Title: Juarez v. Windsor Rock Products, Inc.
Citation: N/A
Docket Number: S52352
State: Oregon
Issuer: Oregon Supreme Court
Date: July 14, 2006

FILED: July 14, 2006
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF OREGON
RONALD JUAREZ,
individually
and as personal representative of the Estate of 
Felix Juarez,
DONDI JUAREZ,
individually;
and ALTAGRACIA RENTEIRIA,
individually,
Petitioners on Review,
v.
WINDSOR ROCK PRODUCTS, INC.,
an Oregon corporation,
Respondent on Review.
(CC 03C15394; CA A123073; SC S52352)
En Banc
On review from the Court of Appeals.*
Argued and submitted January 4, 2006.
Meagan A. Flynn of Preston Bunnell &amp; Flynn, LLP, Portland,
argued the case and filed the briefs for petitioner on review.
Bruce H. Orr of Meyer &amp; Wyse LLP, Portland, argued the cause
and filed the briefs for respondent on review.  With him on the
briefs were James E. Bartels and Steven J. Kuhn.
Judy C. Lucas, Assistant Attorney General, Salem, filed a
brief on behalf of amicus curiae State of Oregon. With her on the brief was Hardy Myers, Attorney General, and Mary H. Williams, Solicitor General.
Lindsey H. Hughes of Keating Jones Bildstein &amp; Hughes, PC,
Portland, and Janet M. Schroer of Hoffman Hart &amp; Wagner, LLP,
Portland, filed a brief on behalf of amicus curiae Oregon
Association of Defense Counsel.
DURHAM, J.
The decision of the Court of Appeals and the judgment of the
circuit court are affirmed.
*Appeal from Marion County Circuit Court, Terry Ann Leggert, Judge. 197 Or App 622, 106 P3d 180 (2005).
DURHAM, J.
The plaintiffs in this tort case ask this court to
determine "[w]hether the negligent infliction of harm great
enough to cause death is an injury for which the Oregon
Constitution guarantees a remedy."  In our view, the primary
issue in this case is much narrower.  We must decide whether
these plaintiffs have alleged a claim that the remedy clause of
Article I, section 10, of the Oregon Constitution, protects.  For
the reasons outlined below, we hold that the claim that
plaintiffs have pleaded in their complaint is not such a claim. 
Because the trial court granted defendant's motion to
dismiss under ORCP 21 A, we assume the truth of all well-pleaded
facts alleged in the complaint.  Kilminster v. Day Management
Corp., 323 Or 618, 621, 919 P2d 474 (1996).  According to the
complaint, Felix Juarez (decedent) was an employee at Windsor
Island Mine, a company owned and operated by Windsor Rock
Products, Inc.  On or about June 30, 2000, while at work, a
backhoe bucket struck decedent, and he died as a result of his
injuries.  Decedent's adult children, Ronald Juarez and Dondi
Juarez, and his mother, Altagracia Renteiria, filed this action
in June 2003 alleging that they had "suffered a loss of society,
companionship, guidance, emotional support, services and
financial assistance," due to the negligently inflicted wrongful
death of Felix Juarez.  They also alleged that decedent had lost
earnings as a result of the accident.  Defendant Windsor Rock
Products, Inc., moved to dismiss the complaint under ORCP 21 A
for lack of jurisdiction over the subject matter and for failure
to state ultimate facts sufficient to constitute a claim.  The
trial court granted defendant's motion and entered a judgment of
dismissal on October 21, 2003.  Plaintiffs appealed, and the
Court of Appeals affirmed in a one sentence per curiam opinion,
citing Kilminster, 323 Or 618.  Juarez v. Windsor Rock Products,
Inc., 197 Or App 622, 106 P3d 180 (2005).  We allowed plaintiffs'
petition for review, and now, for the reasons stated below,
affirm the decision of the Court of Appeals.
Because decedent's death occurred as a result of a
workplace injury, Oregon's workers' compensation scheme limits
plaintiffs' recovery to that available pursuant to that scheme. 
ORS 656.018 provides, in part:
"The liability of every employer who satisfies the duty
required by ORS 656.017(1) is exclusive and in place of
all other liability arising out of injuries, diseases,
symptom complexes or similar conditions arising out of
and in the course of employment that are sustained by
subject workers, the workers' beneficiaries and anyone
otherwise entitled to recover damages from the employer
on account of such conditions or claims resulting
therefrom[.]" (1)  
ORS 656.018(1)(a) (emphasis added).  Plaintiffs concede that
defendant is an employer that has satisfied the duty that ORS
656.017(1) imposes.  Under the workers' compensation statutes,
therefore, the only recovery available here is a burial benefit
provided to decedent's estate.  See ORS 656.204 (outlining
benefits when death results from an accidental work injury). 
Decedent's mother and adult children are not entitled to any
recovery under those statutes. 
Plaintiffs argue, however, that ORS 656.018(1)(a), as
applied to them, violates the remedy clause of Article I, section
10.  Article I, section 10, provides:
"No court shall be secret, but justice shall be
administered, openly and without purchase, completely
and without delay, and every man shall have remedy by
due course of law for injury done him in his person,
property, or reputation."
(Emphasis added.)  Plaintiffs contend that that section of the
Oregon Constitution guarantees a remedy for families of workers
killed as a result of an employer's negligence.  Plaintiffs
assert that ORS 656.018, because it deprives plaintiffs of
recovery on their common-law negligent wrongful death claim,
violates Article I, section 10. (2)
In Smothers v. Gresham Transfer, Inc., 332 Or 83, 123-24, 23 P3d 333 (2001), this court established the methodology for
analyzing a claim under Article I, section 10.  Under that
methodology, we first examine whether plaintiff has alleged an
injury to one of the rights protected by Article I, section 10. 
Id. at 124.  According to Smothers,
"[i]f the answer to that question is yes, and if the
legislature has abolished the common-law cause of
action for injury to rights that are protected by the
remedy clause, then the second question is whether it
has provided a constitutionally adequate substitute
remedy for the common-law cause of action for that
injury."
Id.  
In addressing the first question in the Smothers
analysis, our initial task is to identify the relevant
circumstances of the alleged injury.  Lawson v. Hoke, 339 Or 253,
259, 119 P3d 210 (2005).  Here, the pertinent circumstances are
that decedent was killed as a result of the alleged negligence of
his employer and that the plaintiffs who allege injury stemming
from decedent's death are his mother and adult children. 
Plaintiffs do not allege that they were dependent on decedent for
financial support.  Instead, the complaint alleges economic
injury in terms of a loss of "services and financial assistance." 
The pertinent inquiry, therefore, is:  Does the remedy clause
protect a claim for "loss of society, companionship, guidance,
emotional support, services and financial assistance," brought by
a parent and adult children of a person who was killed allegedly
as the result of the negligence of his employer?  For the
following reasons, we conclude that it does not.  
The briefs of the parties and of the State of Oregon
and Oregon Association of Defense Counsel, amici curiae, focus on
whether a cause of action for death by wrongful act was
cognizable at common law when the Oregon Constitution was drafted
in 1857, as Smothers instructs.  See Smothers, 332 Or at 118
(stating that the remedy clause protects common-law rights
respecting person, property, and reputation, as those rights
existed in 1857).  Defendant and amici curiae point out that our
prior cases have stated generally, without extensive analysis,
that wrongful death was not a cause of action recognized at
common law.  See, e.g., Storm v. McClung, 334 Or 210, 222 n 4, 47
P3d 476 (2002) ("Since at least 1891, this court has adhered to
the view that no right of action for wrongful death existed at
common law."); see also Putman v. Southern Pacific Co., 21 Or
230, 231-32, 27 P 1033 (1891) ("At common law, no action could be
maintained for the death of a human being caused by the wrongful
act of another.").  In Kilminster, 323 Or 618, this court
considered an issue nearly identical to that presented here.  In
Kilminster, the individual plaintiffs were the parents of a
worker killed in the course and scope of his employment with the
defendant.  Id. at 621.  The plaintiffs sued the defendant under
ORS 30.020, Oregon's wrongful death statute.  Id. at 622.  The
trial court granted the defendant's motion to dismiss pursuant to
ORCP 21 A(8).  Id. at 622.  The trial court further ruled that
ORS 656.018 provided the exclusive remedy for the plaintiffs for
a work-related death claim.  Id.  Before this court, the
plaintiffs argued that the application of ORS 656.018 to preclude
their wrongful death action violated Article I, section 10,
because "'it takes away the parents' claim for the wrongful death
of their son.'"  Id. at 625 (emphasis added by court).  This
court rejected that argument:
"Because the legislature has chosen not to provide
decedent's parents with a wrongful death action based
on a theory of negligence, and because Oregon has no
common law action for wrongful death, they have
suffered no legally cognizable injury to their person,
property, or reputation."
Id. at 627 (emphasis added; internal citation omitted). 
Plaintiffs contend that Kilminster and our other
previous cases stating that no common-law cause of action for
wrongful death existed were incorrect because they stem from an
ill-advised nineteenth century English decision, Baker v. Bolton,
170 Eng Rep 1033, 1 Campb 493 (Nisi Prius 1808).  In Baker, a
husband sued on the death of his wife following a stagecoach
accident.  Id.  In his brief opinion, Lord Ellenborough stated:
"[T]he jury could only take into consideration the
bruises which the plaintiff had himself sustained, and
the loss of his wife's society, and the distress of
mind he had suffered on her account, from the time of
the accident till the moment of her dissolution.  In a
civil Court, the death of a human being could not be
complained of as an injury; and in this case the
damages, as to the plaintiff's wife, must stop with the
period of her existence."
Id. (emphasis added). 
In trying to demonstrate that, in 1857, there existed a
common-law cause of action for wrongful death, plaintiffs cite
several decisions from other jurisdictions that, despite Baker v.
Bolton, allowed compensation for negligently caused death.  See,
e.g., Sullivan v. Union Pac. R. Co., 23 F Cas 368, 371, 3 Dill
334 (D Neb 1874) (rejecting Baker v. Bolton because "it is not
reasoned and cites no authorities, and * * * the rule it declares
is without any reason to support it"); Shields v. Yonge, 15 Ga
349, 355, 357 (1854) (rejecting Baker v. Bolton and allowing a
father's action for loss of services); Plummer v. Webb, 19 F Cas
894, 1 Ware 75, 69 (D Me 1825) (recognizing parent's right to
recover for loss of services upon the negligently caused death of
child, but concluding that father was not entitled to son's
services because, at time of death, son was apprenticed to
another), dismissed on appeal for lack of admiralty jurisdiction,
19 F Cas 891, 4 Mason 380 (CCD Me 1827).  Plaintiffs cite other
cases that assumed, without discussion, that one could recover
for loss of services upon the death of certain family members. 
See, e.g., James v. Christy, 18 Mo 162, 164 (1853) (allowing
recovery to father for death of son because "the father has a
property in the services of his son during his minority, and
whilst under his guardianship"); Ford v. Monroe, 20 Wend 210 (NY
Sup Ct 1838) (allowing recovery to father for loss of services of
child who was negligently killed). (3)
Defendant and amici curiae, for their part, note this
court's precedents stating that there existed no common-law right
of action for wrongful death.  In addition, they cite several
mid-nineteenth century cases that followed Baker v. Bolton.  See,
e.g., Insurance Co. v. Brame, 95 US 754, 756 (1877) ("The
authorities are so numerous and so uniform to the proposition,
that by the common law no civil action lies for an injury which
results in death, that it is impossible to speak of it as a
proposition open to question."); Mayhew v. Burns, 103 Ind 328, 2
NE 793, 796 (1885) ("[b]y the common law the father had no right
of action for loss of services after the death of his child");
Emmert v. Grill, 39 Iowa 690, 692 (1874) (stating that no common-law right of action existed to recover against one who caused the
death of another); cf. Conn. Mutual Life Ins. Co. v. N.Y. and
N.H. R.R. Co., 25 Conn 265, 273 (1856) (adopting Baker rule
because of possibility of "numberless actions brought on behalf
of wives, children, friends, brothers, sisters and dependents of
all degrees"); Eden v. L. and F. Railroad Co., 53 Ky 204, 206
(1853) ("according to the principles of the common law injuries
affecting life cannot, in general, be the subject of a civil
action"). 
In essence, plaintiffs ask this court to overrule its
prior cases that reject a common-law wrongful death cause of
action.  The court generally will reconsider common-law doctrines
in three situations: (1) when an earlier case was "inadequately
considered or wrong when it was decided"; (2) when statutes or
regulations have altered an "essential legal element assumed in
the earlier case"; or (3) when the earlier rule was based on
specific facts that have changed.  G.L. v. Kaiser Foundation
Hospitals, Inc., 306 Or 54, 59, 757 P2d 1347 (1988) (citations
omitted); see also Heino v. Harper, 306 Or 347, 373-74, 759 P2d
253 (1988) (quoting rule from Kaiser Foundation). Plaintiffs'
attack on this court's precedent falls into the first scenario --
that this court's prior cases were wrong when they were decided.  
In this case, however, we need not decide whether this
Court's prior cases were correct.  Neither do we need to resolve
the question whether the common law recognized a cause of action
for wrongful death.  Instead, for the reasons below, we conclude
that plaintiffs have not alleged that they have suffered an
injury to "person, property, or reputation," as they must to
succeed in their Article I, section 10, argument.  
It is clear that plaintiffs have not alleged an injury
to their persons or reputations.  As this court did in Smothers,
332 Or at 98-99, we look to Blackstone's Commentaries to explain
the meaning of Article I, section 10.  Here, we look to
Blackstone to ascertain what constitutes an injury to "person,
property, or reputation."  Blackstone described injuries that
"affect the personal security of individuals" as "either injuries
against their lives, their limbs, their bodies, or their
reputations."  3 William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of
England 119 (1768).  Blackstone further described an injury to
one's reputation as "malicious, scandalous, and slanderous words,
tending to [one's] damage and derogation."  Id. at 123 (emphasis
in original).  Here, plaintiffs do not claim injury to their own
lives, limbs, bodies, or reputations. 
Whether plaintiffs allege an injury to property, under
Article I, section 10, requires more discussion.  In interpreting
an original constitutional provision, the court examines the
wording of the provision, its historical circumstances, and case
law surrounding it.  Smothers, 332 Or at 91.  Here, we focus on
the meaning of the unmodified term, "property."  Blackstone
divided property into personal and real property, and described
those types of property as follows: 
"personal [property], which consists of goods, money,
and all other moveable chattels, and things thereunto
incident; a property, which may attend a man's person
wherever he goes, and from thence receives its
denomination: and real property, which consists of such
things as are permanent, fixed, and immoveable; as
lands, tenements, and hereditaments of all kinds, which
are not annexed to the person, nor can be moved from
the place in which they subsist."
3 Blackstone, Commentaries 144 (emphasis in original).  Webster's
1828 dictionary defines "property" as "[t]he exclusive right of
possessing, enjoying and disposing of a thing; ownership."  Noah
Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828). 
Webster's definition also states that property is "[t]he thing
owned; that to which a person has the legal title, whether in his
possession or not."  Id.  The definition of property in Black's
law dictionary is consistent:  "[r]ightful dominion over external
objects; ownership; the unrestricted and exclusive right to a
thing; the right to dispose of the substance of a thing in every
legal way, to possess it, to use it, and to exclude everyone else
from interfering with it."  Henry Campbell Black, Dictionary of
Law Containing Definitions of the Terms and Phrases of American
and English Jurisprudence, Ancient and Modern 953 (1891).  Black
also notes that "property" is "a very wide term, and includes
every class of acquisitions which a man can own or have an
interest in."  Id. at 954.  Based on those broad definitions, we
conclude that the term "property," in Article I, section 10,
encompassed both legal and possessory interests, as well as
money, goods, and "things thereunto incident."  
Turning to the provision's historical circumstances,
the court has reviewed extensively the history of the remedy
clause of Article I, section 10.  Smothers, 332 Or at 94-115.  As
with many provisions in the Oregon Constitution, the framers
based Article I, section 10, on a similar provision in the
Indiana Constitution of 1851.  Id. at 105.  In Smothers, this
court noted that the remedy clause contained in the Indiana
Constitution of 1816 guaranteed a remedy for "'an injury done [to
a person] in his lands, goods, person, or reputation.'" Id. at
106 (quoting Article I, section 11, of the Indiana Constitution
of 1816).  However, the Indiana Constitution of 1851 used the
following words: "'every man, for injury done to him in his
person, property, or reputation, shall have remedy by due course
of law.'"  Smothers, 332 Or at 107 (quoting 1 Charles
Kettleborough, Constitution Making in Indiana, 297-98 (1971)). 
The change from "goods" and "land" to the broader term "property"
suggests that the drafters of the Indiana Constitution of 1851
may have intended to guarantee a remedy for a broader range of
injuries.
This court's prior cases interpreting Article I,
section 10, have not focused on the meaning of "person, property,
or reputation."  In Smothers, for example, the court analyzed the
meaning of "injury," "remedy," and "due course of law," Smothers,
332 Or at 92, but did not analyze "person, property, or
reputation."  In Kilminster, however, the court stated that,
consistent with the wording of the provision, the "Article I,
section 10, remedy guarantee is implicated only if a person
suffers injury to person, property, or reputation."  Kilminster,
323 Or at 626.  Then, without extensive discussion on the meaning
of "person, property, or reputation," the court concluded that
the plaintiffs in that case had suffered no injury to one of
those interests.  Id. at 627.  
Whatever the omissions of Kilminster, this court
elsewhere has discussed the concept of property rights in cases
decided outside of the Article I, section 10, context.  For
example, this court previously has explained the definition of
property in the context of Article I, section 18, of the Oregon
Constitution, as it was understood in 1857:
"Webster defined 'property' in 1828 both concretely (as
'[a]n estate, whether in lands, goods or money') and
more abstractly (as '[t]he exclusive right of
possessing, enjoying and disposing of a thing').  Put
differently, the dictionary definition of property in
1828 was broad enough to include both the tangible or
physical thing and the legal interests pertaining to
it."
Coast Range Conifers v. Board of Forestry, 339 Or 136, 143, 117
P3d 990 (2005) (quoting Noah Webster, An American Dictionary of
the English Language (1828)).
Many of the cases that plaintiffs rely on to show the
existence of a wrongful death cause of action at common law were
rooted in property rights.  Generally, those cases involved
fathers seeking to recover for the loss of services of their
minor children.  Some courts stated explicitly that the premise
for recovery in that circumstance was the father's property right
in the services that their children provided.  See, e.g.,
Sullivan, 23 F Cas at 369 ("since the father is entitled in law
to the services of his child until majority"); James, 18 Mo at
164 ("By our law, the father has a property in the services of
his son during his minority, and whilst he is under is
guardianship.").  Malone explained that right in these terms:
"The recognition of a claim by one person in the safety
and welfare of another originated in the needs of the
domestic institution.  The right was accorded to the
family head to maintain a suit for injury to his wife
or minor child, and to the master for an injury to his
servant.  The interest was first regarded as a property
right, and consistent with this character the claim was
first limited to the value of the wife's or child's
services in the household.  
"* * * * *
"[U]ntil very recently neither the wife nor the
children had any correspondingly protected interest in
the husband or father at common law. * * * Hence it is
obvious that any refusal by courts to allow these
members of the family to maintain a suit for the
wrongful death of the husband or father in the absence
of a statute would not rest upon any distinction
between a wrongful taking of life, on the one hand, and
an infliction of a nonfatal injury on the other.  A
claim by these persons must necessarily be denied in
either event because neither of them ever enjoyed any
recognized right in either the safety or the life of
the parent or the husband."
Wex S. Malone, The Genesis of Wrongful Death, 17 Stan L Rev 1043,
1052-53 (1964-65).  Thus, while a parent could recover at common
law for the loss of services of a minor child, a child could not
recover for the death of a parent because the common law
considered the services of a minor child to be a property right
of the parent, but not vice versa.  
In Oregon, a parent similarly could recover for loss of
services of a minor child:
"At common law, the parent was entitled to maintain an
action for an injury to the child -– the right thereof
being founded, not upon the parental relation, but upon
the technical relation of master and servant -– and the
compensation or damages recoverable was measured by the
pecuniary loss sustained by the parent, resulting from
the injury to the child." 
Schleiger v. Northern Terminal Co., 43 Or 4, 9-10, 72 P 324
(1903). (4)  This right extended beyond majority, as well.  In
Putman, 21 Or at 243, this court considered a statutory wrongful
death claim brought by a parent on the death of her adult child
and observed:  
"Whether the child after maturity or marriage remains
at the home of its parents, or takes them to his home,
or furnishes them with a home, can make no difference; 
it is his recognition of the obligation to support them
and its performance that determine their social status,
-- that the relation of parent and child exists in
fact, -- and furnishes the reasonable expectation of
pecuniary advantage from its continuance upon his life
and of its extinction upon his death."
On reconsideration, however, the two justices that previously had
decided the case disagreed as to the proper outcome of the case,
and therefore the court affirmed the trial court's judgment for
the defendant.  Id. at 244. (5)
As noted, plaintiffs allege here that they have
suffered a "loss of society, companionship, guidance, emotional
support, services and financial assistance." (6)  Plaintiffs,
however, do not  allege that they possess any property right that
defendant's conduct has infringed.  For example, plaintiffs do
not allege that they were dependent on decedent for his services
or financial assistance, that decedent had any legal obligation
to provide such support, or that they had any other legal
interest in his income.  Neither do plaintiffs allege that they
were legally entitled to decedent's services or the value of his
services.  Instead, plaintiffs allege the loss of aspects of
their relationship with decedent.  We do not doubt the importance
of that loss to plaintiffs, but it is not a loss of any property
interest for which Article I, section 10, guarantees a remedy.   The decision of the Court of Appeals and the judgment
of the circuit court are affirmed. (7)
1. ORS 656.017(1), in turn, provides:  
"Every employer subject to this chapter shall
maintain assurance with the Director of the Department
of Consumer and Business Services that subject workers
of the employer and their beneficiaries will receive
compensation for compensable injuries as provided by
this chapter and that the employer will perform all
duties and pay other obligations required under this
chapter, by qualifying:
"(a) As a carrier-insured employer; or
"(b) As a self-insured employer as provided by ORS
656.407."
2. Plaintiffs' complaint purports to rely on a common law
wrongful death cause of action to recover for their injuries
stemming from decedent's death, although the Oregon legislature
long has provided recovery for wrongful death by statute.  See
Goheen v. General Motors Corp., 263 Or 145, 153-54, 502 P2d 223
(1972) ("The original Oregon Wrongful Death Act was included in
the original Deady Code in 1862.").  Oregon's current wrongful
death statute, ORS 30.020, provides, in part:
"When the death of a person is caused by the wrongful
act or omission of another, the personal representative
of the decedent, for the benefit of the decedent's
surviving spouse, surviving children, surviving parents
and other individuals, * * * may maintain an action
against the wrongdoer, if the decedent might have
maintained an action, had the decedent lived, against
the wrongdoer for an injury done by the same act or
omission."
ORS 30.020(1).
3. Plaintiffs also note that legal scholars have
criticized the Baker rule.  See, e.g., T.A. Smedley, Wrongful
Death -- Bases of the Common Law Rules, 13 Vand L Rev 605, 614
(1959-1960) (Baker has "been widely criticized as embodying a
careless overstatement of the law, made without any supporting
authority and induced by confusion of thought.").   
4. When death resulted from the injury, this court
explained that the parents' recovery was limited to
"the pecuniary loss sustained by the parent on account
thereof in the interim between the time of the casualty
and the death.  There was no right of action in the
parent, either for its death, or for any loss or
damages occasioned or resulting to it therefrom. 
Indeed, it was a principle of the law that no civil
action was maintainable for a right springing from the
death of a human being."
Schleiger, 43 Or at 9-10 (internal citations omitted).  
5. Additionally, an 1853 statute stated, "Parents shall be
bound to maintain their children when poor and unable to work to
maintain themselves; and children shall be bound to maintain
their parents in the like circumstances."  Lord's Oregon Laws, § 7054 (1853).
6. In the complaint, the estate alleges a loss of earnings.  In
their response to defendant's motion to dismiss before the trial
court and in their brief to the Court of Appeals, plaintiffs did
not offer arguments regarding the estate's claim.  Similarly, in
their brief to this court, plaintiffs' arguments refer only to
the claims of the family members.  We therefore do not address
the estate's claim for loss of earnings.
7. We note the limited nature of our holding in this case.  We
conclude only that these plaintiffs did not allege an injury to
person, property, or reputation.  We do not address whether
different plaintiffs asserting a wrongful death claim could
prevail under Article I, section 10, of the Oregon Constitution.