Source: https://law.justia.com/cases/iowa/supreme-court/1973/56088-0.html
Timestamp: 2019-10-19 22:18:04
Document Index: 285147263

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 613', '§ 613', '§ 613', '§ 613', '§ 613', '§ 613', '§ 614', '§ 613', '§ 613', '§ 613', '§ 613', '§ 613', '§ 613', '§ 332', '§ 613', '§ 613', '§ 613', '§ 613', '§ 613', '§ 6', '§ 613']

Lunday v. Vogelmann :: 1973 :: Iowa Supreme Court Decisions :: Iowa Case Law :: Iowa Law :: US Law :: Justia
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Lunday v. Vogelmann
Emmett LUNDAY, Jr., a minor, by his father and next friend, Emmett Lunday, Sr., Appellant, v. Henry VOGELMANN et al., Appellees.
The issue in this appeal is whether the notice of claim requirement of Code § 613 A. 5, relating to tort liability of governmental subdivisions, is unconstitutional as a denial of equal protection of the law. Trial court held it is not. We dismiss the appeal in part and affirm in part.
In response to a motion for more specific statement plaintiff amended his petition to acknowledge he did not serve notice of his claim on either the school district or the City within 60 days after his injury. In their answers the school district and City admitted the date of injury and plaintiff's failure to give notice of claim and affirmatively alleged the action is barred by failure to give such notice or to commence the action within three months of the date of injury as required by Code § 613 A. 5. By reply plaintiff alleged the notice requirement of Code § 613 A. 5 is unconstitutional. Subsequently plaintiff moved for adjudication of law points under rule 105, Rules of Civil Procedure, to secure an adjudication of the constitutionality of that notice requirement.
II. Constitutionality of Code § 613 A. 5. Plaintiff contends the notice provisions of Code § 613 A. 5 deny him equal protection of the law under Amendment 14 to the United States Constitution. He does not assert his minority tolled the notice requirement. That remains an open question under our statute. See Vermeer v. Sneller, 190 N.W.2d 389, 395-397 (Iowa 1971). Plaintiff relies upon his minority only in alleging that because Code § 613 A. 5 is unconstitutional, the applicable period of limitations is Code § 614.8 which extends the limitations in Code chapter 614 for a minor until one year after he reaches majority.
The sole issue for decision here is whether Code § 613 A. 5 does deny plaintiff equal protection of the law. That section is:
"613 A. 5 Limitation of actions. Every person who claims damages from any municipality for or on account of any wrongful death, loss or injury within the scope of section 613 A. 2 shall commence an action therefor within three months, unless said person shall cause to be presented to the governing body of the municipality within sixty days after the *907 alleged wrongful death, loss or injury a written notice stating the time, place, and circumstances thereof and the amount of compensation or other relief demanded. Failure to state the amount of compensation or other relief demanded shall not invalidate the notice; providing, the claimant shall furnish full information regarding the nature and extent of the injuries and damages within fifteen days after demand by the municipality. No action therefor shall be maintained unless such notice has been given and unless the action is commenced within two years after such notice. The time for giving such notice shall include a reasonable length of time, not to exceed ninety days, during which the person injured is incapacitated by his injury from giving such notice."
The purpose of the notice requirement of § 613 A. 5 is to provide a method for prompt communication of time, place and circumstances of injury so the municipality can investigate while facts are fresh. Norland v. Mason City, 199 N.W.2d 316, 318 (Iowa 1972). The basis for disparate classification of victims of governmental and private torts is explained in Sprung v. Rasmussen, 180 N.W.2d 430, 433 (Iowa 1970) as a condition placed by the legislature upon its abolition of sovereign immunity:
The fundamental motivation attributed to legislatures which have enacted such notice requirements is that where a governmental subdivision is involved the public has an interest it does not have as to claims against private persons in seeing prompt and thorough investigation of claims is made. This protects the public treasury from stale claims. Thomann v. City of Rochester, 230 App.Div. 612, 245 N.Y.S. 680 (1930). It permits prompt settlement of meritorious claims and facilitates *908 planning of municipal budgets. King v. Johnson, 47 Ill. 2d 247, 265 N.E.2d 874 (1970). The notice requirement also ensures that notices reach the public officers with responsibility to deal with them and in many instances should enable such officers to remedy defects in far-flung municipal property before other persons are injured.
We are unable and unwilling to say § 613 A. 5 is patently arbitrary and bears no rational relationship to a legitimate governmental interest. Plaintiff has not met his burden to prove the statute is unconstitutional.
A contrary result was reached in Reich v. State Highway Department, 386 Mich. 617, 194 N.W.2d 700 (1972). There the Michigan court held a similar statute denied equal protection because in abrogating sovereign tort immunity its legislature manifested an intent that victims of private and public torts be placed on equal footing. In view of our legislature's enactment of § 613 A. 5 as part of the same act in which it created new rights for victims of municipal tortfeasors, we have no basis to follow that reasoning here. Sprung v. Rasmussen, supra.
Plaintiff's argument against § 613 A. 5 would more properly be addressed to the legislature than to us.
Occasionally we should look up from our daily cut-from-pattern decision-making to note the long range effect of our activity on the fabric of justice. This case (latest of many involving § 613 A. 5, The Code, and its predecessor statute) in which we again deny a litigant his day in court, provides another occasion for such reflection.
"Rights of Persons. Section 1. All men * * * have certain inalienable rights among which are those of enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining safety and happiness." (Emphasis supplied.)
It would plainly impinge on basic rights to deny reasonable opportunity for redress in court to one who through the wrongful act of another has been permanently disabled, with a consequent inability to enjoy life and to follow a gainful occupation in order to acquire and possess property. But *909 to hold only a portion of the persons so affectedthose injured by the wrongful act of a municipalitymust suffer the astonishing constraints of a 60-day notice statute, additionally denies those persons equal protection of the law.
"It is to courts, or other quasi-judicial official bodies, that we ultimately look for the implementation of a regularized, orderly process of dispute settlement. Within this framework, those who wrote our original Constitution, in the Fifth Amendment, and later those who drafted the Fourteenth Amendment, recognized the centrality of the concept of due process in the operation of this system. Without this guarantee that one may not be deprived of his rights, neither liberty nor property, without due process of law, the State's monopoly over techniques for binding conflict resolution could hardly be said to be acceptable under our scheme of things. * * * "* * * Thus, this Court has seldom been asked to view access to the courts as an element of due process. The legitimacy of the State's monopoly over techniques of final dispute settlement, even where some are denied access to its use, stands unimpaired where recognized, effective alternatives for the adjustment of differences remain. * * * * * * * * * "* * * Early in our jurisprudence, this Court voiced the doctrine that `[w]herever one is assailed in his person or property, there he may defend,' Windsor v. McVeigh, 93 U.S. 274, 277, 23 L. Ed. 914, 915 (1876). * * * "* * * What the Constitution does require is `an opportunity * * * granted at a meaningful time and in a meaningful manner,' Armstrong v. Manzo, 380 U.S. 545, 552, 85 S. Ct. 1187, 14 L. Ed. 2d 62, 66 (1965). * * * * * * * * * "[T]he right to a meaningful opportunity to be heard within the limits of practicality, must be protected against denial by particular laws that operate to jeopardize it for particular individuals." (Emphasis supplied.)
II. The justifications for unequal treatment we endlessly chronicle in these cases require us to forget what we learned as practicing lawyers, and know as jurists. The municipalities seldom budget for claim payments; they carry liability insurance as the statutes permit. See, e. g., §§ 332.3(20), 347.14(9), 517 A. 1, The Code. Ordinarily the insurance carrier's investigators are on the scene before the injured person has secured professional assistance.
Knowledge of a municipality-caused injury usually reaches the municipal managers before any formal notice. In Iowa, municipalities are not headless monstrosities. It is a hallmark of our still rural-oriented societyoften scorned by elitists but nonetheless extantthat we know the misfortunes of our neighbors. Modern communication facilities are everywhere; news media coverage is sophisticated and alert.
Even less valid is the frequently-encountered argument a short-notice statute reduces the number of frivolous or fraudulent claims made against municipalities. Applicable is a statement from Delorme v. Pierce, 353 F. Supp. 258 (D.Or.1973). There a three-judge federal court (holding a state's "civil death" statute would violate a prisoner-felon's equal protection rights if employed as a defense to a prisoner's state-court attempt to litigate his workmen's compensation award) declared, 353 F. Supp. at 260,
III. Nor am I persuaded, as is the majority, that § 613 A. 5, whose uninspired predecessors were among our limitation statutes since 1888, was in 1968 suddenly transformed as a part of a vehicle for delivering gratuitous privileges to tort victims through a partial abolition of sovereign immunity, and must therefore be accorded greater deference than any other suit-limiting statute. In at least two recent decisions we have applied to § 613 A. 5 the ordinary rules of restriction which apply to all limitation statutes generally. Vermeer v. Sneller, supra; Sprung v. Rasmussen, 180 N.W.2d 430 (Iowa 1970).
"* * * [W]e believe that the notice of claim requirements found in NRS 244.245 and NRS 244.250 as applied to governmental torts deny equal protection guaranteed by the United States Constitution. "Within our present scheme of government, claim statutes serve no real beneficial use * * * but they are indeed a trap for the unwary."
See also Zipser v. Pound, 69 Misc.2d 152, 329 N.Y.S.2d 494 (White Plains City Ct. 1972).
Still another more invidious discrimination inheres in § 613 A. 5. Ordinarily the affluent and educated tort victim has a retained or family attorney. His attorney may ethicallyand probably doescome *912 forward to inform his client of the notice requirement. Iowa Code of Professional Responsibility for Lawyers, Ethical Canon 2-3. It is the poor, uneducated tort victim, without counsel and unacquainted with lawyers, who naively assumes he will be compensated and unknowingly permits the notice time to lapse.
"* * * Justice Rutledge, in President and Directors of Georgetown College v. Hughes, 76 U.S.App.D.C. 123, 130 F.2d 810, 827, pointed out that `the law's emphasis ordinarily is on liability, not immunity, for wrongdoing', and we may also observe that public policy abhors the classification and inference brought about by so-called `protected negligence.' We strive to eliminate itnot foster and encourage it."
Almost ten years ago four members of this court, dissenting, branded the court-imposed concept of governmental immunity as "evil," "unjust," and "unsupported by any valid reason." They wrote, "The law should be progressive; it should advance with changing conditions." That dissent referred to the same arbitrary classifications among tort victims here discussed. Boyer v. Iowa High School Athletic Assn., 256 Iowa 337, 349, 127 N.W.2d 606, 613 (1964). Ten year's continued change in conditions has only demonstrated more clearly the evil of the doctrine those dissenters deplored. The vestige of governmental immunity represented by § 613 A. 5 is not more constitutional or just because it reposes in a statute rather than in case law.
IV. Under § 613 A. 5, the injured person who is run down by a negligently-operated municipal truck loses his basic right to redress in court unless by chance he knows he must file suit in 90 days or notify the municipality in 60 days. The person negligently run down by a private truck has no such burdens: he merely brings his cause of action within two years. Section 614.1(2), The Code. The unequal treatment resulting from the application of those statutes may well invoke the provisions of the Iowa Constitution, art. I, § 6, that,
These defendants have not carried their burden to persuasively justify the impermissible classifications spawned by § 613 A. 5. That statute invidiously discriminates, violating the equal protection clause of Amendment 14. I question whether we fulfill our constitutional duty and historic role by continuing to stoically endure these cases while we point a silent finger toward the legislature.