with 
the judiciary as the umpire. `The great ideals of liberty and equality,' wrote 
Justice Cardozo, `are preserved against the assaults of opportunism, the 
expediency of the passing hour, the erosion of small encroachments, the scorn 
and derision of those who have no patience with general principles, by 
enshrining them in constitutions, and consecrating to the task of their 
protection a body of defenders.'"

[¶111.]            
The Idaho courts have been singularly forthright in denunciation and 
decision on the immunities. In Smith v. State, 93 Idaho 795, 473 P.2d 937, 945 
(1970) (quoting Brown v. City of Omaha, 183 Neb. 430, 160 N.W.2d 805 (1968)), 
the immunities were judicially excised except for "`what might be termed 
"ministerial or discretionary functions" nor on the exercise of legislative or 
judicial or quasi-legislative or quasi-judicial functions. See Holytz v. City of 
Milwaukee, [17 Wis.2d 26, 115 N.W.2d 618] supra.'"

[¶112.]            
In Leliefeld v. Johnson, 104 Idaho 357, 659 P.2d 111 (1983), the court 
used the "means-focus" standard - the middle tier of their three standards - for 
equal protection analysis. This test examines the "means specified in the 
legislation and searches for a `fair and substantial relation' between the means 
selected and the * * * legitimate purpose of the legislation." Id. 659 P.2d  at 
127. Technically, the Idaho legislature abolished government and sovereign 
immunity in advance of the judicially effective scheduled date established in 
Smith, 473 P.2d  at 937, so that abolition was by the legislature in advance of a 
mandatory date affixed by the judiciary.

[¶113.]            
The philosophic overlay of rights of citizens for protection against the 
torts of the state is pursued in comprehensive detail by that court 
distinguishing duty from discretion. Sterling v. Bloom, 111 Idaho 211, 723 P.2d 755 (1986). One of the members of that court noted in Hall, Sovereign Immunity 
and Re-Emergence of the Governmental/Proprietary Distinction: A Setback in 
Idaho's Governmental Liability Law, 20 Idaho L.Rev. 197, 197 (1984):

Thus, when the government 
acts arbitrarily or unfairly in its dealings with the people, the basic 
foundations of the democracy are weakened. To the extent a government wrongs its 
citizens and permits that wrong to go without redress it loses a part of its 
license to govern.

See also 
Comment, Lately "The King" Can Do Little Right: Idaho Governmental Immunity 
Doctrine in the Wake of Sterling v. Bloom, 24 Idaho L.Rev. 291 
(1987-88).

[¶114.]            
Strict scrutiny and particularized recognition of the effect of the 
constitutional guarantees of a speedy remedy for every injury of the Montana 
constitution found full enforcement in White v. State, 203 Mont. 363, 661 P.2d 1272, 1275 (1983) (emphasis added):

The government has a 
valid interest in protecting its treasury. However, payment of tort judgments is 
simply a cost of doing business. There is no evidence in the record that the 
payment of such claims would impair the State's ability to function as a 
governmental entity or create a financial crisis. In fact, the State of Montana 
does have an interest in affording fair and reasonable compensation to citizens 
victimized by the negligence of the State. Therefore, the strict scrutiny test mandated 
by the implication of a fundamental right has not been satisfied and the 
statute prohibiting recovery for noneconomic damage is unconstitutional under 
the Montana State Constitution.

We recognize that some 
limit on the State's liability may comport with the constitutional guarantees of 
equal protection. However, such a limitation cannot discriminate between those 
who suffer pain and loss of life quality and those who primarily suffer 
economically.

[¶115.]            
The principal judicial examinations within this region advancing the 
development of the law of responsibility of the central society for its harm to 
its people from negligence or tortious misconduct is provided by Kansas and 
California. Kansas has since regressed by legislative reaction to an airplane 
crash in Colorado which killed a college football team. In briefing in this 
case, the state and now the majority rely heavily on the Kansas disaster defined 
in real and illusionary terms and reject the humanistically directed adaptations 
of California. Even for Kansas, only part of the entire story is told by the 
adaptation of citations used.

[¶116.]            
Kansas, like most jurisdictions, has a troubled history of immunity 
litigation, but in quality of case writing, is impressive in logic, acrimonious 
in difference, and deeply directed in morality with frequent closely divided 
decisions. The modern law of Kansas commenced in the 1969 case of Carroll v. 
Kittle, 203 Kan. 841, 457 P.2d 21, 27 (1969):

After careful 
consideration a majority of the court is now of the opinion that it is 
appropriate for this court to abolish governmental immunity for negligence, when 
the state or its governmental agencies are engaged in proprietary activities, in 
the absence of the legislature's failure to adopt corrective 
measures.

However, in abolishing 
governmental immunity to the extent suggested, we want it clearly understood 
that we recognize the authority of the legislature to control the entire field 
including that part covered by this opinion. We would suggest that the 
legislature is in a much better position than this court to restrict the 
application of the doctrine because it can supplement the restriction with 
proper legislation in the form of provisions for insurance, etc., as stated in 
61 Columbia Law Review, Judicial Lawmaking, p. 839:

"There is however, a 
limitation on judicial law making inherent in the nature of the judicial 
function. Courts can and indeed are called upon to adjust rights and liabilities 
in accordance with changing canons of public policy. But because they develop 
the law on a case-by-case basis they can not as can the legislature, undertake 
the establishment of a new legal institution, `an elaborate procedure of 
investigation and consideration eventuating in the approval of a particular form 
of words as law.'"

[¶117.]            
First to be changed by legislative reapproachment was Carroll, which 
followed Neely v. St. Francis Hospital & School of Nursing, Inc., 192 Kan. 
716, 391 P.2d 155 (1964), where immunity for non-profit hospitals had been 
rejected when created by statute as declared unconstitutionally discriminatory. 
Carroll was then followed by Woods v. Kansas Turnpike Authority, 205 Kan. 770, 
472 P.2d 219 (1970), which provided immunity protecting the turnpike authority 
against tort claims for negligently inflicted personal injuries. Inverse 
condemnation from the removal of lateral support was not similarly shielded from 
liability when negligently done by the state. Sanders v. State Highway 
Commission, 211 Kan. 776, 508 P.2d 981 (1973). No fault insurance met equal 
protection and due process constitutional test failures in Manzanares v. Bell, 
214 Kan. 589, 522 P.2d 1291 (1974).

[¶118.]            
Then came the litigation for the 1970's by virtue of the crash of a 
university chartered airplane carrying the Wichita State football team. The 
court in Brown v. Wichita State University, 217 Kan. 279, 540 P.2d 66, 81-83 
(1975), opinion vacated in part 219 Kan. 2, 547 P.2d 1015, appeal dismissed sub 
nom. Bruce v. Wichita State University, 429 U.S. 806, 97 S. Ct. 41, 50 L. Ed. 2d 67 
(1976) (emphasis added) said:

Under present Kansas law, 
no regard is given to the injury or the facts and circumstances surrounding the 
events which caused the injury - it is the type of governmental agency and the 
activity in which it is engaged that determines whether the aggrieved party will 
find the doors of the court open or closed. Such a classification is forced and 
unreal, and greater burdens are imposed on some than others of the same desert. 
We find the classification contained in [the Kansas statutes] are not only 
"baffling," but arbitrary, discriminatory and unreasonable.

The doctrine of 
governmental immunity is an historical anachronism which manifests an 
inefficient public policy and works injustice upon everyone concerned. The 
doctrine and the exceptions thereto, operate in such an illogical manner as to 
result in serious inequality. Liability is the rule for negligent or tortious 
conduct, immunity is the exception. But when the tortfeasor is a governmental 
agency, immunized from liability, the injured person must forego his right to 
redress unless within a specific exception. Equality is not achieved by 
artificial exceptions which indiscriminately grant some injured persons recourse 
in the courts and arbitrarily deny such relief to others. (Winters v. Myers, 92 
Kan. 414, 140 P. 1033.) The operative effect of such arbitrary distinctions are 
incompatible with the constitutional safeguards established by both the federal 
and Kansas Constitutions. Accordingly, we hold [the Kansas statutes] are 
unconstitutional and void as a denial of equal protection of the law under the 
Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Sections 1 and 2 of 
the Kansas Bill of Rights.

* * * * * *

We do not subscribe to 
the belief that convenience is a pervasive legislative objective sufficient to 
totally deprive the appellants access to the courts. Convenience is completely 
unacceptable as a standard by which to balance the rights of an individual 
against the interest of the state. Convenience should not outweigh an 
individual's right to be compensated for actual damages sustained and injuries 
suffered. (Muskopf v. Corning Hospital Dist., 55 Cal. 2d 211, 11 Cal. Rptr. 89, 
359 P.2d 457.) To hold convenience is a permissible legislative objective, 
sufficient to insulate the government from negligence, is to engage in 
incredulous reasoning, void of logic, which undermines the very principles upon 
which this nation was founded.

[¶119.]            
Brown I only lasted to rehearing in order to consider the effect of the 
post-1970 crash session of the state legislature which was directed to assure 
that families of the deceased football players would not be compensated by state 
government. Brown v. Wichita State University, 219 Kan. 2, 547 P.2d 1015, 1027, 
appeal dismissed sub nom. Bruce v. Wichita State University, 429 U.S. 806, 97 S. Ct. 41, 50 L. Ed. 2d 67 (1976) (Brown II) (emphasis original), which validated 
the statute to recreate immunity in holding:

In the absence of a 
suspect classification or a violation of a fundamental right, a statutory 
discrimination should not be set aside if any state of facts reasonably may be conceived 
to justify it.

In that 
justification, the majority found three favorable interests to be protected: (1) 
save money, (2) avoid investment of employee time in legal proceedings, and (3) 
protection of the state from high risk activities.

The dissent in Brown II, 
which was the majority in Brown I, recognized that the issue was not the doctrine of governmental immunity, but 
statutory utilization providing invidious discrimination.

The majority cites no 
cases and my research reveals none which remain good authority for the 
proposition that a Legislature possesses unlimited power to statutorily grant or 
deny governmental liability in tort. That such legislative action is subject to 
the requirement of some rationality is illustrated by Harvey v. Clyde Park 
Dist., 32 Ill. 2d 60, 203 N.E.2d 573.

Brown, 547 P.2d  
at 1034. The author, quoting from Sherry, The Myth That the King Can Do No 
Wrong: A Comparative Study of the Sovereign Immunity Doctrine in the United 
States and New York Court of Claims, 22 Admin.L.Rev. 39, 57 (1969), 
stated:

"[The doctrine's survival 
is but a] . . . state of mind conditioned by the spectre that its relinquishment 
will bankrupt the sovereign and result in governmental paralysis. Such a theory 
may well have been justifiable in colonial times. But today there is universal 
agreement that immunity has far outlived its usefulness and is a discredited 
relic of the past not consonant with the needs of civilized 
society."

Brown, 547 P.2d  
at 1037. And analyzed in response that:

The necessity of 
protecting the state treasury fails as a rational justification for 
discriminating between those persons who fall within the different classes 
created by [the Kansas statutes].

The second "interest" 
cited as justifying the discriminatory classifications is equally indefensible. 
To say that government needs to be able to operate unhampered by the threat of 
legal actions intimates that the state should not be bothered by the fact it has 
injured people because it has more important things to do.

". . . A government of 
`of, by and for the people' derives its strength from being just and reasonable 
and not irresponsible in its dealings with the people . . . `To submit, in 
justification of the rule, that the immunity is necessary for the proper 
functioning of [government], is to propound the obvious contradiction that the 
agency formed to protect society is under no obligation, when active itself, to 
protect an individual member of society.'" Blades [A Comment on Governmental 
Tort Immunity in Kansas, 16 Kan.L.Rev. 265] at 267-68 [(1968)].

To say that the threat of 
legal actions will intolerably hamper government activities is to say that 
government alone, among all our institutions, cannot properly function if it 
shoulders responsibility for its actions.

Id. at 
1038.

[¶120.]            
After applying a similar critique of invalidity to a "high risk 
justification," Chief Justice Fatzer concluded:

But all three "interests" 
fail as reasonable justifications for making a distinction between the classes, 
created by the statute for an even more basic reason: the arguments supporting 
discrimination in favor of the state apply equally well to other governmental 
entities. If the state treasury needs protection, why do the treasuries of 
lesser units of government not need it even more?

Id. at 
1039.

The operational 
difference in Kansas through Brown II was that the recreated immunity did not include historical areas of 
liability for local units of government, as is the present case here. 
Consequently, Kansas stands on a broadly different posture from 
Wyoming.

[¶121.]            
We have in this appeal an even more exacerbated discrimination invalidity 
by place where the negligent act occurs. In Flax v. Kansas Turnpike Authority, 
226 Kan. 1, 596 P.2d 446, 451 (1979), the agency relearned that it was 
unconstitutionally excluded by immunity from liability:

To paraphrase Carroll 
[457 P.2d 21]: It is difficult to see why the state, counties, townships and 
cities performing precisely the same acts - e.g., the maintenance of a public 
thoroughfare - should be liable for defective roadways and the Kansas turnpike 
authority should not. * * * [The Kansas statute], which appellee contends would 
deny recovery to the turnpike motorists cannot be constitutionally valid as to 
that group in view of the other legislation which specifically grants a right of 
recovery to all other motorists.

The rule of Flax 
as following Harvey v. Clyde Park District, 32 Ill. 2d 60, 203 N.E.2d 573 (1964) 
denied constitutionality based on classification by place. This course of Kansas 
cases could not then be properly concluded without recognizing Farley v. 
Engelken, 241 Kan. 663, 740 P.2d 1058 (1987), attending a statutorily created 
medical review panel which was declared unconstitutional. It is not alone that 
Farley was a principle authority on our succeeding decision in Hoem, 756 P.2d 780, but the case served as a foundation for the test of review under the equal 
protection requirement intrinsically involved in our later conclusions in the 
succeeding medical review panel unconstitutionality conclusion. The Kansas court 
observed that "[a]s the above review illustrates, the level of scrutiny to be 
applied often determines the constitutionality of the statute." Farley, 740 P.2d  
at 1063. A heightened scrutiny review was undertaken for the access to the court 
foundational issues presented. The conclusion was that the Kansas Bill of Rights 
which provided that all persons for injuries suffered in person, reputation or 
property shall have remedy by the due course of law and justice administered 
without delay. Our court then followed that analysis with the similar heightened 
scrutiny in Hoem, 756 P.2d 780 for determination that the Wyoming medical review 
panel was also unconstitutional. In some present reasoned application of stare 
decisis, I observe that Flax and Farley should also decide this case to require 
a similar result for Chapter 89. Consistently for the Kansas malpractice 
statute, Kansas Malpractice Victims Coalition v. Bell, 243 Kan. 333, 757 P.2d 251 (1988), a cap for limitation of recovery on medical malpractice claims 
failed the constitutional tests of a right to due process and trial by jury. In 
recognizing invalidity, that court further observed that after abolition or a 
modification of a common law remedy, there was no adequate substitute remedy 
provided. The required quid pro quo was not included. Note, Statutory Caps on 
Damages and the Right to Jury Trial, 54 Mo.L.Rev. 471 (1989). For Missouri law, 
compare generally, Comment, Sovereign Immunity: A Framework for Applying Current 
Missouri Law, 51 Mo.L.Rev. 535 (1986).

[¶122.]            
California jurisprudence moved faster and continued more emphatically. 
The philosophically foundational case which recognized the social invalidity of 
the immunities comes in Justice Traynor's seminal opinion in Muskopf v. Corning 
Hospital District, 55 Cal. 2d 211, 11 Cal. Rptr. 89, 359 P.2d 457 (1961). The 
author recognized in the decision of that court that divergent paths had led to 
the development of governmental or local immunities as contrasted with sovereign 
immunity, and that "[t]he rule of governmental immunity for tort is an 
anachronism, without rational basis, and has existed only by the force of 
inertia," id. 11 Cal. Rptr.  at 92, 359 P.2d  at 460 (citing Borchard, Governmental 
Responsibility for Tort, 34 Yale L.J. 1, 129, 229; Casner and Fuller, Municipal 
Tort Liability in Operation, 54 Harv.L.Rev. 437; and Repko, Commentary on 
Municipal Tort Liability, 9 Law and Contemp.Probs. 214), and "[i]t has been 
judicially abolished in other jurisdictions." Muskopf, 11 Cal. Rptr.  at 92, 359 P.2d  at 460.

[¶123.]            
He concluded that

[n]one of the reasons for 
its continuance can withstand analysis. No one defends total governmental 
immunity. In fact, it does not exist. It has become riddled with exceptions, 
both legislative * * * and judicial * * *, and the exceptions operate so 
illogically as to cause serious inequality. Some who are injured by governmental 
agencies can recover, others cannot: one injured while attending a community 
theater in a public park may recover * * *, but one injured in a children's 
playground may not * * *.

Id. 11 Cal. Rptr. 
at 92, 359 P.2d  at 460 (citations omitted).

[¶124.]            
The moral persuasion and the humanistic logic of Muskopf led numerous 
other states to follow, including finally this state.

Only the vestigial 
remains of such governmental immunity have survived; its requiem has long been 
foreshadowed. For years the process of erosion of governmental immunity has gone 
on unabated. The Legislature has contributed mightily to that erosion. The 
courts, by distinction and extension, have removed much of the force of the 
rule. Thus, in holding that the doctrine of governmental immunity for torts for 
which its agents are liable has no place in our law we make no startling break 
with the past but merely take the final step that carries to its conclusion an 
established legislative and judicial trend.

Id. 11 Cal. Rptr. 
at 95, 359 P.2d  at 463. Our utilization of the persuasion of Muskopf in Oroz, 
575 P.2d 1155 justified evaluation that its moral and logical content cannot be 
disregarded in properly reviewing the present actions of this court for what 
should be good law today.

[¶125.]            
County of Los Angeles v. Superior Court of Los Angeles County, 62 Cal. 2d 839, 44 Cal. Rptr. 796, 402 P.2d 868 (1965) carries forward the persuasion of 
Muskopf in current testing of equal protection by use of the reasoned scrutiny 
review standard. See likewise Serrano v. Priest, 5 Cal. 3d 584, 96 Cal. Rptr. 601, 
487 P.2d 1241 (1971), which became a monumentally important case on education 
and led the way for later developments in Wyoming in Washakie County School 
Dist. No. One v. Herschler, 606 P.2d 310 (Wyo.), cert. denied sub nom. Hot 
Springs County School District Number 1 v. Washakie County School District 
Number 1, 449 U.S. 824, 101 S. Ct. 86, 66 L. Ed. 2d 28 (1980). The California court 
in Brown v. Merlo, 8 Cal. 3d 855, 106 Cal. Rptr. 388, 506 P.2d 212 (1973), like 
Wyoming in Nehring v. Russell, 582 P.2d 67 (Wyo. 1978) five years later, 
declared the guest statute to be unconstitutional. Overinclusion was the vice of 
the statute to be observed. Brown, 106 Cal. Rptr.  at 103, 506 P.2d  at 227. See 
Tussman and tenBroek, The Equal Protection of the Laws, 37 Cal.L.Rev. 341, 
351-52 (1949) and Van Alstyne, Governmental Tort Liability: A Public Policy 
Prospectus, 10 UCLA L.Rev. 463 (1963). Erratic and fortuitous operation of a 
statute denied the requirements of equal protection, including citation of 
Harvey, 203 N.E.2d 573 and its rejection of a place classification as 
constitutionally discretionary. The court in Brown, 506 P.2d  at 216-17 (emphasis 
in original) said:

A classification "must be 
reasonable, not arbitrary, and must rest upon some ground of difference having a 
fair and substantial relation to the object of the legislation, so that all 
persons similarly circumstanced shall be treated alike."

See also 
American Bank & Trust Co. v. Community Hospital of Los Gatos-Saratoga, Inc., 
104 Cal. App. 3d 219, 163 Cal. Rptr. 513, 517 (1980). It is my persuasion that the 
authorities demonstrate that reasonable rationality as a test cannot be 
fulfilled where the determinant is accident of place.

[¶126.]            
The Florida judiciary in early progression to justice solved the problem 
of immunity at least in part by recision in Hargrove v. Town of Cocoa Beach, 96 So. 2d 130, 132 (Fla. 1957):

Assuming that the 
immunity rule had its inception in the Men of Devon case, and most legal 
historians agree that it did, it should be noted that this case was decided in 
1788, some twelve years after our Declaration of Independence. Be that as it 
may, our own feeling is that the courts should be alive to the demands of 
justice. We can see no necessity for insisting on legislative action in a matter 
which the courts themselves originated.

The problem in Florida 
has become more confusing because of an effort to prune and pare the rule of 
immunity rather than to uproot it bodily and lay it aside as we should any other 
archaic and outmoded concept. This pruning approach has produced numerous 
strange and incongruous results.

Excluding the 
legislative or judicial function that might be exercised with immunity, that 
court held:

Subject to the 
limitations above announced, we here merely hold that when an individual suffers 
a direct, personal injury proximately caused by the negligence of a municipal 
employee while acting within the scope of his employment, the injured individual 
is entitled to redress for the wrong done. To support the rule we hearken back 
to our original Florida precedent, City of Tallahassee v. Fortune, supra [3 Fla. 
19 (1850)]. Our judicial forbears there held that where an individual suffers a 
special personal damage not common to the community but proximately resulting 
from the negligence of the municipal corporation acting through its employees, 
such individual is entitled to redress. We think this general rule was sound 
when it was announced in 1850 and it should be reestablished as the law of 
Florida. Within the framework of the above announced limitations this is the 
rule of our present opinion. In this vein, we therefore point out that instead 
of disregarding the rule of stare decisis, we now merely restore the original 
concepts of our jurisprudence to a position of priority in order to eradicate 
the deviations that have in our view detracted from the justice of the initial 
rule.

Id. at 133-34 
(footnote omitted). See also Thompson v. City of Jacksonville, 130 So. 2d 105 
(Fla.App. 1961), cert. denied 147 So. 2d 530 (Fla. 1962), limited later to 
exclude intentional torts of municipal employees.

[¶127.]            
Alabama likewise recognized the incongruity of a discriminatory denial of 
justice in Chandler v. Hospital Authority of City of Huntsville, 500 So. 2d 1012 
(Ala. 1986) and Peddycoart v. City of Birmingham, 354 So. 2d 808 (Ala. 1978) to 
be even judicially unacceptable under the application of a rational basis 
standard. See likewise, Jackson v. Mannesmann Demag Corp., 435 So. 2d 725 (Ala. 
1983), court access. See also Sweeney v. State, 768 S.W.2d 253 (Tenn. 1989), 
dangerous highway with notice and City of Dallas v. Donovan, 768 S.W.2d 905 
(Tex. App. 1989), missing stop signs and actual notice determinants of 
governmental liability. Case law in Missouri affords scant support for this 
instant decision. The court in Jones v. State Highway Commission, 557 S.W.2d 225, 227 n. 1 (Mo. 1977), as a comprehensive and well-reasoned opinion, 
abrogated sovereign immunity against tort liability and recognized by footnote 
that twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia had, by judicial decision 
to some degree, done the same.14 That court reflected that "[o]ur 
duty is to respond to the claims which come before us in a manner consistent 
with the principles embedded in our constitution, statutes, and judicial 
precedents. This requires, on rare occasions, as it does today, that we reject 
an earlier rule." Id. at 227. As citing for earlier discussion on the nature of 
contemporary judicial processes, Jones, 557 S.W.2d  at 227 n. 2 cites Day, Why 
Judges Must Make Law, 26 Case W.L.Rev. 563 (1976); Dworkin, Hard Cases, 88 
Harv.L. Rev. 1057 (1975); and Hart, Law in the Perspective of Philosophy: 
1776-1976, 51 N.Y.U.L.Rev. 538 (1976). Subsequent authority is suggested in 
Winston v. Reorganized School Dist. R-2, Lawrence County, Miller, Mo., 636 S.W.2d 324 (Mo. 1982) after the state legislature had adopted a tort claim code. 
Where immunity was expressly waived "as to tort claims arising from the 
operation of motor vehicles or from the condition of a public entity's 
property," that law did not create the place discriminatory attribute here 
affixed by Chapter 89. Id. at 328 (emphasis in original).

[¶128.]            
That court recognized:

Care can be taken in the 
selection and supervision of persons authorized to operate motor vehicles and 
detailed plans developed to control their use. Similar care may be exercised as 
to persons who maintain the public entities' property, and once on notice of a 
dangerous condition, remedial action may be undertaken to correct 
it.

Id. at 
329.

[¶129.]            
The Arkansas court similarly considered governmental immunity for 
municipalities in Parish v. Pitts, 244 Ark. 1239, 429 S.W.2d 45 (1968) and 
abolished immunity except for conduct involving judgment or discretion or 
judicial or legislative activities. The legislature acted by reinstitution and a 
general immunity structure was enacted. Hardin v. City of Devalls Bluff, 256 
Ark. 480, 508 S.W.2d 559 (1974); Sullivan v. Pulaski County, 247 Ark. 259, 445 S.W.2d 94 (1969). In Kentucky, a bill for a capped total for recovery for 
liability for a single incident was justified in Com. v. Daniel, 266 Ky. 285, 98 S.W.2d 897 (1936). A converse result as to a special bill is found in Com. v. 
McCoun, 313 S.W.2d 585 (Ky. 1958), where a special bill was invalidated since a 
general statute had been enacted. The legislature had enacted a claims act code. 
See University of Kentucky v. Guynn, 372 S.W.2d 414 (Ky. 1963).

[¶130.]            
In Pruett v. City of Rosedale, 421 So. 2d 1046 (Miss. 1982), the supreme 
court abolished immunity perspectively by recognizing the judicial creation and 
beneficial judicial abrogation. Mississippi was then one of only six states 
without some action.

For a good many years 
now, state after state has decided that the principle that the King [state] can 
do no wrong is not a legal principle that should receive a blanket application 
in modern times. There are many examples of the inequities involved in this 
principle. Under modern times, it is disadvantageous to both members of the 
public and members of the sovereign state. For the layman, an appropriate 
example would be where a conservation officer while on business for the state 
and operating an uninsured state vehicle, in the process of trying to apprehend 
a violator, and for some negligent reason, lost control of the state vehicle and 
injures an innocent person, both the injured person and the state employee are 
in deep trouble. All the state has to do is say, "we are the sovereign king and 
you do not have a claim for your injuries received through no fault of yours." 
Furthermore, the state employee is subject to a personal suit and the entire 
matter would have a great chance of ruining two persons, both the state employee 
and the innocent member of the public.

Id. at 1047. The 
legislature reacted by a general moratorium and partial remission where 
liability insurance was obtained with the moratorium to end on or after July 1, 
1987 and the state in October 1, 1987 as political subdivisions. See McFadden v. 
State, 542 So. 2d 871 (Miss. 1989); Region VII, Mental Health-Mental Retardation 
Center v. Isaac, 523 So. 2d 1013 (Miss. 1988) and Strait v. Pat Harrison Waterway 
Dist., 523 So. 2d 36 (Miss. 1988).

[¶131.]            
The Rhode Island court recognized that "[t]he immunization of municipal 
corporations from liability for the tortious conduct engaged in by their 
officers or servants during the performance of a governmental function has been 
repudiated repeatedly during the last decade." Becker v. Beaudoin, 106 R.I. 562, 
261 A.2d 896, 899 (1970). That court then held that the immunity conferred by 
the courts was abrogated perspectively. The New Jersey Supreme Court similarly 
observed:

It is plainly unjust to 
refuse relief to persons injured by the wrongful conduct of the State. No one 
seems to defend that refusal as fair. There has been a steady movement away from 
immunity. In some jurisdictions, the change has been achieved by judicial 
decision, Muskopf v. Corning Hospital District, 55 Cal. 2d 211, 11 Cal. Rptr. 89, 
359 P.2d 457 (1961); Stone v. Arizona Highway Comm., 93 Ariz. 384 381 P.2d 107 
(1963), and in others by statutes which consented to suit in the courts or 
provided for relief before an administrative or legislative body.

Willis v. 
Department of Conservation and Economic Development, 55 N.J. 534, 264 A.2d 34, 
36 (1970). In consequent action to comply with theory, immunity was eliminated 
without expression of "an ultimate doctrine." See Frank Briscoe Co., Inc. v. 
Rutgers the State University and College of Medicine and Dentistry of New 
Jersey, 130 N.J. Super. 493, 327 A.2d 687 (1974). Special legislation challenged 
the Connecticut court by consideration of equal protection constraints in 
voiding a Sunday closing blue law, Caldor's, Inc. v. Bedding Barn, Inc., 177 
Conn. 304, 417 A.2d 343 (1979), and then rejecting a discriminatory place law in 
Ryszkiewicz v. City of New Britain, 193 Conn. 589, 479 A.2d 793 (1984), which 
limited recovery for the torts of that city. The limitation did not apply to 
other municipalities of the state in citing with approval Peddycoart, 354 So. 2d 808 and Flax, 596 P.2d 446. The place classification as differentiating towns 
could not be constitutionally justified.15

[¶132.]            
The Supreme Court of Indiana considered its immunity standard in a state 
contaminated beach injury case, Perkins v. State, 252 Ind. 549, 251 N.E.2d 30, 
32-33 (1969):

There is no plain, 
unequivocal statement in the Constitution that the State of Indiana shall be 
immune against suits imposing a liability for damages; only an inference might 
be drawn from the above section. As we read this section it occurs to us that 
the framers of the Constitution assumed that at common law the State was immune 
from suit and authorized the legislature to modify such liability to the extent 
it may see fit, providing that no private acts or special acts were passed for 
the benefit of some individual. We are dealing here not with a constitution 
prohibition, but rather with a principle of common law which has its roots in 
the ancient common law of England which held "The King can do no wrong" and 
hence could not be sued in any court of law. Blackstone's Commentaries on The 
Law, Gavit's Ed., p. 111.

* * * * * *

The common law changes. 
The principle of stare decisis should not always confine our thinking in any 
case. There has been within the last two or three decades considerable 
revaluation and consideration with reference to the principle of sovereign 
immunity.

Circumstances in bygone 
ages may have warranted some of the rather strict principles found in the common 
law relative to sovereign and charitable immunities. However, the common law of 
today is not a frozen mold of ancient ideas, but such law is active and dynamic 
and thus changes with the times and growth of society to meet its 
needs.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, in 
a discussion of early forms of liability in his "Common Law", pp. 36, 37, 1881 
Ed., makes this statement with reference to its development:

"* * * The truth is that 
the law is always approaching, and never reaching, consistency. It is forever 
adopting new principles from life at one end, and it always retains old ones 
from history at the other, which have not yet been absorbed or sloughed off. It 
will become entirely consistent only when it ceases to grow."

That court then 
held in quoting the California case of People v. Superior Court of City and 
County of San Francisco, 29 Cal. 2d 754, 178 P.2d 1 (1947) that "`[w]here the 
state engages in industrial or business enterprises as distinguished from purely 
governmental activities, tort liability attaches.'" Perkins, 251 N.E.2d  at 
34-35. That court then left unanswered the comparable question of immunity for 
governmental actions and functions. See however, Johnson v. St. Vincent 
Hospital, Inc., 273 Ind. 374, 404 N.E.2d 585 (1980), where the medical 
malpractice act was constitutionally justified in providing limitations for 
recovery and diminution of the injured party's right to jury.

[¶133.]            
One of the leading cases addressing the national trend against continued 
immunity was authored for Illinois law in Molitor v. Kaneland Community Unit 
Dist. No. 302, 18 Ill. 2d 11, 163 N.E.2d 89 (1959), cert. denied 362 U.S. 968, 80 S. Ct. 955, 4 L. Ed. 2d 900 (1960). In recognizing that the asserted basis of 
immunity, Men of Devon, 100 Eng.Rep. 359, had been overruled in England in 1890, 
the court surveyed government tort law for Illinois and recognized the 
dissatisfaction with continuation:

As was stated by one 
court, "The whole doctrine of governmental immunity from liability for tort 
rests upon a rotten foundation. It is almost incredible that in this modern age 
of comparative sociological enlightenment, and in a republic, the medieval 
absolutism supposed to be implicit in the maxim, `the King can do no wrong,' 
should exempt the various branches of the government from liability for their 
torts, and that the entire burden of damage resulting from the wrongful acts of 
the government should be imposed upon the single individual who suffers the 
injury, * * *." * * * [C]ourts have overlooked the fact that the Revolutionary 
War was fought to abolish that "divine right of kings" on which the theory is 
based.

Molitor, 163 N.E.2d  at 94 (quoting Barker v. City of Santa Fe, 47 N.M. 85, 136 P.2d 480, 482 
(1943)).

[¶134.]            
The Illinois court recognized that providing responsibility for 
negligence, by abolishing immunity, would secure the public good by increasing 
safety: 

As Dean Harno said: "A 
municipal corporation today is an active and virile creature capable of 
inflicting much harm. Its civil responsibility should be co-extensive. The 
municipal corporation looms up definitely and emphatically in our law, and what 
is more, it can and does commit wrongs. This being so, it must assume the 
responsibilities of the position it occupies in society." (Harno, Tort Immunity 
of Municipal Corporations, 4 Ill.L.Q. 28, 42.)

Id. 163 N.E.2d  
at 95-96. In reversing summary denial of relief by the trial court, the tribunal 
concluded "that the rule of school district tort immunity is unjust, unsupported 
by any valid reason, and has no rightful place in modern day society." Id. at 
96.

[¶135.]            
A similar resolution followed for a park district immunity in Harvey, 203 N.E.2d 573. An irrational classification could not be justified for 
constitutional denial of the remedy for the injury negligently 
inflicted.

Many of the activities 
that frequently give rise to tort liability are common to all governmental 
units. The operation of automobiles is an obvious example. From the perspective 
of the injured party, or from the point of view of ability to insure against 
liability for negligent operation, there is no reason why one who is injured by 
a park district truck should be barred from recovery, while one who is injured 
by a city or village truck is allowed to recover, and one injured by a school 
district truck is allowed to recover only within a prescribed limit. And to the 
extent that recovery is permitted or denied on an arbitrary basis, a special 
privilege is granted in violation of section 22 of article IV.

Id. at 576. 
Furthermore, an improper pattern of discrimination based on the agency of 
responsibility is logically comparable to the place-defined-patchwork effect of 
Chapter 89. See the effect of insurance in Sullivan v. Midlothian Park Dist., 51 Ill. 2d 274, 281 N.E.2d 659 (1972). See also Baum, Tort Liability of Local 
Governments and Their Employees: An Introduction to the Illinois Immunity Act, 
1966 U.Ill.L.F. 981 (1966).

[¶136.]            
Ohio became a principal state in immunity litigation as substantively 
pursued at an early date in Raudabaugh v. State, 96 Ohio St. 513, 118 N.E. 102 
(1917). A constitutional clause fairly similar to the last sentence of Wyo. 
Const. art. 1, § 8, "`Suits may be 
brought against the state, in such courts and in such manner, as may be provided 
by law,'" was considered in determining whether or not the provision was 
self-executing in character. Raudabaugh, 118 N.E.  at 102 (quoting Ohio Const. 
art. 1, § 16) (emphasis in original). The case held "that the provision of the 
Ohio Constitution * * * is not self-executing, and that legislative authority by 
statute is required as a prerequisite to the bringing of an action against the 
state in its own courts." Id. at 103. Despite a recognition of a "widespread 
criticism," the decision was restated in 1972 in the case of Krause v. State, 31 
Ohio St.2d 132, 285 N.E.2d 736 (1972). A general elimination of immunity for the 
operation of motor vehicles as strained by exception of active duty operation 
for police and firemen was validated for constitutional classification in Nanna 
v. Village of McArthur, 44 Ohio App.2d 22, 335 N.E.2d 712 (1974).

[¶137.]            
Contrary to Indiana, provisions of the Ohio medical practice act were 
invalidated for improper classification on a constitutional perspective. The 
court held "[t]here is no satisfactory reason for this separate and unequal 
treatment" between medical malpractice litigation and other tort proceedings. 
Graley v. Satayatham, 343 N.E.2d 832, 837 (Ohio 1976). Furthermore, "[e]ven 
remaining within the area of the professions, it is notable that the special 
consideration given to the medical profession by these statutes is not given to 
lawyers or dentists or others who are subject to malpractice suits." Id. at 837. 
In Haverlack v. Portage Homes, Inc., 2 Ohio St.3d 26, 442 N.E.2d 749 (1982), the 
court held that the abolition of immunity as applied to municipal corporations 
also abrogated the doctrine of governmental immunity for park districts. In 
Marrek v. Cleveland Metroparks Bd. of Com'rs, 9 Ohio St.3d 194, 459 N.E.2d 873 
(1984), a differentiation was established between exercise of a legislative or 
judicial function or the exercise of executive or planning function compared to 
negligence of employees in the performance of their activities. Failure to 
supervise a sledding area evoked conduct not protected by governmental immunity. 
However, a statutory immunity for all property owners under the circumstance was 
said to apply to the claimant as a recreational user. Consequently, the district 
did not owe a duty to the user to keep the premises safe for use. Citation of 
this authority for an immunity perspective is improvident. Related directly to 
Ohio law, an interesting comparison is provided by Howarth, Sovereign Immunity - 
An Argument Pro, 22 Clev.St.L.Rev. 48 (1973) and Sindell, Sovereign Immunity - 
An Argument Con, 22 Clev.St.L.Rev. 55 (1973). See also Murray and Murray, The 
Unconstitutionality of Sovereign Immunity in Ohio - Last Stand for the 
Illegitimate King, 18 U.Tol.L.Rev. 77, 77 (1986):

Ohio courts have 
witnessed as long and fierce a battle over the doctrine of sovereign immunity as 
any courts in the nation. Victory has passed between the citizens and the 
government with the balance of sovereign power and individual rights dependent 
upon contemporary notions of justice.

See Note, 
Interpreting the Tort Liability of the State of Ohio: Reynolds v. State, 48 Ohio 
St.L.J. 577 (1987). Hardy v. VerMeulen, 32 Ohio St.3d 45, 512 N.E.2d 626 (1987), 
cert. denied 484 U.S. 1066, 108 S. Ct. 1029, 98 L. Ed. 2d 993 (1988) is persuasive 
in addressing medical malpractice statutory denial of a right to a 
remedy.

[¶138.]            
Another of the principal opinions rejecting continued validity for 
immunity was provided by Spanel v. Mounds View School District No. 621, 264 
Minn. 279, 118 N.W.2d 795 (1962) by prospectively overruling the doctrine of 
immunity with respect to tort claims against school districts. Further attention 
concluded that a claim statute was discriminatory, Glassmann v. Miller, 356 N.W.2d 655 (Minn. 1984), and denial of right of any recipient of worker's 
compensation was improper, Bernthal v. City of St. Paul, 376 N.W.2d 422 (Minn. 
1985). In Bernthal, the court considered two potentially identifiable purposes 
which may have fueled the enactment process: elimination of benefit to an 
insurance carrier and protection of the government entity from financial 
responsibility. However, the opinion went on to say:

Assuming the two 
identified purposes of [the statute], are legitimate, the question remains 
whether the classification the statute creates permissibly furthers these 
purposes. To be constitutional, it must have been reasonable for the legislators 
to believe that use of the classification would promote the identified purposes. 
Furthermore, the classification, even if 
it does further the purpose, cannot withstand rationality analysis if the 
classification is based upon "criteria wholly unrelated to the objective of" the 
statute. Reed v. Reed, 404 U.S. 71, 76, 92 S. Ct. 251, 254, 30 L. Ed. 2d 225 
(1971). The classification "must rest upon some ground of difference having a 
fair and substantial relation to the object of the legislation, so that all 
persons similarly circumstanced shall be treated alike." Royster Guano Co. v. 
Virginia, 253 U.S. 412, 415, 40 S. Ct. 560, 561-62, 64 L. Ed. 989 
(1920).

Id. at 425-26 
(emphasis added).

[¶139.]            
Williams v. City of Detroit, 364 Mich. 231, 111 N.W.2d 1 (1961) provided 
a similar anticipatory elimination of immunity on a closely divided vote.16 See Cooperrider, The Court, the 
Legislature, and Governmental Tort Liability in Michigan, 72 Mich.L.Rev. 187 
(1973).

[¶140.]            
Within the modernizing trend, the Nebraska court was first directed to 
municipal immunity:

Particularly during the 
past 10 years, judicial opinions in increasing volume have pointed out the fact 
that the reasons underlying the traditional wide-sweeping rule of sovereign 
immunity have virtually disappeared in modern society. The rule is today no 
longer just, reasonable, nor defensible. The judicial attack on the traditional 
rule of governmental immunity has resulted in judicial abrogation of the 
doctrine in several states. [Citing cases from California, Illinois, Florida, 
New Jersey, Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona.] See, also, Hink and Schulter, Some 
Thoughts on the American Law of Governmental Tort Liability, 20 Rutgers L.Rev. 
710 (1966); A Comment on Government Tort Immunity in Kansas, 16 Kan.L.Rev. 265 
(Jan. 1968).

The major conflict is no 
longer whether the traditional doctrine of governmental immunity from tort 
liability is obsolete and unjust, but, instead, lies in the area of the 
responsibility and power of the courts to reform it. For a discussion of the 
relative responsibility of courts and legislatures in this area, see, The Role 
of the Courts in Abolishing Governmental Immunity, Duke L.J. (1964), 888; Peck, 
The Role of the Courts and Legislatures in the Reform of Tort Law, 48 
Minn.L.Rev. 265.

* * * * * *

"The dozen or so state 
supreme courts that have recently abrogated the immunity doctrine have 
recognized that an unjust and irrational principle cannot be allowed to persist 
on the hollow ground that changing an antiquated rule is a job for the 
legislature." 16 Kan.L.Rev. 265 at .

Brown, 160 N.W.2d  at 806-07.

[¶141.]            
That Nebraska court determined to proceed by action

more effectively directed 
to a solution more narrowly limited to specific facts framed in litigated cases. 
Any modification ultimately shaped by this court should be limited to torts and 
should not be construed as imposing liability on any governmental body in the 
exercise of what might be termed "ministerial or discretionary functions" nor on 
the exercise of legislative or judicial or quasi-legislative or quasi-judicial 
functions.

Id. at 808. That 
court then held that cities and other governmental subdivisions and local public 
bodies were not immune from tort liability arising out of the ownership use and 
operation of motor vehicles. Brown is followed by the university track meet 
accident of Johnson v. Municipal University of Omaha, 184 Neb. 512, 169 N.W.2d 286, 288 (1969):

The issue of immunity and 
the issue of liability are two complete and distinct issues. The removal of 
governmental immunity in a specified area of tort actions does not impose 
absolute liability in place of immunity. It only makes a governmental entity 
subject to the same rules which apply to nongovernmental persons or corporations 
who do not have the shield of sovereign governmental immunity. In the posture of 
the case before us, the demurrer to the petition can be sustained only if the 
doctrine of governmental immunity applies to this case in its full traditional 
sweep.

The court said 
no. See Comment, The Doctrine of Governmental Immunity in Nebraska, 1 Creighton 
L.Rev. 79 (1968).

[¶142.]            
In Iowa, the legislature intervened by passage of a general tort claims 
act in purpose perceived by the court:

"We can only conclude the 
General Assembly saw no ultimate advantage to the state by continuing to cast 
upon some unfortunate individuals the full burden of damage done by the tortious 
conduct of state officers, agents or employees."

Hubbard v. 
State, 163 N.W.2d 904, 910 (Iowa 1969) (quoting Graham v. Worthington, 259 Iowa 
845, 860-61, 146 N.W.2d 626, 636-37 (1966)). The Iowa act was an open-end tort 
claim act with stated immunity exceptions. Lloyd v. State, 251 N.W.2d 551 (Iowa 
1977); Saxton v. State, 206 N.W.2d 85 (Iowa 1973).

[¶143.]            
Wisconsin moved from denied subrogation relief for car damage by applied 
immunity in Firemen's Ins. Co. of Newark, N.J. v. Washburn County, 2 Wis.2d 214, 
85 N.W.2d 840 (1957),17 to elimination of the immunity 
absolution in Holytz v. City of Milwaukee, 17 Wis.2d 26, 115 N.W.2d 618 
(1962).

Another problem which we 
foresee regarding the scope of this decision is the determination of what public 
bodies are within the scope of the abrogation of the rule. The case at bar 
relates specifically to a city; however, we consider that abrogation of the 
doctrine applies to all public bodies within the state: the state, counties, 
cities, villages, towns, school districts, sewer districts, drainage districts, 
and any other political subdivisions of the state - whether they be incorporated 
or not. By reason of the rule of respondeat superior a public body shall 
be liable for damages for the torts of its officers, agents and employees 
occurring in the course of the business of such public body.

So far as the state of 
Wisconsin and its various arms is concerned, a careful distinction must be made between 
the abrogation of the immunity doctrine and the right of a private party to sue 
the state.

Holytz, 115 N.W.2d  at 625 (emphasis added).

[¶144.]            
No smooth pathway to justice for the negligently injured in Wisconsin was 
to be found as witnessed by the recognized sovereign immunity in Cords v. State, 
62 Wis.2d 42, 214 N.W.2d 405 (1974), and the constitutionality of a liability 
cap in Sambs v. City of Brookfield, 97 Wis.2d 356, 293 N.W.2d 504, cert. denied 
449 U.S. 1035, 101 S. Ct. 611, 66 L. Ed. 2d 497 (1980) and Stanhope v. Brown 
County, 90 Wis.2d 823, 280 N.W.2d 711 (1979). Conversely, the coroner was not 
immunized from responsibility for fault without exercised discretion in Scarpaci 
v. Milwaukee County, 96 Wis.2d 663, 292 N.W.2d 816 (1980), and a public lake 
could unconstitutionally take according to Zinn v. State, 112 Wis.2d 417, 334 N.W.2d 67 (1983). Finally, the Milwaukee Brewer's baseball team merited review 
and protection from contended unconstitutional legislation which could permit an 
adjacent prison to be built. Milwaukee Brewers Baseball Club v. Wisconsin Dept. 
of Health and Social Services, 130 Wis.2d 79, 387 N.W.2d 254 (1986). North 
Dakota found immunity and no arbitrary or indefensible classification among tort 
victims to differentiate by government agencies with or without insurance, Patch 
v. Sebelius, 320 N.W.2d 511 (N.D. 1982), but a medical malpractice act denied a 
quid pro quo for the classification which invaded constitutional protection and 
was consequently invalid in Arneson v. Olson, 270 N.W.2d 125 (N.D. 1978). See 
also Lyons v. Lederle Laboratories, A Div. of American Cyanamid Co., 440 N.W.2d 769 (S.D. 1989).

[¶145.]            
Consequently, the demonstrated aversion of courts changed with delivery 
of justice to the denial concepts of immunity is nearly unanimous.

IX. FAILURE OF CHAPTER 89 
TO MEET THE CONSTITUTIONAL TESTS. IRRATIONALITY AT ITS WORST

[¶146.]            
It now becomes time unencumbered by the anachronism or illusions to 
medieval English kings to look at what Wyo. Const. art. 1, § 8 really 
says:

All shall be open and 
every person for an injury done to person, reputation or property shall have 
justice administered without sale, denial or delay. Suits may be brought against 
the state in such manner and in such courts as the legislature may by law 
direct.

That basic right 
is not quantified or qualified with sometimes or maybe limitations nor does that 
text expand the availability to legislative choice denying any rights when 
speaking only to the obligation to provide forum and process. I will also 
consider that the non-self-executing characterization as an ingredient of 
discussion in immunity cases as an outdated subject of dissertation cannot apply 
to special legislation which presently authorizes the denial of justice 
dependent upon where on public property the injury might occur.

[¶147.]            
The commonality of this character of crisis inspired immunity statute to 
the profusion of medical malpractice enactments provides persuasive logic for 
analysis of the modern direction of American law. Hoem, 756 P.2d 780 was not 
isolated in example reflecting a character of that constitutional law 
development. The statutes of repose creating a denial of constitutionally 
provided access to the courts is identically emplaced with a similarly created 
statutory bar to the injured as affected here by applied immunity.

[¶148.]            
In a singularly perceptive analysis, Note, The Unconstitutionality of 
Medical Malpractice Statutes of Repose: Judicial Conscience Versus Legislative 
Will, 34 Vill.L.Rev. 397 (1989), the author traces the current progress of 
constitutional law as the emerging trend to find such statutes to be 
unconstitutional. The author identifies an identical direction earlier achieved 
in the guest statute litigation. See Comment, The Constitutionality of 
Automobile Guest Statutes: A Roadmap to the Recent Equal Protection Challenges, 
1975 B.Y.U.L.Rev. 99 (1975) and Comment, The Common Law Basis of Automobile 
Guest Statutes, 43 U.Chi.L.Rev. 798 (1976). Those pervasive statutes as then 
enacted as an outgrowth of the depression were for a long time satisfied by 
adjudicatory approval and are now almost unanimously rejected, including 
Wyoming. Nehring, 582 P.2d 67.

[¶149.]            
This newly understood constitutional interest of a right for access to 
the courts - right to a remedy provision - as accommodating due process and 
equal protection is now engineering the crescendo of cases invalidating 
dehabilitary statutes of repose. This brings to our attention a climactic 
redirection of the courts by a whole series of cases, many of which arise in 
states with the more modernized attention to a singularly emplaced immunity bar, 
which invalidate preclusive statutes of repose.18 

[¶150.]            
Obviously the medical malpractice injured claimant who was denied access 
to justice by passage of a statutory time before he knew that he was injured or 
a claim might exist is no different from the traveler negligently inflicted with 
injury by the public official and then denied access to the courts by the 
character of the perpetrator of that injury through this newly created applied 
immunity.

[¶151.]            
It may well be despite the equal protection, due process and rights to a 
jury constitutional provisions that the premier objection to enforcement of 
statutes such as Chapter 89 arise from denial of the constitutional access to 
the courts, which guaranty is enumerated for Wyoming by Wyo. Const. art. 1, § 8. 
Inevitably, if guest statutes join dodo birds and statutes of repose follow the 
passenger pigeon to extinction, unconstitutional prohibition of remedy by 
specialized immunity cannot indefinitely be maintained as either morally or 
legally justified.19

[¶152.]            
There should be a general system for justice that is generally followed 
instead of erratically and irrationally applied for pigeon-hole results. There 
should also be a predominating concept, if not foundation to every rationally 
constituted system of tort law, assuring recovery to the injured person where 
fault is found. How are Wyoming's citizens to understand the justice delivery 
system they are paying for? The state says it can injure them and whether or not 
they are compensated will depend on the good fortune of the place where they are 
(or are not) injured.

[¶153.]            
The singular concept that is now produced by statutory deletion of these 
remedies for injury recovery and this majority opinion in construction 
absolution is that property is valued in protection when destroyed or taken by 
government, but damaged body or destroyed life should be unprotected from 
negligence and fault of the agents of government. As a further disintegration of 
reasoned principle for recovery within the umbrella of assertable protection 
provided by the constitution, I urgently dissent. Not only does the result lack 
practical moralism in individual rights to protection from society, but 
historical justification and precedential realism cannot be persuasively applied 
to authenticate the result achieved. We should compare constitutional inquiry 
for the right to sell used cars as a property interest, Roslindale Motor Sales, 
Inc. v. Police Com'r of Boston, 405 Mass. 79, 538 N.E.2d 312 (1989), with 
protection for negligent injury to body or life itself evidenced here. It is not 
too different from the right to price competitively as the constitutional right 
or the size of a newspaper, but not sanctity of body and existence. See Pirie v. 
Kamps, 68 Wyo. 83, 229 P.2d 927 (1951), as well as Langley, 84 P.2d 767 and cf. 
Bulova Watch Co., 371 P.2d 409. See also Quality Oil Co. v. E.I. du Pont De 
Nemours & Co., 182 Kan. 488, 322 P.2d 731 (1958). I cannot accommodate a 
degree of scrutiny to the right for recovery for injury to body or destruction 
of life with a lesser significance than acceptance of fair trade 
laws.

[¶154.]            
This present standard for invoking or waiving immunity according to the 
place of injury extends the boundaries of irrationality when used to deny rights 
to the citizens as the users of public facilities. On the streets and onto the 
parking lot across the sidewalk, government can inflict injury with immunity; 
but into the building, government is expelled from statism to reacquire 
responsibility like any other building owner.20

[¶155.]            
In assessing the creation of the 1986 immunities for government bodies in 
design, construction and maintenance of driveways and walkways, we need to 
reaffirm meaning to our constitution.

Equality of 
all.

In their inherent right 
to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, all members of the human race are 
equal.

Wyo. Const. art. 
1, § 2.

Due process of 
law.

No person shall be 
deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.

Wyo. Const. art. 
1, § 6.

No absolute, arbitrary 
power.

Absolute, arbitrary power 
over the lives, liberty and property of freemen exists nowhere in a republic, 
not even in the largest majority.

Wyo. Const. art. 
1, § 7.

Compensation for property 
taken.

Private property shall 
not be taken or damaged for public or private use without just 
compensation.

Wyo. Const. art. 
1, § 33.

Uniform operation of 
general law.

All laws of a general 
nature shall have a uniform operation.

Wyo. Const. art. 
1, § 34.

Special and local laws 
prohibited.

The legislature shall not 
pass local or special laws in any of the following enumerated cases, that is to 
say: * * * for limitation of civil actions * * *. In all other cases where a 
general law can be made applicable no special law shall be enacted.

Wyo. Const. art. 
3, § 27.

Damages for personal 
injuries or death not to be limited; workmen's compensation.

No law shall be enacted 
limiting the amount of damages to be recovered for causing the injury or death 
of any person.

Wyo. Const. art. 
10, § 4.

Dealing as we are called 
to do in this appeal with the freedom of government and public employees to maim 
or kill its citizens by negligent misconduct upon roadways or walkways, I cannot 
fit the result to be achieved into the constitutional limitations opposed by 
this array of the Wyoming constitutional protection. As a universal principle, 
these provisions of the Wyoming Constitution limit the power of the legislature 
and no act of that body can be sustained which conflicts with them. Atchison 
Street Ry. Co. v. Missouri Pac. Ry. Co., 31 Kan. 660, 3 P. 284, 286 
(1884).

Likewise, as we said in 
Hoem, 756 P.2d 780, proper examination requires denial of this degree of near 
aimless venture of the legislature into denial of guarantees of its citizens. 
Victims of tortious injuries should be no less protected if caused by public 
employees than would be the victims of medical malpractice. No less than there, 
Hoem, 756 P.2d  at 786, we again have strange bedfellows here, with directed 
interest to deny relief to those negligently injured. This enactment 
transgressed the Wyoming Constitution. Id. at 782. The really absurd result is 
now achieved. Stovall, 648 P.2d  at 548. Lacking the capacity applied there to 
construe to rationality, I conclude that the test of constitutionality is 
unachievable here.

[¶156.]            
The prayer of Justice Rose so forcefully stated in Jivelekas, 546 P.2d  at 
427-29 cannot be so casually discarded:

In his writing against 
the age-old acceptance of the traditional mistakes of the law which he found 
moribund by the chains of legal doctrinaire, Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo said in 
"Law and Literature," published in 1931:

"The time is ripe for 
betterment. `Le Droit a ses epoques,' says Pascal in words which Professor 
Hazeltine has recently recalled to us. The law has `its epochs of ebb and flow.' 
One of the flood seasons is upon us. Men are insisting, as perhaps never before, 
that law shall be made true to its ideal of justice. Let us gather up the 
driftwood, and leave the waters pure."

* * * * * *

The judicial conscience 
must no longer permit us to tolerate a principle of human behavior which, out of 
hand, denies the injured, the maimed and the loved ones of the dead a right of 
action against wrongdoing just because the wrongdoer is a servant of the state 
or municipality. If the state and its entities are to expose the people and 
their property to negligent acts, then government must expect to respond to 
suit.

[¶157.]            
The anachronism of immunity as first created and maintained by the 
inertia of the judiciary, Oroz, 575 P.2d 1155, becomes no less unfair to the 
injured or killed when reinstated by a crisis directed legislature which gives 
scant heed to the rights of its citizens and voters for security from publicly 
imposed tortious harm.[fn21] Again, although the origin of the variant theories 
of immunity may have been "`one of the mysteries of legal evolution,'" Oroz, 575 P.2d  at 1158 (quoting Borchard, Government Liability in Tort (parts 13), 34 Yale 
L.Rev. 1, 4 (1924)), there should be no mistaking what the current emplacement 
does for access to justice in cases where those are unfortunately injured by the 
negligent acts of certain defined government employees who provide driveways and 
walkways for the public use. See for example, Recent Decision, Tort Law - 
Governmental Liability for Injuries Caused by Open and Obvious Dangers, 27 
Ariz.L.Rev. 285 (1985).

[¶158.]            
I cannot accept handwringing for the negligently injured.

Due to the persistence of 
the doctrine of sovereignty and its corollaries, and to the various judicial 
doctrines that have grown up in respect to the responsibility of the state and 
its officers, great injustice is done to many individuals in connection with the 
functioning of the modern state. Most of the difficulties that have arisen in 
the past could be avoided by the establishment of a proper ethical and legal 
basis for responsibility.

Blachly and 
Oatman, supra, 9 Law and Contemp.Probs. at 213.

[¶159.]            
It is not my perception nor do I say that no immunity for any 
governmental activity which endangers rights of citizens can ever be created. 
Kaisner, 543 So. 2d 732. Cf. McCracken v. City of Lawton, 648 P.2d 18, 20 n. 3 
(Okla. 1982); Hershel v. University Hospital Foundation, 610 P.2d 237, 242 
(Okla. 1980) (Opala, J., specially concurring). Nevertheless, Chapter 89 cannot 
be pulled through constitutional guarantees to extricate out a valid legislative 
act. Practical problems of government do not require this kind of injustice 
accommodation. Dandridge v. Williams, 397 U.S. 471, 90 S. Ct. 1153, 25 L. Ed. 2d 491, reh'g denied 398 U.S. 914, 90 S. Ct. 1684, 26 L. Ed. 2d 80 (1970). Nor can I 
find a distinction rationally drawn to address a legitimate purpose, Western and 
Southern Life Ins. Co. v. State Bd. of Equalization of California, 451 U.S. 648, 
101 S. Ct. 2070, 68 L. Ed. 2d 514 (1981); Vance v. Bradley, 440 U.S. 93, 99 S. Ct. 939, 59 L. Ed. 2d 171 (1979), except to reduce rights of citizens for justice at 
an anticipated saving by absolved negligent conduct of government. No more 
fundamental interest can be perceived than freedom from unjustified negligent 
activity to damaging body or denying continued life. Certainly, neither a life 
insurance premium tax nor retirement age is intrinsic to maintenance of 
Wyoming's constitutional guarantees. Injury or loss of life is no less effacious 
whether resulting from simple negligence or gross misbehavior. White, 661 P.2d  
at 1275. Pain after injury cannot differentiate the intent of the perpetrators. 
Cf. Lentz v. Morris, 236 Va. 78, 372 S.E.2d 608 (1988). Justification is again 
not advanced by comparison or litigation resulting from congressional efforts to 
promote nuclear power. See Duke Power Co. v. Carolina Environmental Study Group, 
Inc., 438 U.S. 59, 98 S. Ct. 2620, 57 L. Ed. 2d 595 (1978), where a remedy is 
granted to provide due process and equal protection on the monstrous difference 
where no remedy will be provided for death or injury. Neither can absolution 
from liability and responsibility as provided by Chapter 89 be compared with the 
discretionary function immunity since differentiation between discretionary 
ministerial conduct has already been abolished by W.S. 1-39-102(b). See Grant v. 
Davis, 537 So. 2d 7 (Ala. 1988). Cf. Denver Buick, Inc. v. Pearson, 465 P.2d 512 
(Wyo. 1970), which distinguished the difference now abolished.

[¶160.]            
In equal protection and due process perspectives, attacks for justice may 
have usually failed where sovereign immunity was invoked if the claim sounded in 
tort except for the private bill disconsonance of constitutional application. 
Had the text of Chapter 89 been confined to issues of only sovereign immunity, 
then we would have this case confined to the irrationality special interest 
classification for applied immunity and a somewhat relatable thesis that 
original injustice may not be unconstitutional until eliminated and then 
reinstated by succeeding legislation. Cf. O'Bannon, 770 S.W.2d 215. This calls 
us to consider that even though the original injustice was unchallengeable, its 
reinstitution as reinstatement after elimination can be proscribed 
constitutionally. Tested is the question whether the socially absurd structure 
of injustice and denied rights when once forsaken by society can then be 
constitutionally restored to directly infect due process, equal protection and 
rights of access to the judicial system. An opposite view would almost believe 
that Brown v. Board of Education, might be written out of our collective 
knowledge and that the prior idiom of separate but equal restored to the social 
practice of this nation for education and existence.

[¶161.]            
In a broader context, we are called to recognize that Rasputin is not 
dead. Immunity's intrinsic invalidity, unjustified constitutionality, yet its 
political resiliency confounds rational analysis. See Comment, The Doctrine of 
Sovereign Immunity in Wyoming: Current Status of the Doctrine and Arguments for 
Abrogation, XX Land & Water L.Rev. 221 (1985). See also Borchard, supra, 34 
Yale L.J. 1; Minge, supra, VII Land & Water L.Rev. at 229-62, 618-62; 
Comment, Wyoming's Governmental Claims Act: Sovereign Immunity With Exceptions - 
A Statutory Analysis, XV Land & Water L.Rev. 619 (1980); Note, Sovereign 
Immunity of the State of Wyoming. Oroz v. Board of County Commissioners of 
Carbon County, 575 P.2d 1155 (Wyo. 1978), XIV Land & Water L.Rev. 271 
(1979); and Note, Sovereign Immunity - A Still Potent Concept in Wyoming, 16 
Wyo.L.J. 304 (1962). 

[¶162.]            
The second problem is the irrationality of combining planning-design 
defects-discretionary and governmental decision making to accomplish a character 
of protected governmental activity from plain negligence in operation and 
maintenance of the facilities of society which cause injury to its citizens. 
Likewise, unjustified is failure to recognize the differing thesis invoked in 
comparisons between ministerial action and proprietary 
responsibility.

[¶163.]            
Perhaps the major problem now presented is the lack of logic and 
justification that attends a protected character of public activities for 
roadways, parking and sidewalks but not for buildings, recreation facilities, 
schools or the multitude of other activities within which government is the 
performer and the citizen is the user. I cannot rationalize the government 
retaining liability for vehicles on the roads but escaping liability for the 
roads upon which the vehicles ride. How all of that rationalization is justified 
despite the constitutional mandate escapes me. The broadened problem with 
Chapter 89 does not end with the state and sovereign immunity since the 
liability denial is charged to descend also to governmental immunity and the 
local units of government wherein past immunity may never have existed. If a 
road can be paved with uncompensated injury, a stopped sewer can also be plugged 
with immunization.

X. PRIVATE 
BILLS

[¶164.]            
The salve to conscience that has in recent time been used by the Wyoming 
legislature to absolve injustice from operation of immunity has been by a 
private act, immunity waiver and appropriation, which is clearly 
unconstitutional. These enactments violate both the expressed limitations and 
the uniformity philosophy of this state's constitution. Cloe and Marcus, Special 
and Local Legislation, 24 Ky.L.J. 351 (1936). Nevertheless, this back door 
hand-out process has been used by the legislature four times as a recognition of 
the expertise of lobbying, willingness of most legislators to ignore special 
bill limitations imposed in the constitution and to avoid injustice created by 
the out-dated deterrent earlier created by the judiciary called immunity. It is 
unfortunate, as reflected in this record, that this unconstitutional approach is 
now suggested as an alternative to a uniform and fair adjudicatory system as a 
basis upon which this recreated immunity is justified in 
legislation.

[¶165.]            
It is improper to suggest that unconstitutional private bills as waiver 
and appropriation should continue to be used in the future rather than a 
rational and even-handed state plan encompassing a dissection of constitutional 
responsibility and morality by this eager effort to provide individualized 
justice for those persons fortunate enough to have the needed legislative 
contacts. With such a process, I cannot assent and will not now as in the past 
ever join. See 1975 Wyo. Sess. Laws. ch. 171, serious injury to an inmate at the 
Wyoming Industrial Institute in 1970, authorization $100,000; 1981 Wyo. Sess. 
Laws ch. 61, Worthington, 598 P.2d 796, highway construction site accident, 
appropriation $500,000; 1982 Wyo. Sess. Laws ch. 24, serious highway accident, 
appropriation $500,000 and waiver of immunity; and 1983 Wyo. Sess. Laws ch. 10, 
serious Wyoming highway accident, appropriation $250,000 and waiver of 
immunity.[fn22] See Wyo. Const. art. 1, § 34, uniform operation of general law; 
Wyo. Const. art. 3, § 27, special, local laws prohibited; and Wyo. Const. art. 
3, § 36, prohibited appropriations.

[¶166.]            
The specific subject of private bills or special acts to remove immunity 
for one injured by an act of the governmental agent was directly addressed in 
Rector v. State, 495 P.2d 826, 827 (Okla. 1972) (quoting Article V, Section 59, 
Okla. Const.), by analysis of a provision similar to the Wyoming Constitution: 

"Laws of a general nature 
shall have a uniform operation throughout the State, and where a general law can 
be made applicable, no special law shall be enacted."[[fn23]]

The premier 
emplacement of a special law proscription came in Nehring, 582 P.2d 67, which 
invalidated Wyoming's forty-seven-year-old guest statute on the basis of its 
nature as special legislation after a dozen prior validating appellate 
decisions.

XI. 
CONCLUSION

[¶167.]            
Negligence is an attribute of human conduct and accidents are inevitable. 
Justice deserves a standard in operation which will provide protection for 
Wyoming citizens. That standard announced by United States Supreme Court Justice 
John Marshall of right and remedy for body and life should not be overwhelmed by 
the level of anxiety which drove the legislature to pass Chapter 89.

[¶168.]            
Immunity is an outmoded anachronism of questional history and parentage. 
In this appeal, the majority applies an unjustifiably limited standard of review 
to an irrationally created disturbance of basic rights in justice for reparation 
for injury or death. This classification when listed constitutionally should 
never be given life in the injury or death to which it appertains. I refuse to 
lock out the injured at the courthouse door. Daugaard v. Baltic Co-Op Bldg. 
Supply Ass'n, 349 N.W.2d 419 (S.D. 1984); Hardy, 512 N.E.2d 626. Our 
constitutional guarantees for access to the courts should not be converted into 
"useless appendage" at the whim of the legislature. Berry By and Through Berry 
v. Beech Aircraft Corp., 717 P.2d 670, 676 (Utah 1985). Deferring to the 
legislature can only amount to abdication of our judicial duty to protect the 
rights guaranteed by the constitution of this state, "the source and limit of 
legislative as well as judicial power." Nelson v. Krusen, 678 S.W.2d 918, 923 
(Tex. 1984).

[¶169.]            
In finding that Chapter 89 invidiously demeans and pollutes Wyoming's 
constitutional rights for justice, I respectfully dissent.

FOOTNOTES

1 Compare W.S. 1-39-105, 
motor vehicle liability, with W.S. 1-39-120(a)(iii), exclusion for weather 
maintenance of highways, and then interject W.S. 1-39-118(b), providing for 
liability to limit insurance "covering any acts or risks." Is safety as 
important today as it was before fiscal responsibility for damage was removed? 
Consider for example, two-way construction barricading for repair sites on the 
interstate. It is axiomatic that responsibility promotes attention to 
safety.

2 Minge, Governmental 
Immunity From Damage Actions in Wyoming, VII Land & Water L.Rev. 229, 229 
(1972) (quoting First Annual Message to Congress, 7 Richardson, Messages and 
Papers of the Presidents 3245, 3252 (1897)).

3 The Declaration of 
Independence para. 2 (U.S. 1776).

4 See for example, Leflar 
and Kantrowitz, Tort Liability of the States, 29 N.Y.U.L.Rev. 1363, 1407 (1954), 
with the classification of "Responsibility Almost Never Undertaken" including 
Wyoming and only seven other states; Van Alstyne, Governmental Tort Liability: A 
Decade of Change, 1966 U.Ill.L.F. 919 (1966); Comment, The State as a Party 
Defendant: Abrogation of Sovereign Immunity in Tort in Maryland, 36 Md.L.Rev. 
653 (1977); Note, Administration of Claims Against the Sovereign - A Survey of 
State Techniques, 68 Harv.L.Rev. 506 (1955).

5 Perhaps 100 
well-considered recent law journal reviews have been written on the subject of 
the tort crisis, but the only generally validated conclusion is that the crisis 
as sponsored by economic interests was more psychological than rational and none 
of the "cures" have altered the increase of insurance rates except where rights 
for innocent victims have been eliminated to reduce direct claim payments, but 
even then, the reduction in rate has not been proportional to the amount denied 
by the elimination of rights of citizens to recover for injuries sustained, 
e.g., Priest, The Current Insurance Crisis and Modern Tort Law, 96 Yale L.J. 
1521 (1987).

6 See Amar, Of Sovereignty 
and Federalism, 96 Yale L.J. 1425 (1987). "Victims of government-sponsored 
lawlessness have come to dread the word `federalism.' * * * Simply put, 
governments have neither `sovereignty' nor `immunity' to violate the 
Constitution[s]." Id. at 1425-27.

It therefore seems 
evident that at least in some cases, blanket government immunity from liability 
conflicts with the Constitution's structural principle of full remedies for 
violations of legal rights against government. What, then, can possibly justify 
the invocation of sovereign immunity in those cases? Surely not the text of the 
Constitution, for we have already seen that governmental claims to sovereign 
immunity have no textual basis.

Id. at 1489. See 
also Jackson, The Supreme Court, the Eleventh Amendment, and State Sovereign 
Immunity, 98 Yale L.J. 1 (1988).

Marbury v. Madison [5 
U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 2 L. Ed. 60 (1803)] proclaimed that the essence of civil 
liberty, of a government of laws and not of men, was the availability of a 
judicial remedy for governmental wrongdoing that invaded private legal rights. 
Against the force of this principle stood a common law tradition of sovereign 
immunity, a tradition of English law misunderstood in its transposition to the 
United States, but reinforced by early political battles of the young 
republic.

Id. at 126. Cf. 
Duffy, Sovereign Immunity, The Officer Suit Fiction, and Entitlement Benefits, 
56 U.Chi.L.Rev. 295 (1989) and Massey, State Sovereignty and the Tenth and 
Eleventh Amendments, 56 Chi.L.Rev. 61 (1989).

7 Hoem v. State, 756 P.2d 780 (Wyo. 1988); Rocky Mountain Oil and Gas Ass'n v. State, 749 P.2d 221 (Wyo. 
1987); Washakie County School Dist. No. One v. Herschler, 606 P.2d 310 (Wyo.), 
cert. denied sub nom. Hot Springs County School District Number 1 v. Washakie 
County School District Number 1, 449 U.S. 824, 101 S. Ct. 86, 66 L. Ed. 2d 28 
(1980); Witzenburger v. State ex rel. Wyoming Community Development Authority, 
575 P.2d 1100, reh'g denied 577 P.2d 1386 (Wyo. 1978). Comparably immersed in 
shame was the denial of required legislative reapportionment, State ex rel. 
Whitehead v. Gage, 377 P.2d 299 (Wyo. 1963); Note, Wyoming Legislative 
Reapportionment in the Light (?) of Baker v. Carr, 18 Wyo.L.J. 23 (1963). See 
Cranston v. Thomson, 530 P.2d 726 (Wyo. 1975); Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 82 S. Ct. 691, 7 L. Ed. 2d 663 (1962); and Schaefer v. Thomson, 240 F. Supp. 247 
(D.Wyo. 1964). See also Harris v. Shanahan, 192 Kan. 183, 387 P.2d 771 
(1963).

8 In the 1977 legislative 
session, a governmental claims act, House Bill 186, had also been passed by the 
legislature to be vetoed by the governor following objection by the office of 
the attorney general. Digest of House Journal, Forty-Fourth State Legislature of 
Wyoming 231 (1977).

9 See 1980 Wyo. Sess. Laws 
ch. 46; 1981 Wyo. Sess. Laws ch. 142; 1986 Wyo. Sess. Laws ch. 15; 1986 Wyo. 
Sess. Laws ch. 19; 1986 Wyo. Sess. Laws ch. 74; Chapter 89; 1986 Wyo. Sess. Laws 
ch. 142; 1986 Wyo. Sess. Laws ch. 181; 1987 Wyo. Sess. Laws ch. 93; and 1988 
Wyo. Sess. Laws ch. 45.

10 The repeal of W.S. 
1-39-111 as the public facilities section for the closed-end immunity statute 
has infinitely more complexities and effect than the exception to the immunity 
expulsions of W.S. 1-39-120. Strangely in litigation, appeal and now majority 
opinion, the most significant provision of Chapter 89 is completely ignored. As 
an example, the terminology of W.S. 1-39-111 in original enactment had changed 
from streets and alleys to public facilities. The change related to inclusion of 
rest facilities constructed by the highway department adjacent to the highway 
system. See Digest of House Journal, Forty-Fifth State Legislature of Wyoming 
128 (1979) and record for appeal, Stovall, 648 P.2d 543. Now apparently outside 
of the latrine door, immunity; inside of the building, W.S. 1-39-106, 
responsibility (unless one is to define highway rest facilities as recreation 
areas).

11 The challenge in concept 
is to anticipate what in addition to the geographical confines of walkways and 
driveways was immunized by W.S. 1-39-120 from liability as well as what happens 
to roads, bridges and sidewalks in parks and other recreational facilities. 
Outdoor national guard facilities perhaps could apply with institutions of 
confinement where outside activities do occur. See 1975 Wyo. Sess. Laws ch. 171. 
The incongruities that may result are presently unimaginable when related to all 
circumstances where injury to the body from negligence of the public employee 
can occur.

12 Or the King can do no 
wrong.

13 Unquestionably, the 
classic and most comprehensive intrinsic examination of the subject of 
governmental and sovereign immunity is Borchard, Government Liability in Tort 
(parts 1-3), 34 Yale L.J. 1, 129, 229 (1924); Borchard, Governmental 
Responsibility in Tort (parts 4-6), 36 Yale L.J. 1, 757, 1039 (1926-1927); 
Borchard, Governmental Responsibility in Tort (part 7), 28 Colum.L.Rev. 577 
(1928); and Borchard, Theories of Governmental Responsibility in Tort (part 8), 
28 Colum.L.Rev. 734 (1928). See also the definitive and thoroughly researched 
and carefully analyzed review as individualized to Wyoming in Minge, supra, VII 
Land & Water L.Rev. 229 and Minge, Governmental Immunity From Damage Actions 
in Wyoming - Part II, VII Land & Water L.Rev. 617 (1972). A course of 
education for bench, bar and legislator would not be unhealthy and might advance 
the recognition that the only validity of immunity in generic application is a 
feudalistic concept at best denied before statehood. The underpinnings is a 
thesis of federated governmental autocracy with a central theme that the 
perceived welfare of the system and majority justifies the sacrifice of the 
rights of the unlucky among the membership who sustain unjustified injury from 
fault, failure and neglect or negligence of that central authority. Curiously 
crossing the philosophic thesis of centralized autocracy and its supremacy to be 
isolated from responsibility for wrong, injury or death is a maintained standard 
that protection of property retains constitutional protection validity, but 
life, limb and health do not.

14 The thoughtful 
persuasion of an anticipatory dissent which presaged later developments is found 
in the consideration by Justice Finch in O'Dell v. School Dist. of Independence, 
521 S.W.2d 403 (Mo.), cert. denied 423 U.S. 865, 96 S. Ct. 125, 46 L. Ed. 2d 94 
(1975). He first discerned that the origination of the thesis of immunity was 
decisional, examined the reasons advanced for adaptation and dispositively 
eliminated retention justification. He remained on the court for the two years 
required to find his thesis adopted in Jones, 557 S.W.2d 225.

15 The New Hampshire court 
had more trouble. In Opinion of the Justices, 101 N.H. 546, 134 A.2d 279 (1957), 
a special immunity for an individual airport authority was held to be 
constitutional. Following thereafter in Merrill v. City of Manchester, 114 N.H. 
722, 332 A.2d 378 (1974), the judicially conferred immunity for cities and towns 
was abrogated except for legislative and judicial functions and executive and 
planning activities in the nature of exercised discretion. That immunity did not 
include the sovereign immunity absolution by the state itself. Sousa v. State, 
115 N.H. 340, 341 A.2d 282 (1975). Responding to Merrill, the legislature had 
adopted a tort claims provision which was held to be constitutional in Cargill's 
Estate v. City of Rochester, 119 N.H. 661, 406 A.2d 704 (1979). A rational basis 
inquiry was the test adopted and the limitation on recovery as a dollar cap as a 
statutory limit excepted. In dissent in Cargill's Estate, 406 A.2d  at 709 
(emphasis in original), Justice Douglas reaffirmed that "[t]he legislature seems 
to be saying to our citizens that it values their persons less than it does 
their property or character." He found a patent violation of denied 
constitutional remedy for injuries to person, property or character. 
Surprisingly then in a reversal of thesis, the court in a 1980 case, Carson v. 
Maurer, 120 N.H. 925, 424 A.2d 825 (1980), invalidated as unconstitutional the 
litigative constraints of a comprehensive medical practice act.

16 The concurring vote of 
Justice Black, which determined the case, affords an interesting 
perspective:

When a court of last 
resort divides according to what the reading public looks upon as political 
lines, the lone writer of a separate or distinct opinion usually finds himself a 
sort of rogue in the eyes of his divisively lined up Brethren. He is supposed - 
so I twig - to join one team or the other; failing which the dainty vestments of 
delicate ostracism are primly cast upon him. * * *

* * * * * *

* * * "`Judges, like 
doctors and others, are reluctant to admit they made mistakes. Then, too, there is plain old-fashioned 
animal laziness. It's a nuisance to revise what you have once settled. Out 
of such laziness comes what Holmes called "one of the misfortunes of the law," 
that "ideas become encysted in phrases and thereafter for a long time cease to 
provoke further analysis."' Courts On Trial, by Jerome Frank, Princeton 
University Press, 1950, pp. 272, 273."

* * * * * *

What indeed are judges to 
do as inexcusable injustice continues unremittingly before their very eyes; 
injustice occasioned by the overprotracted life of a rule made at common law by 
judges who knew naught of modern elevators and like appliances which, being 
negligently constructed or maintained by public authority, cause repetitious 
sufferings - as here - of totally innocent victims? Are judges powerless to act, 
as year after year goes by with primarily responsible legislators standing by, 
totally disinterested or politely amused at the plight of the 
courts?

The right answer is the 
same as given by life's teachings; teachings which are no stranger to the law. 
Action of any kind is always better than total inaction. Sins of cold-blooded 
omission invariably average out to greater error than sins of warm-hearted 
commission. As Dante tells us, the two will be weighed in different scales when 
the great day of Final Judgment arrives in our Highest Court.

Williams, 111 N.W.2d  at 10-12 (emphasis in original). To see what happened thereafter for 
immunized police officer conduct, see Anderson v. City of Detroit, 54 Mich. App. 
496, 221 N.W.2d 168 (1974).

17 This case included a 
statement as otherwise concepted in the character of injury case constitutional 
inquiries involving immunity "[v]ested property and contract rights stand in a 
very different category from inchoate remedies for acts which are not actionable 
at common law but are made so by statute." Firemen's Ins. Co. of Newark, N.J., 
85 N.W.2d  at 846. This feudalistic perception values in constitutional terms 
only property and contract, but not integrity of the body or maintenance of the 
life. Like a generic acknowledgement today that hanging immunity adjudication on 
the peg of Men of Devon is neither justified in logic nor approved in social 
conscientiousness. Any application for approval of immunity to differentiating 
rights to body and life from property is at least outmoded in today's realities 
of the worth of a person.

18 Kenyon, 688 P.2d 961; 
Austin v. Litvak, 682 P.2d 41 (Colo. 1984); Phelan v. Hanft, 471 So. 2d 648 
(Fla.App. 1985), appeal vacated 488 So. 2d 531 (Fla. 1986); Shessel v. Stroup, 
253 Ga. 56, 316 S.E.2d 155 (1984); Clark v. Singer, 250 Ga. 470, 298 S.E.2d 484 
(1983); Strahler v. St. Luke's Hosp., 706 S.W.2d 7 (Mo. 1986); Carson v. Maurer, 
120 N.H. 925, 424 A.2d 825 (1980); Gaines v. Preterm-Cleveland, Inc., 33 Ohio 
St.3d 54, 514 N.E.2d 709 (1987); Hardy, 512 N.E.2d 626; Mominee v. Scherbarth, 
28 Ohio St.3d 270, 503 N.E.2d 717 (1986); Reynolds v. Porter, 760 P.2d 816 
(Okla. 1988); Neagle v. Nelson, 685 S.W.2d 11 (Tex. 1985); Nelson v. Krusen, 678 S.W.2d 918 (Tex. 1984); Sax v. Votteler, 648 S.W.2d 661 (Tex. 1983); Kohnke v. 
St. Paul Fire & Marine Ins. Co., 140 Wis.2d 80, 410 N.W.2d 585, review 
granted 141 Wis.2d 983, 416 N.W.2d 296 (1987), aff'd on other grounds and 
remanded, 144 Wis.2d 352, 424 N.W.2d 191 (Wis. 1988). See also Phillips v. ABC 
Builders, Inc., 611 P.2d 821 (Wyo. 1980).

A statute of 
repose marks the boundary of a substantive right. A statute of limitation 
interposes itself only procedurally to bar the remedy after a substantive right 
has vested. Reynolds, 760 P.2d 816; Note, supra, 34 Vill.L.Rev. at 400. Cf. 
Lyons, 440 N.W.2d 769, unconstitutional statute of limitation for medical 
malpractice remedies.

19 An interesting analysis 
is made by the Ohio court in Hardy, 512 N.E.2d  at 628 in first quoting the 
earlier case of Kintz v. Harriger, 99 Ohio St. 240, 124 N.E. 168, 170 
(1919):

"1. The 
Constitution of Ohio, Bill of Rights, Section 16, provides, among other things, 
`Every person, for an injury done him in his land, goods, person, or reputation, 
shall have remedy by due course of law.'

"2. It is the 
primary duty of courts to sustain this declaration of right and remedy, wherever 
the same has been wrongfully invaded."

That court then 
considered the test for constitutionality:

The 
right-to-a-remedy provision of Section 16, Article I does not require the 
analysis of rational-basis that is used to decide due process or equal 
protection arguments against the constitutionality of legislation. The fault in 
[the statute] is that it denies legal remedy to one who has suffered bodily 
injury. This the legislature may not do even if it acted with a rational 
basis.

Hardy, 512 N.E.2d  at 629.

20 A parking lot within a 
building does pose a problem. Compare W.S. 1-39-120, parking area exclusion from 
immunity, with W.S. 1-39-106, eliminating immunity from any building, 
recreational area or public park. Consequently directed also, a town has 
liability for the safety of its municipal buildings for the user, but not so for 
streets, alleys and parking lots.

21 We cannot, as judges, 
lawyers or citizens, give proper expression in our work to anarchistic concept 
of natural law for which we are unable to give a rational basis. D. Richards, 
Toleration and the Constitution at 7 (1986).

Where also tort 
law is applicable to business and general conduct, I would find the two goals of 
compensation of victims and deterrents of misconduct persuasively significant. 
Immunity and irresponsibility have an intrinsic character of commonality when 
directed to human behavior. Responsiveness and responsibility equally attend 
directed conduct. Calabresi, Optimal Deterrence and Accidents, 84 Yale L.J. 656 
(1975). The authors in Murray and Murray, supra, 18 
U.Tol.L.Rev. at 122 (quoting Marbury, 5 U.S. at 163) (footnote omitted) 
appropriately concluded:

The new 
sovereign immunity act alters merely the form of the question, not the 
conclusion. If it remains true that, as Chief Justice Marshall wrote, "[t]he 
very essence of civil liberty consists in the right of every individual to claim 
the protection of the laws, whenever he receives an injury," civil liberties in 
a society which proclaims the people sovereign demands that the government stand 
accountable.

22 Only two legislators 
consistently voted "no" to these four back door immunity waiver legislative 
gambits; although generally speaking, most legislators recognized the 
constitutional irresponsibility in attempting to provide justice. The trouble 
with private bills is similar to embezzlement. Once you first choose to do what 
is wrong, it becomes easier to continue to do it with regularity 
thereafter.

23 See also Lucero v. 
New Mexico State 
Highway Dept., 55 N.M. 157, 228 P.2d 945 (1951); Jack 
v. State, 183 Okla. 375, 82 P.2d 1033 (1937); and Sirrine v. 
State, 132 S.C. 241, 128 S.E. 172 (1925). See also Keiderling v. Sanchez, 91 
N.M. 198, 572 P.2d 545 (1977); Reynolds, 760 P.2d 816; Milwaukee Brewers 
Baseball Club, 387 N.W.2d 254; Soo Line R. Co. v. Department of Transp., 
Division of Highways, 101 Wis.2d 64, 303 N.W.2d 626 (1981); and Cloe & 
Marcus, supra, 24 Ky.L.J. 351. Compare, however, Mai, Constitutionality of 
Special Bills for Private Relief, 6 Wyo.L.J. 261 (1952) and the moral obligation 
thesis of result-oriented decision, State ex rel. McPherren v. Carter, 30 
Wyo. 22, 215 P. 477 (1923); and State ex rel. 
Hanson v. Carter, 30 Wyo. 43, 215 P. 484 (1923). See also Phillips, 
611 P.2d 821 (Wyo. 1980); Washakie County School Dist. No. 
One, 606 P.2d 310; Mountain Fuel Supply Co. v. Emerson, 578 P.2d 1351 (Wyo. 
1978); Miller v. Board of County Commissioners of Natrona County, 79 Wyo. 502, 
337 P.2d 262 (1959); Ludwig v. Harston, 65 Wyo. 134, 197 P.2d 252 (1948); May v. 
City of Laramie, 58 Wyo. 240, 131 P.2d 300 (1942); State v. LeBarron, 24 Wyo. 
519, 162 P. 265 (1917); and Note, Limitation of Actions - Statute of Limitations 
for Architects and Builders as Special Legislation. Phillips v. ABC Builders, 
Inc., 611 P.2d 821 (Wyo. 1980), XVILand & Water L.Rev. 313 
(1981).