Title: Smothers v. Gresham Transfer, Inc.
Citation: N/A
Docket Number: S44512
State: Oregon
Issuer: Oregon Supreme Court
Date: May 10, 2001

FILED:  MAY 10, 2001
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF OREGON

TERRY L. SMOTHERS,
		Petitioner on Review,
	v.
GRESHAM TRANSFER, INC.,
an Oregon corporation,
	Respondent on Review.
(CC 9505-02969; CA A90805; SC S44512)

	On review from the Court of Appeals.* 
	Argued and submitted November 8, 1999.
	Michael A. Gilbertson, Ransom &amp; Gilbertson, Portland, argued
the cause and filed the briefs for petitioner on review.  
	Thomas W. Sondag, Lane Powell Spears Lubersky LLP, Portland,
argued the cause and filed the brief for respondent on review.
	Chess Trethewy, Garrett, Hemann, Robertson, Paulus, Jennings
&amp; Comstock, P.C., Salem, filed a brief on behalf of amicus curiae
Associated Oregon Industries.  With him on the brief was Paul J.
Weddle.
	Lawrence Baron, Portland, filed a brief on behalf of amicus
curiae Oregon Trial Lawyers Association.  With him on the brief
was Daniel L. Keppler.
	Kathryn H. Clarke, Portland, filed a brief on behalf of
amicus curiae Oregon Trial Lawyers Association.  With her on the
brief were Maureen Leonard and Matthew Whitman.
	David L. Runner, Salem, filed a brief on behalf of amicus
curiae SAIF Corporation and Timber Products Company.
	G. Kenneth Shiroishi, Dunn Carney Allen Higgins &amp; Tongue,
Portland, filed a brief on behalf of amicus curiae Oregon
Association of Defense Counsel.
	Before Carson, Chief Justice, and Gillette, Durham,
Kulongoski, Leeson, and Riggs Justices.**
	LEESON, J.
	The decision of the Court of Appeals is reversed.  The
judgment of the circuit court is reversed, and the case is
remanded to the circuit court for further proceedings.
	**Van Hoomissen, J., retired December 31, 2000, and did not
participate in the decision of this case.  De Muniz, J., did not
participate in the consideration or decision of this case. 
	*Appeal from Multnomah County Circuit Court, Henry Kantor, Judge. 149 Or App 49, 941 P2d 1065 (1997).
LEESON, J.


	Plaintiff filed this negligence action against
defendant, his employer, after an administrative law judge (ALJ)
of the Workers' Compensation Board upheld the insurer's denial of
plaintiff's workers' compensation claim.  The ALJ found that
plaintiff's exposure to sulfuric, hydrochloric, and hydrofluoric
acid mist and fumes at work was not the "major contributing
cause" of plaintiff's respiratory condition and other ailments
and, therefore, that plaintiff had not suffered a "compensable
injury" under the workers' compensation statutes.  Nonetheless,
plaintiff believed that he had suffered an injury at work. 
Accordingly, he brought this action against his employer for
negligence.  The trial court dismissed plaintiff's complaint for
failure to state a claim, ORCP 21 A(8), reasoning that ORS
656.018 (1995) makes workers' compensation law the "exclusive
remedy" for work-related injuries, whether or not a claim is
compensable.  The Court of Appeals affirmed.  Smothers v. Gresham
Transfer, Inc., 149 Or App 49, 941 P2d 1065 (1997).  This court
allowed review to address plaintiff's contention that he has been
denied a remedy for the injuries that he suffered at work, in
violation of the remedy clause in Article I, section 10, of the
Oregon Constitution.  For the reasons that follow, we hold that,
if a workers' compensation claim alleging an injury to a right
that is protected by the remedy clause is denied for failure to
prove that the work-related incident giving rise to the claim was
the major contributing cause of the injury or condition for which
the worker seeks compensation, then the exclusive remedy
provisions of ORS 656.018 (1995) are unconstitutional under the
remedy clause.  Applying that holding to the facts of this case,
we reverse the decision of the Court of Appeals and the judgment
of the trial court and remand the case to the trial court for
further proceedings. 
I.  BACKGROUND



A.  Facts
	Plaintiff's job as a lube technician for defendant's
trucking company required him to work in a pit more than four
feet deep in a mechanics' shop where trucks were serviced.  A
truck-washing area was located outside the shop.  Defendant's
employees cleaned the exteriors of trucks by spraying them with a
chemical mixture of diluted sulfuric acid and small amounts of
hydrochloric and hydrofluoric acids.  When the doors to the shop
were open, acid mist and fumes from the truck-washing area
drifted into the shop and down into the pit where plaintiff
worked.  For many months, plaintiff experienced headaches, as
well as itching, burning, and watering eyes.
	In January 1993, plaintiff contracted an upper
respiratory infection that developed into pneumonia.  He was
hospitalized for five days, and he was unable to work for a
month.  Plaintiff returned to work, but he suffered another
episode of pneumonia in February 1993.  In November 1993, his
physician diagnosed him with bronchitis.  In December 1993,
plaintiff's coworkers found him so ill that he was lying on the
lunchroom floor.  He was sent home, where he was bedridden with
bacterial bronchitis for most of the holiday season.  
	Plaintiff returned to work in January 1994, but his
physician expressed concern about his slow rate of recovery. 
Plaintiff called in sick several times between March and mid-June
1994.  In June 1994, claimant stopped working for defendant
because of his illness.
	Thereafter, plaintiff filed a workers' compensation
claim for his lung condition.  Defendant's insurer denied
plaintiff's claim.  At a hearing before an ALJ, the issue was
whether plaintiff had a compensable occupational disease.  See
ORS 656.802(1)(a) (defining "occupational disease").  After the
hearing, the ALJ upheld the insurer's denial, because plaintiff
had failed to prove that his work exposure was the major
contributing cause of his lung disorder.  See ORS 656.802(2)(a)
("The worker must prove that employment conditions were the major
contributing cause of the disease."). (1) 
B.  Legal Context for Plaintiff's Negligence Action
	In Errand v. Cascade Steel Rolling Mills, Inc., 320 Or
509, 525, 888 P2d 544 (1995), this court held that the exclusive
remedy provisions in ORS 656.018 (1993) did not preclude workers
whose workers' compensation claims had been denied from bringing
civil actions against their employers in an effort to recover
damages for their work-related injuries.  In this case, after the
ALJ had upheld the denial of plaintiff's workers' compensation
claim, plaintiff, relying on Errand, filed this action against
defendant.  His complaint alleged that defendant's negligence in
subjecting him to the acid mist and fumes at work had caused
permanent injury to his lungs; skin blisters, pain and swelling
in the joints of his hands, elbows and knees; degeneration of his
toenails, fingernails, and teeth; and other physical ailments.
	Meanwhile, in response to this court's decision in
Errand, the 1995 Legislature amended ORS 656.018 and added
subsection (6) to provide that workers' compensation is the
exclusive remedy for work-related injuries, even if a claim is
not compensable.  Or Laws 1995, ch 332, § 5.  As amended, ORS
656.018 (1995) provides, in part:
		"(1)(a) 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 * * *.
		"(2) The rights given to a subject worker and the
beneficiaries of the subject worker under this chapter
for injuries, diseases, symptom complexes or similar
conditions arising out of and in the course of
employment are in lieu of any remedies they might
otherwise have for such injuries, diseases, symptom
complexes or similar conditions against the worker's
employer under ORS 654.305 to 654.335 or other laws,
common law or statute, except to the extent the worker
is expressly given the right under this chapter to
bring suit against the employer of the worker for an
injury, disease, symptom complex or similar condition.
		"* * * * * 
		"(6) The exclusive remedy provisions and
limitation on liability provisions of this chapter
apply to all injuries and to diseases, symptom
complexes or similar conditions of subject workers
arising out of and in the course of employment whether
or not they are determined to be compensable under this
chapter."
(Emphasis added.) (2)  Those amendments took effect on June 7, 1995,
after plaintiff had filed his complaint, and they apply to "all
claims or causes of action existing or arising on or after the
effective date of this Act, regardless of the date of injury or
the date a claim is presented[.]"  Or Laws 1995, ch 332, § 66(1). 

Relying on the "exclusive remedy" provisions of ORS
656.018 (1995), defendant moved to dismiss plaintiff's complaint
for failure to state a claim.  The trial court granted that
motion.
	On appeal to the Court of Appeals, plaintiff argued
that, although he could not prove that the acid fumes and mist
that he had inhaled at work were the major contributing cause of
his lung condition and other ailments, he nonetheless had been
injured at work.  Before the 1995 amendments to ORS 656.018, he
noted, workers' compensation was the exclusive remedy for only
compensable work-related injuries.  The 1995 amendments to ORS
656.018 made workers' compensation the exclusive remedy for all
work-related injuries, whether or not a claim is compensable. 
Those amendments, plaintiff argued, left him with no remedy for
the injuries that he had suffered at work, in violation of the
remedy clause of Article I, section 10, which guarantees every
person a remedy by due course of law for injury to person,
property, or reputation.  The Court of Appeals rejected
plaintiff's argument.  Smothers, 149 Or App at 54.
C.  Parties' Arguments
	Before this court, plaintiff repeats his contention
that, under the mandate of the remedy clause of Article I,
section 10, the legislature may not deprive a person of a remedy
for an injury to person, property, or reputation that was
recognized at common law, unless the legislature makes available
an equivalent remedy.  Defendant's response to plaintiff's
constitutional argument is twofold.  First, defendant contends
that the legislature has plenary authority to define what
constitutes a cognizable injury to person, property, or
reputation.  Second, defendant contends that the remedy clause
does not limit the legislature's power to modify any common-law
or statutory remedy.
	In making their arguments, the parties and amici curiae
assert that this court's remedy clause jurisprudence has not been
consistent.  This court has acknowledged as much.  See Neher v.
Chartier, 319 Or 417, 423, 879 P2d 156 (1994) (court's case law
"has failed definitively to establish and consistently to apply
any one theory regarding the protections afforded by" remedy
clause); Hale v. Port of Portland, 308 Or 508, 529, 783 P2d 506
(1989) ("This court has written many individually tenable but
inconsistent opinions about the remedy clause.") (Linde, J.,
concurring).  Scholars likewise have observed that courts have
not adopted a consistent remedy clause jurisprudence.  See, e.g.,
David Schuman, The Right to a Remedy, 65 Temp L Rev 1197, 1203
(1992) (courts have adopted a "daunting variety of remedy
guarantee interpretations"); Jonathan M. Hoffman, By the Course
of the Law:  The Origins of the Open Courts Clause of State
Constitutions, 74 Or L Rev 1279, 1282 (1995) (courts in "total
disarray" over how to interpret remedy clauses). 
	As our subsequent discussion will show, the parties are
correct that this court has not developed a consistent body of
law interpreting the remedy clause of Article I, section 10. 
Moreover, despite its extensive remedy clause case law, this
court previously has not analyzed that clause under the
methodology prescribed in Priest v. Pearce, 314 Or 411, 415-16,
840 P2d 65 (1992), for interpreting an original provision of the
Oregon Constitution.  The purpose of that inquiry is "to
understand the wording in the light of the way that wording would
have been understood and used by those who created the
provision," Vannatta v. Keisling, 324 Or 514, 530, 931 P2d 770
(1997), and to "apply faithfully the principles embodied in the
Oregon Constitution to modern circumstances as those
circumstances arise," State v. Rogers, 330 Or 282, 297, 4 P3d
1261 (2000).  Our analysis consists of an examination of the
wording of the particular constitutional provision, the
historical circumstances that led to its creation, and case law
surrounding it.  Priest, 314 Or at 415-16.  We turn to an
application of that methodology. (3) 
II.  REMEDY CLAUSE

A.  Text
	Article I of the Oregon Constitution is Oregon's Bill
of Rights.  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."
Section 10 consists of one sentence that is made up of two
independent clauses.  Both clauses are phrased in mandatory
terms.  This court has held that the command "shall" in Article
I, section 10, is a statement prescribing how government must
conduct its functions.  Oregonian Publishing Co. v. O'Leary, 303
Or 297, 301-02, 736 P2d 173 (1987). 
	The first clause of Article I, section 10, provides
that "[n]o court shall be secret" and that justice "shall be
administered, openly and without purchase, completely and without
delay * * *."  That clause prescribes how justice must be
administered in Oregon by identifying both a prohibition (no
court shall be secret) and a directive (justice must be
administered openly, completely, and without purchase or delay).
	The second clause mandates that "every man shall have
remedy by due course of law for injury done him in his person,
property, or reputation."  As applicable to modern circumstances,
the phrase "every man" means every person.  Unlike many
provisions in bills of rights, which protect individual rights by
prohibiting the legislature from enacting certain laws or
prohibiting the government from taking certain actions, the
second clause of section 10 protects rights respecting person,
property, and reputation by mandating affirmatively that remedy
by due course of law be available in the event of injury to those
rights.
	The key terms in the remedy clause are "remedy," "due
course of law," and "injury."  We examine the meaning of those
terms. 
	The parties agree that the word "remedy" refers at
least to a means for seeking redress for injury.  Plaintiff
describes a "remedy" as an "avenue to receive compensation for a
loss," while defendant describes it as the "machinery of the law"
that a party sets in motion to recover for a harm.  Plaintiff
contends that the word "remedy" also includes the redress for an
injury, such as money damages, that a litigant obtains through a
remedial process. 
	The Oregon Constitution, including Article I, section
10, was drafted in 1857 and adopted 1859.  A mid-nineteenth
century law dictionary defined "remedy" as "[t]he means employed
to enforce a right or redress an injury."  John Bouvier, A Law
Dictionary Adapted to the Constitution and Laws of the United
States of America, 340 (1839).  A standard dictionary of the era
defined "remedy" as:
		"1.  That which cures a disease * * *.  2.  That
which counteracts an evil of any kind * * *.  3.  That
which cures uneasiness * * *.  4.  That which repairs
loss or disaster."
Noah Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language, 934
(1851).  Those definitions indicate that the word "remedy" refers
both to a process through which a person may seek redress for
injury and to what is required to restore a person who has been
injured.
	We turn to the phrase, "due course of law," which
modifies the word "remedy" in Article I, section 10.  Plaintiff
contends that, when the drafters wrote the Oregon Constitution in
1857, "due course of law" referred to a common-law cause of
action for an injury.  Although plaintiff concedes that the
legislature constitutionally may enact remedies that are
substitutes for common-law remedies, he contends that the
requirement in Article I, section 10, that remedy be by "due
course of law" means that substitute remedies must be equivalent
to common-law remedies.  Defendant responds that "due course of
law" means any remedial statute that provides a rational means
for obtaining a principled decision under the controlling
statutory framework.  We explain later in this opinion how courts
had interpreted the phrase "due course of law" in the years
leading up to the drafting of the Oregon Constitution.  At this
stage of the inquiry, it suffices to note that the drafters of
the Oregon Constitution did not explain what they meant by that
phrase.  
	We turn to the word "injury."  Plaintiff argues that,
when the drafters wrote the Oregon Constitution in 1857, "injury"
meant any wrong or damage done by or to another.  Legal and
standard dictionaries of the time support plaintiff's argument. 
A legal dictionary defined injury as "a wrong or tort."  Bouvier,
A Law Dictionary at 507.  That dictionary further classified
injuries as "public" or "private," and "absolute" or "relative." 
Id.  Among "absolute" injuries were those affecting person,
property, reputation, and liberty.  Id.  "Relative" injuries, by
contrast, were, for example, those affecting the rights of
husbands in relationship to their wives and parents in
relationship to their children.  Id.  A standard dictionary
defined "injury," in part, as
	"any wrong or damage done to a man's person, rights,
reputation, or goods.  That which impairs the soundness
of the body or health, or which gives pain, is an
injury."
Webster, American Dictionary at 606.  
	Defendant responds that the word "injury" in the remedy
clause refers to a legal injury and that the legislature has
plenary authority to determine whether an injury is legally
cognizable.  Defendant concedes that a legislative determination
that a recognized injury no longer is legally cognizable
effectively abolishes a previously recognized right, but contends
that the only restriction that the remedy clause imposes on the
legislature in that respect is that it cannot abolish a remedy
and at the same time recognize the existence of the right.  In
other words, defendant contends, the drafters of the Oregon
Constitution intended to permit the legislature to define what
constitutes an injury respecting person, property, or reputation
for which a remedy must be available by due course of law. 
	In summary:  Although the text of the remedy clause
states in mandatory terms that remedy by due course of law must
be available for injury to person, property, or reputation, the
clause does not define the terms "remedy," "due course of law,"
or "injury."  Contemporaneous dictionaries provide some
definitions, but no definitive picture of the scope or effect of
the remedy clause emerges.  For further insight into the
drafters' intent in writing the remedy clause, we turn to an
examination of the historical circumstances relating to that
provision.  See Priest, 314 Or at 416 (describing inquiry into
historical circumstances as part of constitutional interpretation
methodology).
B.  Historical Circumstances
1.  Edward Coke's Second Institute
	The principle that the law makes available a remedy for
injury to person, property, or reputation comes from the common
law.  The phrasing of remedy clauses that now appear in the Bill
of Rights of the Oregon Constitution and 38 other states (4) traces
to Edward Coke's commentary, first published in 1642, on the
second sentence of Chapter 29 of the Magna Carta of 1225. 
	The two sentences comprising Chapter 29 of the Magna
Carta of 1225 had appeared as separate chapters, 39 and 40, in
the original Magna Carta of 1215. (5)  See A. E. Dick Howard, Magna
Carta:  Text and Commentary, 33-52 (1964) (reprinting complete
text of Magna Carta 1215).  A 1797 edition of Coke's Second
Institute translated Chapter 29 of the Magna Carta of 1225 from
the original Latin as follows:
		"No freeman shall be taken, or imprisoned, or be
disseised of his freehold, or liberties, or free
customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any otherwise
destroyed; nor will we not pass upon him, nor condemn
him, but by lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law
of the land.  We will sell to no man, we will not deny
or defer to any man either justice or right."
Edward Coke, The Second Part of the Institutes of the Laws of
England, 45 (1797).  Coke's commentary on the Magna Carta viewed
Chapter 29 as a "roote," out of which "many fruitfull branches of
the law of England have sprung."  Id. at 45.  Coke identified
nine such branches, and then he explained how each branch had
been interpreted by parliament, by English legal writers, and by
precedent.  Id. at 46.  In other words, Coke's commentary was not
concerned with the meaning of Chapter 29 of the Magna Carta of
1225.  Rather, Coke sought to explain how the common law had
evolved since 1225 and to assert what Coke thought the law ought
to be.  Faith Thompson, Magna Carta:  Its Role in the Making of
the English Constitution, 1300-1629, 354-56 (1948).  Coke used
the Magna Carta of 1225, as he had used other ancient texts and
reports, as a means to demonstrate how, in his view, the common
law protected individuals by placing substantive restraints on
both the Crown and Parliament, and by adjusting relations between
private individuals.  See Theodore F. T. Plucknett, Bonham's Case
and Judicial Review, 40 Harv L Rev 30, 30-31 (1926-27)
(discussing Coke's use of history to interpret English law).  
	The dominant theme in Coke's commentary on the first
sentence of Chapter 29 was his explanation that the law protected
individuals' rights by prohibiting official acts depriving
freemen of life, liberty, or property unless done according to
"the law of the land" or by judgment of peers.  Proceedings "by
the law of the land" meant "by the common law, statute law, or
custome of England," "by the due course, and process of law," or
"by due process of the common law."  Coke, Second Institute at
45-46, 50.  With respect to deprivations by public officials,
Coke contended that due process of law required indictment or
presentment of good and lawful men by original writ of the common
law, the opportunity to answer by due process of the common law,
and presentment before justices "or thing of record."  Id. at 50. 
Coke described at length the evolution and seventeenth-century
meaning of the due process guarantees that had grown out of the
first sentence of Chapter 29.  Id. at 49-56; see also Charles
Grove Haines, The Revival of Natural Law Concepts, 1006-07 (1930)
(to Coke, due process conveyed principle that making and
enforcement of laws must not be arbitrary or contrary to
principles of natural or common law); Edward Corwin, The "Higher
Law" Background of American Constitutional Law, 42 Harv L Rev
365, 393 (1929) (describing Coke's effort to establish common-law
procedure as permanent restraint on power); Charles Grove Haines,
The American Doctrine of Judicial Supremacy, 25-34 (1914)
(describing Coke's conception of fundamental law binding both
Crown and Parliament).
	Coke declared that the second sentence of Chapter 29
had evolved into a different kind of guarantee in English law,
viz., one involving the rights of subjects in their private
relations with one another.  The assurance that the king would
not sell, deny, or defer justice or right had come to mean that  
	"* * * every subject of this realme, for injury done to
him in bonis, terris, vel persona, by any other
subject, be he ecclesiastical, or temporall, free, or
bond, man, or woman, old, or young, or be he outlawed,
excommunicated, or any other without exception, may
take his remedy by the course of the law, and have
justice, and right for the injury done to him, freely
without sale, fully without any deniall, and speedily
without delay."
Coke, Second Institute at 55.  In other words, Coke asserted that
the common law of England had come to guarantee every subject a
legal remedy for injury to goods, lands, or person caused by any
other subject.   The purpose of the remedial branch of the common
law was to discover "that which is tort, crooked, or wrong" and
restore "right" or "justice."  Id. at 56.  Coke viewed the
remedial branch of the law as the best birthright that English
subjects had, because it protected their goods, lands, person,
life, honor, and estimation from injury and wrong.  Id.  Coke
praised the common law, because it guaranteed both justice
("justitiam") and the means to attain it ("rectum").  Id. 
	Coke's commentary on Chapter 29 of the Magna Carta of
1225 thus explained that the common law had evolved to protect
individuals in two broad respects.  The first was a shield
against arbitrary government actions involving a person's life,
liberty, or property.  The second was a guarantee to every
subject that a legal remedy was available for injury to goods,
land, or person by any other subject of the realm.  As noted,
Coke viewed the remedial side of the law as "the best birthright
the subject hath."  Id. at 56.  
	Coke's Second Institute made its way to the American
colonies through a variety of sources.  Several lawyers had The
Institutes in their libraries.  A. E. Dick Howard, The Road From
Runnymede, 122-24 (1968).  In 1687, William Penn published The
Excellent Priviledge of Liberty &amp; Property Being the Birth-Right
of Free-Born Subjects of England, the first commentary on the
Magna Carta of 1225 to be published in the American colonies. 
Penn had copied his commentary verbatim from Henry Care's English
Liberties, another commentary on the Magna Carta of 1225 that
enjoyed immense popularity in England and in the colonies. (6) 
Howard, Road From Runnymede at 124.  Care had paraphrased Coke
when writing his commentary on the Magna Carta.  Id. at 89-90. 
To Care, like Coke, the provisions of the Magna Carta of 1225
were not concessions that had been exacted from kings.  Rather,
the Magna Carta of 1225 affirmed the common law, which the
English had claimed as their birthright.  Henry Care, English
Liberties, 6 (American ed 1721). 
	Care's commentary on the second sentence of Chapter 29
stated:
		"We will sell to no Man, deny to no man, etc. 
This is spoken in the Person of the King, who in
Judgment of the Law, in all his Courts of Justice, is
present.  And therefore every Subject of this Realm,
for Injury done to him, in Person, Lands or Goods, by
any other Subject, Ecclesiastical or Temporal, whatever
he be, may take his Remedy by the Course of the Law,
and have Justice and Right for the Injury done him,
freely, without Sale; fully, without denial; and
speedily without delay; for Justice must have three
Qualities, it must be Libera, free; for nothing is more
odious than Justice set to sale; Plena, full, for
justice ought not to limp, or be granted by piece-meal;
And Cleris, speedy:  Quia Dilatio est quedam negatio,
Delay is a kind of denial: and when all these meet, it
is both Justice and Right."
Care, English Liberties at 25-26 (italics in original;
underscoring added). 
2.  William Blackstone's Commentaries 
	Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England, the
first volume of which was published in 1765, is another important
source for understanding what the drafters of state constitutions
intended when they included in declarations or bills of rights
the guarantee of remedy by due course of law for injury to
person, property, reputation and, in some instances, liberty. 
Blackstone's Commentaries updated Coke's accounts of the
evolution of the common law.  The Commentaries sold quickly in
the American colonies and became one of the principal means of
the colonists' information about the state of English law in
general.  Plucknett, Concise History at 287.
	Blackstone explained that the common law viewed
Englishmen as having both absolute and relative rights.  1
William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England *123. 
Absolute rights are founded on immutable laws of nature and
reason, and usually are called liberties.  Id. at *123-24. 
Absolute rights exist in both a state of nature and in civil
society, while relative rights, such as those that are based on
the marital relationship, are rights that are defined solely by
membership in civil society.  Id. at *123.  The principal aim of
society is to protect individuals in their enjoyment of absolute
rights.  Id. at *124.  The common law recognized three absolute
rights:  "the right of personal security [including reputation],
the right of personal liberty, and the right of private
property."  Id. at *129.  
	Blackstone described an act that deprives a person of a
right as a "wrong."  3 Blackstone, Commentaries *116.  Wrongs can
be public (crimes and misdemeanors) or private (civil injuries). 
Id.  Blackstone explained that the remedial part of the law
provides a method for recovering for deprivations of rights or
for redressing wrongs, be they public or private.  1 Blackstone,
Commentaries *54.  Whenever the common law recognized a right or
prohibited an injury, he wrote, it also gave a remedy by legal
action initiated by filing the appropriate writ.  3 Blackstone,
Commentaries *123.
	Blackstone echoed Coke in stating that it would be "in
vain" for the law to recognize rights, if it were not for the
remedial part of the law that provides the methods for restoring
those rights when they wrongfully are withheld or invaded.  1
Blackstone, Commentaries *56.  To Blackstone, the guarantee of
legal remedy for injury "is what we mean properly, when we speak
of the protection of the law."  Id.  Hence, the maxim of English
law, Ubi jus, ibi remedium:  "for every right, there must be a
remedy."  James DeWitt Andrews, American Law:  A Commentary on
the Jurisprudence, Constitution and laws of the United States,
590 (2d ed 1908). 
	3.  English Rights in the American Colonies
	As early as 1606, royal charters granted colonists the
rights of Englishmen. (7)  The charters also gave the colonies the
authority to legislate for themselves, so long as the laws that
they enacted conformed to the English legal system.  H. D.
Hazeltine, The Influence of Magna Carta on American
Constitutional Development, 17 Colum L Rev 1, 8 (1917).  Because
the colonists viewed themselves as English citizens, the common
law of England, particularly as it had been summarized by writers
like Coke, Care, Penn, and Blackstone, had a profound impact on
the colonists' understandings of their rights and the authority
of their legislatures, also known at the time as general courts. 
See Howard, Road from Runnymede at 119-25 (describing popularity
of those writers in colonies); Julius Goebel, Jr., Constitutional
History and Law, 38 Colum L Rev 555, 565 (1938) (describing
colonists' faith in common-law rights).
	In the eighteenth century, under the influence of
writers like John Locke, James Harrington, and Algernon Sidney,
colonists began to describe their ancient common-law rights as
"natural rights."  1 F.N. Thorpe, Constitutional History of the
American People, 1776-1850, 38 (1898); Kermit L. Hall, The Magic
Mirror:  Law in American History, 57-58 (1989).  It became
increasingly popular to refer to rights as "inalienable" and "God
given" even though, historically, the rights could be traced to
the Magna Carta or could be identified as basic to the common
law.  Goebel, Constitutional History, 38 Colum L Rev at 565. 
Couching debates about rights in natural law terms obscured the
extent to which the colonists were relying on the common law in
resisting parliamentary impositions.  Hall, The Magic Mirror at
57-58.  Despite the rhetoric of natural law, however, colonial
leaders like John Adams understood that the common law was the
source of "the unalienable, indefeasible rights of men, the honor
and dignity of human nature, the grandeur and glory of the
public, and the universal happiness of individuals * * *." 
Corwin, The "Higher Law" Background of American Constitutional
Law, 42 Harv L Rev at 169 (quoting John Adams, Life and Works,
440 (1851)); see also H. D. Hazeltine, The Influence of Magna
Carta on American Constitutional Development, 17 Colum L Rev 1, 9
(1917) (common law also more important in Puritan colonies than
even Puritans at time suspected).  As the Revolution neared,
colonial lawyers looked to the common law, as it then had
evolved, as the source of their right to oppose Parliamentary
measures such as the "Coercive Acts" of 1774.  William Clarence
Webster, Comparative Study of the State Constitutions of the
American Revolution, in 9 Annals of the American Academy of
Political and Social Science, 381 (R. P. Falker ed 1899).  
	History also had taught the American colonists that,
notwithstanding the Magna Carta and the legal writings about
common-law rights that had followed, their rights were not safe
from the arbitrary exercise of government power unless they were
embodied in positive law.  Hazeltine, The Influence of Magna
Carta at 39.  Accordingly, in 1765, delegates from nine of the
colonies met in New York and published a declaration of rights
asserting their entitlement to all the common-law rights and
liberties of English subjects.  2 James Kent, Commentaries on
American Law, 5 (3d ed 1836).  In the same vein, the first
Continental Congress in 1774 adopted a Declaration of Rights
asserting not only that the inhabitants of the English colonies
in North America were entitled to life, liberty, and property by
the immutable laws of nature, but also that they were entitled to
the common law and statutory law of England and to all the
immunities and privileges granted and confirmed by royal
charters.  The 1774 Declaration of Rights reflected the principle
of English law that English subjects carried with them, as their
birthright, the laws of England.  Id.  
	Two years later, in 1776, the Declaration of
Independence restated the colonists' right to continue to enjoy
the ancient rights of the English constitution at the same time
that it pleaded a legal case for political independence.  Hall,
Magic Mirror at 59.  After the Revolution, all the states
continued the operation of the common law within their borders. 
Webster, Comparative Study at 70. (8)  Accordingly, courts continued
to apply common-law remedies for injuries to absolute rights.
	Shortly before the Revolution, the Continental Congress
had recommended to the colonies that they establish independent
governments.  By the end of 1776, several of the colonies -- now
states -- had adopted constitutions and had prefaced them with
declarations or bills of rights that stated "in dogmatic form all
of the seminal principles of the English constitutional system." 
C. Ellis Stevens, Sources of the Constitution of the United
States, 34, 38 n 1 (1894). (9)  After the Revolution, however, the
function of declarations or bills of rights was to safeguard
against arbitrary power of all kinds, not merely the Crown or
Parliament.  Willi Paul Adams, The First American Constitutions,
145 (1980).
	Few of the original states formed constitutional
conventions to draft their constitutions.  Most states left the
task to their legislatures, or general courts.  Allan Nevins, The
American States During and After the Revolution:  1775-1789, 137
(1924). (10)  Not surprisingly, the drafters of the first state
constitutions drew on their own colonial institutions and
charters, which included the tenets of the common law as they
understood them.  Donald S. Lutz, The Origins of American
Constitutionalism, 62 (1988); see Nevins, The American States
During and After the Revolution at 1 ("Almost all of the early
state constitutions descend directly from Colonial
institutions.").  There were few practical guides available to
the drafters of state constitutions, apart from the existing
royal and proprietary charters, the writings of Coke, Care, Penn,
and Blackstone, and the philosophy of English revolutionists. 
Nevins, The American States During and After the Revolution at
126.
	Declarations or bills of rights in state constitutions
reflected the broad, deep foundations of English rights as those
rights were understood at the time, but drafters restated their
common-law rights as natural rights.  Webster, Comparative Study
at 384-85.  The most significant legal provisions in the early
bills of rights were taken from the Second Institute in an effort
to give concrete content to the common-law rights of Englishmen. 
Roscoe Pound, The Formative Era of American Law, 98 (1938). (11) 
	Our historical inquiry to this point reveals that the
common law had a powerful influence on the American colonists'
understandings of their legal rights as private individuals in
their relations with one another, as well as on their
understandings of their rights and liberties in relation to
government.  Consistent with the writings of Blackstone and
eighteenth century revolutionary writers, the colonists viewed
some of their rights -- including those respecting person,
property, reputation, and liberty -- as "absolute."  The drafters
of the first state constitutions sought to protect absolute
rights by prefacing their constitutions with bills or
declarations of rights that both prohibited official interference
with some rights and mandated how the government was to protect
other rights.  In writing those bills or declarations of rights,
the drafters looked to the common law, as it was described to
them in sources that included Coke's Second Institute, to
identify the rights that they sought to protect.  Coke's
commentary on the second sentence of Chapter 29 of the Magna
Carta of 1225, describing the common-law guarantee of remedy by
due course of law for injury to goods, land, or person, evidently
provided the framework and phraseology for remedy clauses that
first appeared in state declarations of rights beginning in 1776. 
John H. Bauman, Remedies Provisions in State Constitutions and
the Proper Role of the State Courts, 26 Wake Forest L Rev 237,
243-44 (1991). 
	4.  Early Remedy Clauses 
	The states of Maryland and Delaware were the first to
place remedy clauses in their declarations of rights.  Both
states had been proprietary colonies before the Revolution and,
as noted earlier, their governors had guaranteed to the residents
of those colonies the rights of Englishmen.  The remedy clauses
of both states' constitutions echoed Coke's, Care's, and Penn's
commentaries on the second sentence of Chapter 29 of the Magna
Carta of 1225. (12) 
	After 1776, the drafters of other state constitutions
apparently looked to Maryland and Delaware, if not directly to
Coke, Care, or Penn, in crafting their remedy clauses.  See
Howard, Road From Runnymede at 485-86 (Appendix O, listing state
constitutions with remedy clauses derived from Coke or variants
thereon). (13)  Clauses guaranteeing remedy for injury to absolute
common-law rights became more common after 1780, as constitution
writers realized that unrestrained state legislative power was as
much a threat to the security of individual rights as
unrestrained parliamentary and royal power had been.  See Gordon
S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic 1776-1787, 448-49
(1969) (by 1780s, growing awareness that legislative power is
"essentially no different from magisterial power"); see also
Haines, American Doctrine at 40-61 (describing theory of
constitutions as fundamental laws unalterable by legislatures).
	As noted, the drafters wrote the Oregon Constitution
and its Bill of Rights in 1857.  As part of our effort to
understand the wording of Oregon's remedy clause in light of the
way that wording would have been understood and used by those who
wrote the provision, Vannatta, 324 Or at 530, and as a way of
bridging the period from the immediate aftermath of the American
Revolution to the middle of the nineteenth century, we turn to an
examination of the historical evolution of the remedy clause in
Indiana, whose constitution of 1851 was the primary source for
the Oregon Constitution.  Charles Henry Carey, ed., The Oregon
Constitution and Proceedings and Debates of the Constitutional
Convention of 1857, 28 (1926). 
	 5.  Indiana Remedy Clause
	 The territory of Indiana, which had been governed by
the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, was admitted into the union in
1816.  1 Charles Kettleborough, Constitution Making in Indiana,
65 (1971).  The Indiana Bill of Rights followed the model of
other Midwestern states, such as Ohio and Kentucky. (14)  William P.
McLauchlan, The Indiana State Constitution:  A Reference Guide, 3
(1996).  Article I, section 11, of the Indiana Constitution of
1816, provided:
		"That all Courts shall be open, and every person,
for an injury done him in his lands, goods, person, or
reputation, shall have remedy by the due course of law;
and right and justice administered without denial or
delay."
That phrasing virtually was identical to Article X, section 13,
of the Kentucky Constitution of 1799. 
	By the 1840s, there was considerable dissatisfaction in
Indiana with the constitution of 1816, primarily because that
constitution had not proved to be an adequate restraint on 
legislative power.  1 Kettleborough, Constitution Making at 186-87.  Article III, section 25, of the 1816 constitution, had
provided for annual sessions of the legislature, and the
constitution had imposed few restraints on legislative powers. 
Id. at 95-96.  Specific complaints in the 1840s were that the
legislature was enacting too many laws and that too many of those
laws were local and private in nature.  Id. at 183, 186-87. 
Citizens of Indiana were not alone in distrusting legislative
power.  One of the notable features of all state constitutions
that were drafted in the mid-nineteenth century was the mistrust
of legislative power.  Amasa M. Eaton, Recent State
Constitutions, 6 Harv L Rev 109, 109 (1892); see Hall, Magic
Mirror at 89 (populist and antigovernmental stirrings of late
1840s and 1850s "climaxed in an outburst of constitutional reform
that diminished legislative power").  
	The Indiana Constitutional Convention of 1850 made
fundamental changes to that state's original constitution,
including limiting the legislature to biennial sessions (Article
IV, section 9) and prohibiting the legislature from passing local
or special laws (Article IV, section 22).  1 Kettelborough,
Constitution Making at 314, 318-19.  The convention also rewrote
various provisions of Indiana's Bill of Rights to assure that the
legislature would not invade the rights that were protected
therein.  
	Article I, section 11, of the Indiana Constitution of
1816, was one of the provisions that the convention revised. 
Renumbered as Article I, section 12, of the Indiana Constitution
of 1851, the convention rewrote it to provide:
		"All courts shall be open; and every man, for
injury done to him in his person, property, or
reputation, shall have remedy by due course of law. 
Justice shall be administered freely, and without
purchase; completely, and without denial; speedily, and
without delay."
1 Kettleborough, Constitution Making at 297-98.  Unlike the one-sentence version in the 1816 constitution, the 1851 provision
consisted of two sentences, each addressing different guarantees. 
The first sentence guaranteed both open courts and the right to
remedy by due course of law for injury to person, property, or
reputation.  The second sentence prescribed how justice must be
administered, and the delegates added requirements that had not
been present in the 1816 constitution, including the requirement
that justice be administered completely, as well as freely;
without purchase; and speedily, without denial or delay.  
	The decisions to restructure Article I, section 12, to
make the remedy clause an independent clause and to add the
requirement that justice be administered completely are
indications that the drafters of the Indiana Constitution of 1851
intended to secure more firmly than had been done in the 1816
constitution the common-law right to remedy for injury to
absolute rights concerning person, property, and reputation. The evolution of the remedy clause in the Indiana Bill of Rights
thus indicates that the commitment to protecting absolute common-law rights had strengthened, not waned, with the passage of time. 
	We have found no cases construing the Indiana remedy
clause before the Oregon Constitution was adopted in 1857. 
However, legal commentaries and case law from other jurisdictions
provide insight into the rights that remedy clauses were intended
to protect and how the key terms "remedy," "due course of law,"
and "injury" were understood during that era.  We turn to an
examination of those sources.
	6.  Commentaries and Case Law from Other Jurisdictions
	The commitment to natural rights was strong in the
nineteenth century, just as it had been in the eighteenth century
and before.  New York Chancellor James Kent, for example,
identified personal security (including reputation), personal
liberty, and the right to acquire and enjoy property as absolute
rights.  2 Kent, Commentaries at 1, 15.  Kent described absolute
rights as natural, inherent, and unalienable, id. at 1, and
explained that the function of bills of rights is to guard
absolute rights from attack in the ordinary course of public
affairs, id. at 8.  Similarly, the Ohio Supreme Court, in
construing that state's remedy clause, referred to reputation as
a "sacred right of every person," Fisher v. Patterson, 14 Ohio
418, 426 (1846), and the Mississippi Supreme Court, in a case
involving that state's remedy clause, described liberty and
property as fundamental, sacred rights.  Commercial Bank of
Natchez v. Chambers et al., 16 Miss 9, 57 (1847). 
	It also was well established in the nineteenth century
that, at a minimum, a "remedy" was a means for enforcing a legal
right.  In Marbury v. Madison, 5 US (1 Cranch) 137, 163, 2 L Ed
60 (1803), the United States Supreme Court held that the "very
essence of civil liberty * * * consists in the right of every
individual to claim the protection of the laws, whenever he
receives an injury."  That rule rested on Blackstone's assertion
that "'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 wherever that right is invaded,'" and that "'every right,
when withheld, must have a remedy, and every injury its proper
redress.'"  Id. (quoting Blackstone's Commentaries).
	Kentucky's highest court made a similar statement in
Davis v. Ballard, 24 Ky (1 JJ Marsh) 563 (1829).  The court
explained that no one is secure in the enjoyment of life,
liberty, or property unless the government provides an
opportunity for redress if those rights are injured.  Id. at 568. 
The court held that the remedy clause in Article X, section 13,
of the Kentucky Constitution, imposes on "the functionaries of
the government" the duty to assure the availability of a remedy
for injury.  Id. 
	Courts assumed that common-law remedies provided
constitutionally adequate remedies for injuries to recognized
rights.  Nonetheless, they acknowledged legislative authority to
alter remedies, so long as the alterations did not infringe on
absolute, or vested, rights.  See Gooch v. Stephenson, 13 Me 371,
376-77 (1836) (so stating).  If legislatively enacted remedies
did infringe on such rights, courts invalidated those remedies. 
Thus, in Riggs, Peabody &amp; Co. v. Martin, 5 Ark 506, 508-09
(1844), the Arkansas Supreme Court declared unconstitutional a
statute that prohibited a person from asserting rights to probate
estates unless the person took an oath in open court stating that
he had given the estate credit for all payments and offsets to
which the estate was entitled.  The court held that the
legislature lacked authority to impose the open-court oath
requirement:  
		"The Legislature certainly does not possess the
power to cut off all remedy on demands against the
estate of deceased persons, or so to impair the right
or clog its assertion as to render it inoperative or
valueless."
Id. at 508.  
	Courts in the nineteenth century also evaluated
legislatively created remedies by examining whether they
satisfied "due course of law," "due process of law," or "law of
the land" requirements.  As they had in Coke's time, those
phrases continued to share an "identity of meaning" in the
nineteenth century.  Theodore Sedgwick, A Treatise on the Rules
Which Govern the Interpretation and Application of Statutory and
Constitutional Law, 534, 534 n  (1857).  State as well as
federal courts viewed the phrases as imposing an "important
limitation" on the exercise of legislative power.  Id. at 534. 
For example, in Townsend v. Townsend, 7 Tenn (Peck) 1, 14 (1821),
the Supreme Court of Tennessee stated that the remedy clause in
Article XI, section 7, of the Tennessee Constitution, which
guaranteed remedy by due course of law for injury to lands,
goods, person, or reputation, imposed a "restriction * * * upon
legislative and all other power."  The legislature was not free
to barter away constitutional rights, because they were "vested,
unexchangeable, and unalienable."  Id. at 12.  In Davis, 24 Ky (1
JJ Marsh) at 571, the court held that the remedy clause in
Article X, section 13, of the Kentucky Constitution, which
guaranteed remedy by due course of law for injury to lands,
goods, person, or reputation, was one of the constitutional
provisions that imposed a duty on the judiciary to declare laws
unconstitutional. 
	Courts also held that "law of the land" provisions in
bills of rights imposed restraints on legislative power.  In
Jones' Heirs v. Perry, 18 Tenn (10 Yer) 59, 71 (1836), for
example, the Tennessee Supreme Court explained: 
		"The only means by which the legislature can be
kept within the bounds of the constitution, in times of
high political excitement, is to accustom its members
to the restraints it imposes, and to check their
assumption of an excess of power promptly whenever the
case occurs."
See also Westervelt v. Gregg, 12 NY 202, 209 (1854) (due process
of law does not mean any act legislature might think fit to pass
"in the uncontrolled exercise of its power"); Hoke v. Henderson,
15 NC (4 Dev) 1, 12 (1833) rev'd on other grounds Mial v.
Ellington, 134 NC 131, 46 SE 961 (1903) (phrase "law of the land"
does not mean any act of general assembly).
	Notwithstanding their duty to determine whether
legislatively enacted remedies satisfied due course of law, due
process of law, or law of the land requirements, courts
approached their evaluative task with the presumption that the
legislature had intended to provide a constitutionally adequate
remedy for injury to protected rights.  In Schuylkill Navigation
Company v. Loose, 19 Pa 15, 18 (1852), for example, the
Pennsylvania Supreme Court explained that the remedy clause in
Article IX, section 11, of the Pennsylvania Constitution, had
descended from the common-law guarantee that "'justice and right
shall be denied * * * to no one.'"  (quoting Magna Carta). 
Because the common law and the constitution guaranteed "right,"
or remedy, for injury, the court explained, it would evaluate
remedial statutes that were substitutes for common-law remedies
with a presumption that the legislature intended to provide
remedies for injury that at least were equivalent to those that
had been provided at common law.  Id. 
	Finally, in our examination of historical sources
providing insight into the meaning of the key terms in state
constitutional remedy clauses, we turn to nineteenth century case
law construing the word "injury."  As they had in previous
centuries, courts continued to view "injury" as any violation of
a right or any wrong done to a right.  In Parker v. Griswold, 17
Conn 288, 295 (1845), for example, the question was whether the
defendant had injured the plaintiff's land by diverting water
away from a stream that ran through it.  The defendant had argued
that no injury had occurred merely because less water had come to
the plaintiff's land.  Id. at 295.  The Connecticut Supreme Court
rejected that argument, explaining:
		 "An injury is a wrong; and for the redress of
every wrong there is a remedy: a wrong is a violation
of one's right; and for the vindication of every
right there is a remedy.  Want of right and want to
remedy are justly said to be reciprocal.  Where
therefore there has been a violation of a right, the
person injured is entitled to an action."  
Id. at 303 (emphasis added).  Courts also held that remedy
clauses addressed "every possible injury which a man may sustain
and which affects him in respect to his real or personal
property, or in respect to his person or reputation * * *." 
Townsend, 7 Tenn (Peck) at 14; see also Parker, 17 Conn at 303
(for vindication of right that is injured or wronged, law
supplies a remedy through some form of action). (15) 
	In sum, when the Oregon Constitutional Convention
convened in 1857, courts and commentators had provided
considerable insight into the background and meaning of remedy
clauses in state declarations or bills of rights.  Those cases
and commentaries revealed that the purpose of remedy clauses was
to protect "absolute" common-law rights.  For injuries to those
rights, the remedial side of the common law had provided causes
of action that were intended to restore right or justice.  Remedy
clauses mandated the continued availability of remedy for injury
to absolute rights.  The requirement that remedy be by due course
or due process of law was intended as a limitation on the
legislature's authority when it substituted statutory remedies
for common-law remedies.  It was the duty of courts to enforce
those restraints in evaluating whether particular statutory
remedies satisfied the requirement that remedy be by "due course
of law."  See 2 Kent, Commentaries at 13 n b (not every act of
legislature reflects "law of the land"); Haines, American
Doctrine at 63-121 (discussing state court decisions between 1778
and 1819 establishing practice of "judicial control of
legislative acts").  With that background, we turn to the
drafting and adoption of the remedy clause in Article I, section
10, of the Oregon Constitution. 
	7.  Oregon Constitutional Convention
	The Oregon Constitutional Convention convened on
August 17, 1857, and elected territorial Justice Matthew Deady as
its president.  Carey, The Oregon Constitution at 27.  Many of
the delegates came from states that had undertaken constitutional
reform in the late 1840s.  David Alan Johnson, Founding the Far
West, 142 (1992).  Nineteen of the 60 delegates were lawyers. 
Charles H. Carey, General History of Oregon, 511 (3d ed 1971). 
Like their Indiana counterparts, the drafters of the Oregon
Constitution were leery of legislative power.  They limited the
legislature to biennial sessions, Article IV, section 10, imposed
a single-subject limitation on all acts, Article IV, section 20,
prohibited the enactment of special or local laws, Article IV,
section 23, and required a majority of all the members -- rather
than a majority of a quorum -- to enact all laws, Article IV,
section 25.  See Carey, The Oregon Constitution at 390
(explaining reasons for wanting to restrain legislative power).
	Early in the convention, lawyer-delegate Delazon
Smith, who had studied other states' constitutions, proposed
creating a committee on the bill of rights.  Id. at 76, 100. 
Smith argued that a bill of rights was "a sort of textbook of
weighty matters" that would command the respect of the people and
the attention of the courts, and would limit the fractious spirit
of the majority if it tried to infringe on the rights of the
individual citizen.  Id. at 102. 
	The delegates created a seven-member committee on the
bill of rights headed by lawyer-delegate Layfayette Grover.  Id.
at 107.  The committee submitted a proposed bill of rights less
than a week later.  Id. at 117.  Many of the provisions were
identical to the bill of rights of the Indiana Constitution of
1851.  See W.C. Palmer, The Sources of the Oregon Constitution, 5
Or L Rev 200, 201-02 (1926) (comparing Oregon and Indiana bills
of rights).  The committee recommended the following wording for
the provision that became Article I, section 10, of the Oregon
Constitution:
		"No tribunal 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."
Carey, The Oregon Constitution at 120.  In the final version, the
convention substituted the word "court" for the word "tribunal." 
Id. at 327.  The convention adopted the Bill of Rights on
September 12, 1857.  Id. at 343.  
	There is no record of the debates surrounding the
changes that the committee on the Bill of Rights made to Article
I, section 10.  However, in the short time that the committee
devoted to drafting the Bill of Rights for the Oregon
Constitution, it rewrote Article I, section 12, of the Indiana
Constitution of 1851, rather than merely adopting the Indiana
provision verbatim.  The committee reorganized the provision to
express in one clause all the requirements relating to open
courts and judicial administration.  It expressed in a separate,
independent clause the guarantee of remedy by due course of law
for injury to person, property, or reputation.  The decision to
express in a separate, independent clause the guarantee of remedy
by due course of law for injury to person, property, or
reputation indicates that the drafters of the Oregon Constitution
believed that the right to a remedy for injury to those rights
needed to be stated clearly and unambiguously in the Oregon Bill
of Rights.
	Evidence of the scope of the drafters' intent when they
wrote the remedy clause in section 10 of the Oregon Bill of
Rights admittedly is sketchy.  However, we find no indication
that the drafters sought to depart from the historical purpose of
remedy clauses, which was to mandate the availability of a remedy
by due course of law for injury to absolute rights respecting
person, property, and reputation.  That the drafters of Article
I, section 10, of the Oregon Constitution, rewrote and
reorganized Article I, section 12, of the Indiana Constitution of
1851, rather than merely adopting that provision verbatim as they
did several other provisions of the Indiana Bill of Rights,
demonstrates that the drafters gave careful thought to the
structure and wording of Article I, section 10.  Their choice to
express in one clause how justice is to be administered, and to
reserve for a separate, independent clause the requirement of
remedy by due course of law for injury to person, property, or
reputation, indicates that the drafters regarded the remedy
clause as providing substantive protection to those absolute
common-law rights.  Viewed in the context of the historical
tradition that gave rise to remedy clauses in other state
constitutions, and the mistrust of legislative power that
pervaded the mid-nineteenth century, we conclude that the
drafters of Article I, section 10, sought to give constitutional
protection to absolute rights respecting person, property, and
reputation as those rights were understood in 1857, and that the
means for doing so was to mandate the availability of remedy by
due course of law in the event of injury to those rights.  That
remedy must be by due course of law is a directive to courts, as
the guardians of constitutional rights, to determine the
constitutionality of legislatively created remedies respecting
such rights. 
	Having examined the text of the remedy clause, and the
historical circumstances leading to its adoption, we now turn to
Oregon case law surrounding the provision.  See Priest, 314 Or at
415-16 (prescribing sequence of analysis). 
C.  Oregon Supreme Court Case Law
	This court's case law surrounding Article I, section
10, is extensive.  We review that case law first by considering
cases analyzing the rights that the remedy clause protects, then
cases analyzing its key terms:  remedy, due course of law, and
injury.
	1.   Rights Protected by the Remedy Clause  
	This court has stated that the guarantee of remedy by
due course of law for injury to person, property, or reputation
"is one of the most sacred and essential of all the
constitutional guaranties" and that "without it a free government
cannot be maintained or individual liberty be preserved."  Gearin
v. Marion County, 110 Or 390, 396, 223 P 929 (1924).  This court
also has stated that the purpose of the remedy clause is to make
the common-law maxim that there is no wrong without a remedy "a
fixed and permanent rule of law in this state."  Platt v. Newberg
et al., 104 Or 148, 153, 205 P 296 (1922).  Those statements
reflect this court's understanding that certain common-law rights
are absolute rights that must be protected from infringement. 
	Consistent with the foregoing observations, this court
for many years held that the purpose of the remedy clause "is to
save from legislative abolishment those jural rights which had
become well established prior to the enactment of our
Constitution."  See Stewart v. Houk et al, 127 Or 589, 591, 271 P
998, on reh'g 272 P 893 (1928) (so stating and citing eight
previous cases so holding).  Stewart involved the
constitutionality of a 1927 statute, which provided that
"'[a]cceptance of a free ride as a guest in a motor vehicle shall
be presumed to be a waiver of said guest of liability for
accidental injury caused by [the] owner or driver of such motor
vehicle.'"  Id. at 591 (quoting statute).  The court held that
the statute violated the remedy clause.  It reasoned:
		"[I]f the buttress erected by this constitutional
provision for the safeguarding of long-established
rights can be pierced by this piece of legislation, an
entry will be effected through which may come other
legislation in substitution for the safeguarded common-law rights.  It is clear we possess no power to
sanction the entry and the substitution."
Id. at 596.  The holding in Stewart was consistent with previous
cases in which the court had held that, under the remedy clause,
"[v]ested rights are placed under constitutional protection, and
cannot be destroyed by legislation."  Templeton v. Linn County,
22 Or 313, 318, 29 P 795 (1892).
	Soon after this court's decision in Stewart, the United
States Supreme Court decided Silver v. Silver, 280 US 117, 50 S
Ct 57, 74 L Ed 221 (1929).  That decision presaged an alteration
in the course of this court's Article I, section 10,
jurisprudence.  In Silver, the issue was whether the Connecticut
guest-passenger statute, which barred a gratuitous guest from
recovering for injuries caused by ordinary negligence in the
operation of an automobile but not other modes of transportation,
violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment
to the United States Constitution. (16)  Id. at 122.  The
Connecticut Supreme Court had held that the statute did not
violate the Equal Protection Clause, Silver v. Silver, 108 Conn
371, 143 A 240 (1928), and the United States Supreme Court
affirmed, Silver, 280 US at 122.  The Supreme Court explained
that the Equal Protection Clause "does not forbid the creation of
new rights, or the abolition of old ones recognized by the common
law, to attain a permissible legislative object."  Id. 
	Thereafter, in 1935, in Perozzi v. Ganiere, 149 Or 330,
345, 40 P2d 1009 (1935), this court relied on Silver in upholding
Oregon's 1929 guest passenger statute against a remedy clause
challenge.  That statute barred causes of action against drivers
of motor vehicles by gratuitous guests who had been injured,
unless the plaintiff could show that the accident was intentional
or had been caused by gross negligence, intoxication, or reckless
disregard for the rights of others.  Id. at 331.  The plaintiff
in Perozzi relied on Stewart for the proposition that the 1929
statute, like its predecessor, deprived her of a remedy for the
injury that she had suffered to her person when the car in which
she was riding overturned as a result of the defendant's careless
and negligent driving.  Id. at 330-31.  In rejecting the
plaintiff's challenge, the court cited Silver for the proposition
that the remedy clause in Article I, section 10, of the Oregon
Constitution, does not prohibit the legislature from creating new
rights or abolishing old rights recognized at common law. (17)  Id.
at 333.
	As our analysis to this point makes clear, the Perozzi
court erred in relying on the United States Supreme Court's
analysis of the Equal Protection Clause in Silver for its
interpretation of the rights protected by the Oregon remedy
clause.  The Equal Protection Clause and the remedy clause
address distinctly different constitutional concerns.  As this
court correctly had held on many occasions before Perozzi, the
purpose of the remedy clause in Article I, section 10, is to
protect absolute common-law rights respecting person, property,
and reputation by guaranteeing the availability of a remedy in
the event of an injury.  The purpose of the Equal Protection
Clause, which was added to the United States Constitution after
the Civil War, is to assure that all persons are treated equally
by the law.  Nonetheless, beginning with Perozzi, the United
States Supreme Court's interpretation of the Equal Protection
Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment in Silver, rather than the
text, history, and this court's prior interpretations of the
remedy clause, became the basis for this court asserting, in
subsequent cases, that the legislature may abolish absolute
common-law rights without violating Article I, section 10.  As
our review of subsequent cases will show, that error has had
significant consequences.
	In Noonan v. City of Portland, 161 Or 213, 249, 88 P2d
808 (1939), this court again relied on Silver in holding that
Article I, section 10, "was not intended to give anyone a vested
right in the law either statutory or common * * *."  The court
reiterated that point in Josephs v. Burns &amp; Bear, 260 Or 493,
503, 491 P2d 203 (1971), again relying on Silver.  Other remedy-clause cases examining the rights that are protected by Article
I, section 10, likewise have relied on Perozzi, Noonan, and
Josephs.  See, e.g., Holden v. Pioneer Broadcasting Co. et al,
228 Or 405, 412-13, 365 P2d 845 (1961) (citing Perozzi and Noonan
for proposition legislature may modify fault principle); (18) Sealey
v. Hicks, 309 Or 387, 393-94, 788 P2d 435 (1990) (citing Josephs
for proposition that legislature can determine what constitutes
legally cognizable injury); Hale v. Port of Portland, 308 Or 508,
521, 783 P2d 506 (1989) (citing Noonan for proposition that
Article I, section 10, not intended to give anyone vested right
in law). 
	As we have explained, the history of the remedy clause
indicates that its purpose is to protect absolute common-law
rights respecting person, property, and reputation, as those
rights existed when the Oregon Constitution was drafted in 1857. 
The means for protecting those rights is the mandate that remedy
by due course of law be available in the event of injury.  Until
1935, this court's case law was consistent with that historical
purpose.  In Perozzi, this court erroneously relied on the United
States Supreme Court's interpretation of the Equal Protection
Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States
Constitution in Silver to hold that Article I, section 10, does
not forbid the legislature from abolishing absolute rights
respecting person, property, or reputation that existed when the
Oregon Constitution was adopted.  Subsequent cases, relying on
Perozzi and Silver, have repeated that error.  We disavow this
court's holdings, beginning with Perozzi, that the legislature
can abolish or alter absolute rights respecting person, property,
or reputation that existed when the Oregon Constitution was
drafted without violating the remedy clause in Article I, section
10.
	2.  Remedy
	For rights that are protected by Article I, section 10,
this court consistently has held that the law must provide a
means for seeking redress for injury.  See, e.g., Thomas v.
Bowen, 29 Or 258, 264, 45 P 768 (1896) (Article I, section 10,
furnishes adequate remedy for any infringement of right to
preservation of good name); Batdorff v. Oregon City, 53 Or 402,
408-9, 100 P 937 (1909) (city ordinance limiting recovery for
injury to instances of gross negligence leaves "remediless"
person injured by ordinary negligence in violation of Article I,
section 10).  The legislature lacks authority to deny a remedy
for injury to absolute rights that existed when the Oregon
Constitution was adopted in 1857.  See Mattson v. Astoria, 39 Or
577, 580, 65 P 1066 (1901) (Article I, section 10, intended to
preserve common-law right of action).  
	Although this court has held that the remedy clause
preserves common-law rights of action, id., it never has held
that the remedy clause prohibits the legislature from changing a
common-law remedy or form of procedure, attaching conditions
precedent to invoking the remedy, or perhaps even abolishing old
remedies and substituting new remedies.  Id.  That is, the court
never has held that the remedy clause freezes in place common-law
remedies.  However, just as the legislature cannot deny a remedy
entirely for injury to constitutionally protected common-law
rights, id., neither can it substitute an "emasculated remedy"
that is incapable of restoring the right that has been injured,
West v. Jaloff, 113 Or 184, 195, 232 P 642 (1925). (19)
	3.  Due Course of Law
	For many years, this court viewed the phrase, "due
course of law," as a guarantee of "due process of law," like that
contained in the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States
Constitution.  In Hough v. Porter, 51 Or 318, 449, 98 P 1083
(1909), for example, the court identified Article I, section 10,
as authority for the proposition that, "under the fundamental law
of our land[,] all persons are entitled by due process of law to
protection in their property rights, and to a speedy hearing of
any controversy in respect thereto."  In Perozzi, 149 Or at 350,
the court again asserted that Article I, section 10, "is a 'due
process of law' clause."  Consistent with that view, this court
held that the procedural requirements of Article I, section 10,
are applicable to criminal proceedings, see State v. Bouse, 199
Or 676, 686, 264 P2d 800 (1953) (Article I, section 10, like
Fourteenth Amendment, demands fair and impartial trial); to
habeas corpus proceedings, see Penrod/Brown v. Cupp, 283 Or 21,
26, 581 P2d 934 (1978) ("Where the deprivation involves a
constitutionally protected right, either Oregon's Article I,
Section 10, or the federal fourteenth amendment obliges the state
to provide some remedy in due course, or due process, of law.");
and to prison discipline proceedings, see Bonney v. OSP, 270 Or
79, 91-2, 526 P2d 1020 (1974) ("in the inmate hearing context we
choose to interpret Oregon's constitutional due process provision
as mandating no greater rights than does the Fourteenth
Amendment").  During the period that the court viewed the
guarantee of "due course of law" as equivalent to "due process of
law in the Fourteenth Amendment," it followed substantially
federal court interpretations of the Fourteenth Amendment.  See
School Dist. No. 12 v. Wasco County, 270 Or 622, 632, 529 P2d 386
(1974) (so stating). 
	Justice Linde's concurrence in Davidson v. Rogers, 281
Or 219, 222-23, 574 P2d 624 (1978), set the stage for a different
approach.  He wrote:
	"The guarantee in article I, section 10, of a
'remedy by due course of law for injury done [one] in
his person, property, or reputation' is part of a
section dealing with the administration of justice.  It
is a plaintiffs' clause, addressed to securing the
right to set the machinery of the law in motion to
recover for harm already done to one of the stated
kinds of interest, a guarantee that dates by way of the
original state constitutions of 1776 back to King
John's promise in Magna Carta chapter 40: 'To no one
will We sell, to no one will We deny or delay, right or
justice.'  It is concerned with securing a remedy from
those who administer the law, through courts or
otherwise."
(Brackets in original; footnote omitted.)  In 1982, in Cole v.
Dept. of Rev., 294 Or 188, 191, 655 P2d 171 (1982), this court
adopted Justice Linde's view that the guarantee of remedy by due
course of law is not equivalent to the guarantee of due process
of law of the Fourteenth Amendment.  Unlike the Due Process
Clause in the Fourteenth Amendment, which evaluates the adequacy
of the processes provided before government deprives a person of
life, liberty or property, the remedy clause guarantees remedy by
due course of law for injuries to person, property, or reputation
that already have occurred.  Id.; see also State v. Wagner, 305
Or 115, 145-56, 752 P2d 1136 (1988) (Article I, section 10, not
equivalent to Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause); State v.
Hart, 299 Or 128, 140, 699 P2d 1113 (1985) (same). 
	Our historical inquiry in this case supports this
court's holding in Cole that the remedy clause of Article I,
section 10, is not a due process clause in the sense that due
process is used in the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States
Constitution.  Nonetheless, the mandate in Article I, section 10,
that remedy be by due course of law for injury to person,
property, or reputation, expresses a limitation on the exercise
of legislative power.  It is the duty of courts to evaluate the
constitutionality of legislative enactments regarding the
availability of remedies for injuries to rights that are
protected by the remedy clause.
	4.  Injury
	Judge Matthew Deady, who had served as the president of
the Oregon Constitutional Convention in 1857, provided the first
judicial explanation of the meaning of the term "injury" in the
remedy clause:
		"[T]he remedy guarantied by [Article I, section
10,] is not intended for the redress of any novel,
indefinite, or remote injury that was not then regarded
as within the pale of legal redress.  But whatever
injury the law, as it then stood, took cognizance of
and furnished a remedy for, every man shall continue to
have a remedy for by due course of law. * * * If [a]
then known and accustomed remedy can be taken away in
the face of this constitutional provision, what other
may not?  Can the legislature, in some spasm of novel
opinion, take away every man's remedy for slander,
assault and battery, or the recovery of a debt?"
Eastman v. County of Clackamas, 32 F 24, 32 (D Or 1887).  The
word "then" appears to refer to the time when the drafters wrote
the Oregon Constitution.  Thus, according to Judge Deady, if
there was a common-law cause of action for injury to person,
property, or reputation in 1857, then the remedy clause mandates
the continued availability of remedy for that injury.  Id.
	This court adopted Judge Deady's view of injury in
Theiler v. Tillamook County, 75 Or 214, 217, 146 P 828 (1915). 
Earlier, this court had cited with approval decisions from other
jurisdictions holding that "injury" means wrongs or harms to
rights that are recognized by the common law, that is, for which
common-law causes of action existed.  Mattson, 39 Or at 580
(citing McClain v. Williams, 10 SD 332, 73 NW 72 (1897), and
Reining v. City of Buffalo, 102 NY 308, 6 NE 792 (1886)).  See
Stewart, 127 Or at 592 (quoting Mattson for proposition that
injury means wrongs for which remedy must be available); see also
Cole, 294 Or at 191 (procedural requirement that one pay assessed
taxes before suing to have them refunded not type of injury
contemplated by Article I, section 10).
	In 1990, in Sealey, this court held that the
legislature has authority to determine what constitutes a legally
cognizable injury.  309 Or at 394.  The Sealey court relied on
Josephs, which in turn had relied on Noonan and Silver, for the
proposition that the remedy clause does not give anyone a vested
right in the law, either statutory or common.  See Josephs, 260
Or at 503 (so stating).  If it were true that the legislature had
authority to declare what rights are protected by the remedy
clause, then it would follow that the legislature also had
plenary authority to define what constitutes a legally cognizable
injury to those rights.  However, as we have explained above, the
remedy clause protects absolute common-law rights respecting
person, property, and reputation that existed when the drafters
wrote the constitution.  If the legislature constitutionally
cannot abolish or alter those rights directly, then it cannot
abolish them indirectly by defining narrowly what constitutes an
injury to those rights.  We disavow the holding in Sealey that
the legislature constitutionally is authorized to define what
constitutes an injury to absolute rights respecting person,
property, and reputation that are protected by Article I, section
10.
D.  Summary
	Having analyzed the remedy clause in the manner
prescribed by Priest for interpreting an original provision of
the Oregon Constitution, 314 Or at 415-16, we reach the following
conclusions.  As one of the provisions of the Oregon Bill of
Rights, the remedy clause of Article I, section 10, protects
rights respecting person, property, and reputation that, in 1857,
the common law regarded as "absolute," that is, that derive from
nature or reason rather than solely from membership in civil
society.  By the seventeenth century, the remedial side of the
common law had developed to protect those rights in the event of
injury by any other subject of the English realm.  The function
of common-law causes of action was to restore "justice" or
"right" following injury.  "Injury" at common law meant any harm
or wrong to absolute rights for which a cause of action existed.
	Drafters of remedy clauses in state constitutions
sought to protect absolute common-law rights by mandating that a
remedy always would be available for injury to those rights.  The
drafters of the Oregon remedy clause identified absolute rights
respecting person, property, and reputation as meriting
constitutional protection under the remedy clause.  As to those
rights, the remedy clause provides, in mandatory terms, that
remedy by due course of law shall be available to every person in
the event of injury.  The word "remedy" refers both to a remedial
process for seeking redress for injury and to what is required to
restore a right that has been injured.  Injury, in turn, is a
wrong or harm for which a cause of action existed when the
drafters wrote the Oregon Constitution in 1857.  A common-law
cause of action is a constitutionally adequate remedy for seeking
redress for injury to protected rights.  However, the remedy
clause does not freeze in place common-law causes of action that
existed when the drafters wrote the Oregon Constitution in 1857. 
The legislature may abolish a common-law cause of action, so long
as it provides a substitute remedial process in the event of
injury to the absolute rights that the remedy clause protects. 
At a minimum, to be remedy by due course of law, the statutory
remedy must be available for the same wrongs or harms for which
the common-law cause of action existed in 1857.  That is, if the
common law provided a cause of action for an injury to one of the
rights that the remedy clause protects, then a legislatively
substituted remedial process must be available for that injury. 
	It follows from the foregoing that, in analyzing a
claim under the remedy clause, the first question is whether the
plaintiff has alleged an injury to one of the absolute rights
that Article I, section 10 protects.  Stated differently, when
the drafters wrote the Oregon Constitution in 1857, did the
common law of Oregon recognize a cause of action for the alleged
injury?  If 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.
E.  Analysis of This Case
	In light of the foregoing principles for analyzing
claims under Article I, section 10, we turn to the specific issue
to be decided in this case.  At the outset, we emphasize that the
issue is a narrow one.  Plaintiff does not challenge the
constitutionality of the workers' compensation system as a whole. 
Neither does he contend that the "exclusive remedy" provisions of
ORS 656.018 (1995) per se are unconstitutional.  Thus, unlike the
plaintiff in Evanhoff v. State Industrial Acc. Com., 78 Or 503,
154 P 106 (1915), plaintiff here does not assert that
substituting the workers' compensation remedial process for the
common-law cause of action by an employee against an employer for
negligence violates Article I, section 10. (20)  Moreover, and as
context for the discussion that follows, we note that, since
Evanhoff in 1915, this court implicitly has recognized the
legislature's constitutional authority to substitute workers'
compensation for the common-law negligence cause of action for
work-related injuries.  See, e.g., Atkinson v. Fairview Dairy
Farms, 190 Or 1, 13, 222 P2d 732 (1950) ("The Workmen's
Compensation Act has been held on a number of occasions to be
constitutional.").  Nothing in this case challenges those
precepts.  The constitutionality of the overall workers'
compensation statutory program is not in question.  
	The narrow issue in this case is whether the exclusive
remedy provisions of ORS 656.018 (1995) are unconstitutional
under the remedy clause to the extent that there now is a
category of workers who have been injured at work but receive no
compensation benefits, because they cannot prove that the work-related incident was the major contributing cause of their injury
or disease.  From the perspective of the workers' compensation
system, such workers are deemed to have suffered no injury and
therefore are not entitled to compensation benefits.  At common
law, by contrast, injury was understood to be any wrong or harm
to person, rights, reputation, or property.  See Kinney v. SIAC,
245 Or 543, 548-49, 423 P2d 186 (1967) (explaining common-law
definition of injury as "any wrong or harm," and noting same
definition of personal injury under then-existing workers'
compensation law).
	We turn to the facts of this case.  Plaintiff contends
that he was injured at work, that is, that he suffered a harm to
his person in the form of severe and progressive respiratory
problems, as well as other physical ailments, after he inhaled
sulfuric, hydrochloric, and hydrofluoric acid mist and fumes
while working in the pit in defendant's shop.  Before his
exposure, plaintiff had not experienced any of his symptoms. 
Because plaintiff was unable to prove that his work exposure was
the major contributing cause of his disabling lung condition,
however, he did not have a compensable injury under present
workers' compensation law.  Moreover, as we have explained, under
ORS 656.018 (1995), workers' compensation purports to be the
exclusive remedy for work-related injuries, whether or not a
claim is a compensable claim.  Thus, under present workers'
compensation law, plaintiff was left with no means for seeking
redress for the injuries that he alleges that he suffered at work
and for which a common-law cause of action would have been
available before the advent of the workers' compensation system.  
	After the ALJ had denied plaintiff's workers'
compensation claim, plaintiff filed this negligence action. 
Defendant moved to dismiss for failure to state a claim.  ORCP 21
A(8).  Although defendant did not dispute that plaintiff might
have suffered an injury at work, it argued that plaintiff had not
suffered a compensable injury, as that term presently is defined
in workers' compensation law, see ORS 656.802(2)(a) (to be
compensable, claimant must prove work-related exposure was major
contributing cause of occupational disease), and that ORS 656.018
(1995) makes workers' compensation the exclusive remedy for work-related injuries, whether or not a claim is compensable.  In
response to defendant's motion to dismiss, plaintiff argued,
among other things, that the exclusive remedy provisions of ORS
656.018 (1995) violated the remedy clause of Article I, section
10.  Plaintiff contended that the remedy clause guarantees the
availability of a process for seeking redress for injuries that
were recognized at common law and that ORS 656.018 (1995)
impermissibly eliminated the existence of a remedy for the
injuries that he believes he suffered at work.  The trial court
granted defendant's motion to dismiss for failure to state a
claim.
	In affirming the trial court, the Court of Appeals
reasoned that, under Sealey, the legislature has plenary
authority to define what constitutes a "legally cognizable"
injury.  Smothers, 149 Or App at 54.  Earlier in this opinion, we
have explained why we now disavow that holding in Sealey.  Under
the remedy clause, if a cause of action existed for an injury to
an absolute right respecting person, property, or reputation when
the drafters wrote the Oregon Constitution, then either that
cause of action or a legislatively created substitute process
that provides a constitutionally adequate remedy for that injury
must be available to every person.  
	The Court of Appeals also relied on Kilminster v. Day
Management Corp., 323 Or 618, 919 P2d 474 (1996), in holding that
plaintiff in this case had no "right" that would support the
argument that he had been deprived of a remedy.  Smothers, 149 Or
App at 55.  In Kilminster, a worker died when he fell from a
radio tower that his employer had ordered him to climb without
providing adequate fall-protection equipment.  Id. at 621.  The
decedent's parents brought an action for wrongful death under ORS
30.020(1).  That statute gives a plaintiff a right to bring a
wrongful death action only "'if the decedent might have
maintained an action, had the decedent lived.'"  Id. at 626
(quoting statute).  In other words, ORS 30.020(1) gives a
plaintiff only a derivative right.  Id.  If the decedent in
Kilminster had lived, then the "exclusive remedy" provisions of
ORS 656.018 would have barred him from pursuing a common-law
action against his employer.  Id.  
	The plaintiffs in Kilminster argued that the "exclusive
remedy" bar deprived them of their right to pursue a claim for
the wrongful death of their son.  Id. at 625.  This court
rejected that argument.  It reasoned: 
		"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 [citations
omitted], they have suffered no legally cognizable
injury to their person, property, or reputation."
Id. at 627 (emphasis added).  
	Unlike the plaintiffs in Kilminster, plaintiff's right
to remedy for injury in this case does not derive from a statute. 
Rather, plaintiff's right is grounded in the common law of
negligence.  Although Oregon has no common-law action for
wrongful death, it does have a common-law action for negligence. 
The Court of Appeals erred in relying on Kilminster to affirm the
trial court's dismissal of plaintiff's complaint in this case.
	Having explained why the Court of Appeals' reliance on
Sealey and Kilminster do not dispose of plaintiff's
constitutional challenge in this case, we turn to an application
of the methodology discussed earlier in this opinion for
analyzing claims under the remedy clause.  The first question is
whether plaintiff has alleged an injury to one of the rights for
which the remedy clause mandates that a remedy be available by
due course of law.  Plaintiff's complaint alleges that he
suffered permanent injury to his lungs and that he suffers other
physical ailments, because defendant negligently permitted mist
and fumes from sulfuric, hydrochloric, and hydrofluoric acid to
drift into the shop area and pit where plaintiff worked, was
aware that exposure to them could cause harm to plaintiff, failed
to provide plaintiff with proper safety instructions or
protection from the chemicals, and failed to warn plaintiff that
he would be exposed to the chemicals.  To answer the first
question, we must decide whether, when the drafters wrote the
Oregon Constitution, the common-law of Oregon would have
recognized an action for negligence under the circumstances of
this case.  We conclude that it would.
	The territorial law of Oregon of June 27, 1844,
provided, in part:
		"[T]he Common Law of England and principles of
equity, not modified by the statutes of Iowa or of
this government, not incompatible with its
principles, shall constitute a part of the law of
this land."
Laws of Oregon 1843-49, Act of June 27, 1844, Art III, § 1, p.
100 (1853).  Article XVIII, section 7, of the Oregon
Constitution, re-adopted territorial laws. (21)  This court has held
that, in their reference to the common law, the drafters of the
Oregon Constitution "must have had reference to that law as it
existed, modified and amended by the English statutes passed
prior to the Revolution."  Peery v. Fletcher, 93 Or 43, 53, 182 P
143 (1919).  
	It is undisputed that, at the time of the American
Revolution, the common law recognized a cause of action for
negligence.  See J. H. Baker, An Introduction to English Legal
History, 346-48 (2d ed 1979) (describing evolution of negligence
tort).  This court's case law is replete with cases involving
that tort.  
	Our next, more specific, inquiry is whether at common
law in Oregon in 1857, an employee would have had a cause of
action against an employer for failure to provide a safe
workplace and failure to warn of dangerous working conditions to
which the employee would be exposed.  That is, and unlike most
other exercises in constitutional construction, the substantive
content of the constitutional right can be established only by
identifying the content of the common law in 1857.  Although no
Oregon cases addressed the common-law rights of employees to
bring such negligence actions against their employers in the
years immediately surrounding the creation of the Oregon
Constitution, the content of the common law in 1857 may be
divined from a wide range of sources.  Cases from other
jurisdictions, as well as Oregon cases decided within a
relatively short period after 1857, are instructive.
	In Hough v. Texas and Pacific R.R. Co., 100 US 213, 25
L Ed 612 (1879), the United States Supreme Court addressed the
duty that an employer owed to an employee and whether the
negligence of a fellow servant relieved the employer of liability
for injuries to the employee.  The Court held that it was "firmly
established" in American jurisprudence that employers, or
masters, are obligated "not to expose the servant, when
conducting the master's business, to perils or hazards against
which he may be guarded by proper diligence on the part of the
master."  Id. at 217.  The Court surveyed treatises, cases from
state courts, and several English and Scottish cases from the
mid-nineteenth century to demonstrate that the principle was well
established.  Id. at 219-24.  Moreover, the Court noted,
employees could not be presumed to assume the risk of dangers at
work that they had no reason to believe they would encounter. 
Id. at 217.   
	In 1883, in a different negligence action brought by
an employee against his employer, the Kansas Supreme Court
explained:
		"In all cases, at common law, a master assumes
the duty toward his servant of exercising reasonable
care and diligence to provide the servant with a
reasonably safe place at which to work, with
reasonably safe machinery, tools and implements to
work with, with reasonably safe materials to work
upon, and with suitable and competent fellow-servants
to work with him * * *."
A.T. &amp; S.F. Rld Co. v. Moore, 29 Kan 632, 644 (1883).  Only when
the master himself had performed the duty imposed by the common
law to provide a worker with a reasonably safe place to work, the
court reasoned, did the fellow-servant or assumption-of-the-risk
rules shield the employer from liability for negligence.  Id. at
644-45; see also Wilson v. Willimantic Linen Co., 50 Conn 433,
440-41 (1883) (same).  
	This court's first opportunity to address the question
of an employer's common-law liability to an employee for
negligence was in 1888.  In Anderson v. Bennett, 16 Or 515, 19 P
765 (1888), the plaintiff, a laborer who had been hired to help
construct a tunnel for the Northern Pacific Railroad Company, was
blinded when his supervisor negligently ordered him to drill a
hole in some rock and the drilling caused an explosion.  Id. at
516-17.  The plaintiff's employer sought to avoid liability on
the grounds that the plaintiff had assumed the risk and that a
master was not liable for injuries caused by the negligence of a
fellow servant.  Id. at 520.   This court rejected both
arguments, drawing on common-law rules that had developed in
other jurisdictions:
		"It is the duty which the master owes to every
servant to provide a reasonably safe place in which
to work, and although he is not an insurer he is
bound on the same principle by the law to exercise
due and proper care in this regard, as he is in
hiring competent servants, or in supplying reasonably
safe machinery or other instrumentalities for the use
of his servants.
		"This is regarded as a personal or absolute
obligation.  And if the discharge of this obligation is
intrusted to a servant, such servant is the representative
of the master, and any negligence on his part is the
negligence of the master.
		"The servant has a right to rely on the master's
performance of this duty, and his omission to take due care
in this respect, whereby injury results to his servant,
will be included among the risks he assumes, and for which
he is liable; and while he is not an insurer of their
safety, he is not at liberty to neglect all care; he must
use due and reasonable care, according to the exigencies of
the undertaking.  The obligation not to expose the servant
to perils which by proper diligence may be guarded against
becomes more important, and the degree of diligence and
care to be exercised in its performance the greater in
proportion to the dangers which may be encountered."
Id. at 528.  This court held that an employer, and the employer's
representatives, have a duty "to use reasonable care and
diligence and [to] make reasonable provision for the servant's
safety," and that failure to do so subjected the employer to
liability.  Id. at 532.  
	Although Anderson was decided some 30 years after the
drafters wrote the Oregon Constitution, nothing in the court's
opinion in that case suggested that the holding was novel or that
the decision marked a departure from any previous decisions or
jurisprudence on the subject.  We conclude that, in 1857, the
common law of Oregon would have recognized that a worker had a
cause of action for negligence against his employer for failing
to provide a safe workplace and failing to warn of the dangerous
conditions to which the worker would be exposed at work.
	The next question is whether there is a remedial
process available to plaintiff for seeking redress for the
injuries that he alleges that he suffered to his lungs and other
parts of his body when he was exposed to acid mist and fumes at
work.  As we have explained, when the drafters wrote the Oregon
Constitution, plaintiff would have had a negligence cause of
action against his employer for his alleged injuries.  However,
in 1913, the Oregon Legislature adopted the "Workmen's
Compensation Act," which subsequently was referred to the people
by petition under Article IV, section 1, of the Oregon
Constitution.  See Salem Hospital v. Olcott, 67 Or 448, 449-50,
136 P 341 (1913) (explaining adoption of Workmen's Compensation
Act).  Section 12 of the act provided, in part:
		"Every workman subject to this Act * * * who, * *
* while so employed sustains personal injury by
accident arising out of and in the course of his
employment and resulting in his disability * * * shall
be entitled to receive from the Industrial Accident
Fund hereby created the sum or sums hereinafter
specified and the right to receive such sum or sums
shall be in lieu of all claims against his employer on
account of such injury or death except as hereinafter
specifically provided * * *."
Or Laws 1913, ch 112, § 12.  Many years later, this court
explained that the workers' compensation system had been adopted 
"to require industry to carry the burden of personal injuries
sustained by its employees in their work," Newell v. Taylor, 212
Or 522, 527, 321 P2d 294 (1958), and that it was so well
established that no citation was required for the proposition
"that the act is remedial in character and should be liberally
construed to promote the beneficial results intended."  Id. at
527-28.
	Earlier, this court had observed that the twofold
purposes of workers' compensation statutes were to afford
protection to workers in the form of compensation for work-related injuries and to protect employers from expensive
litigation.  See Bigby v. Pelican Bay Lbr. Co., 173 Or 682, 692,
147 P2d 199 (1944) (so stating).  The Workmen's Compensation Act
achieved those purposes by providing compensation to injured
workers in lieu of the common-law remedy, and by making workers'
compensation the exclusive remedy for work-related injuries,
unless provided otherwise by statute.  Atkinson, 190 Or at 13. 
In keeping with the purposes of the act, this court long has held
that an award of compensation is the full and complete measure of
a worker's recovery for work-related injuries, including all
consequences of the injury, such as aggravation.  See Kowcun v.
Bybee, 182 Or 271, 295, 186 P2d 790 (1947) (so stating).
	When the workers' compensation program was adopted, and
for almost 70 years thereafter, the statutory scheme provided
that a work-related injury was a "compensable injury" if the
worker could show, as a plaintiff had been required to show at
common law, that the work-related incident was a contributing
cause of the injury.  See Kehoe v. Ind. Accident Com., 214 Or
629, 637, 332 P2d 91 (1958) ("[T]he law does not weigh the
relative importance of the several causes that bring about the
injury -- it is sufficient if the accident occurring through
employment is a contributing cause of the result.").  Moreover,
this court held that the word "injury" in the workers'
compensation statutes was to be given "broad and liberal
construction in view of the remedial and humanitarian purposes of
the [Workers'] Compensation Law."  Kinney, 245 Or at 549. 
	Under current workers' compensation law, an
occupational disease generally is considered to be an injury. 
ORS 656.804.  However, as we have explained, workers'
compensation law now provides that occupational diseases and some
injuries are "compensable" injuries only if the worker can prove
that the work-related incident was the major contributing cause
of the disease or injury.  See ORS 656.802(2)(a); ORS
656.005(7)(a) (identifying circumstances in which "major
contributing cause" standard applies). (22)  The major contributing
cause standard means a cause, or combination of causes, that
contributes more to the injury for which the worker seeks
compensation than all other causes combined, or most of the
cause.  See McGarrah v. SAIF, 296 Or 145, 166, 675 P2d 159 (1983)
(if at-work conditions, compared to nonemployment exposure, are
major contributing cause of disease or disorder, then claimant
eligible for compensation).  The major contributing cause
standard did not exist at common law.  Thus, for those workers'
compensation claims that are subject to the major contributing
cause standard, workers' compensation law does not provide
compensation for a work-related incident that was only a
contributing cause of the workers's injury.  Therefore, workers'
compensation law no longer provides a remedy for some wrongs or
harms occurring in the workplace for which a common-law
negligence cause of action had existed when the drafters wrote
the Oregon Constitution in 1857.  Nevertheless, under ORS 656.018
(1995), workers' compensation law purports to be the exclusive
remedy for work-related injuries, whether or not a claim is
compensable.  
	In Errand, this court examined the legislature's intent
when it enacted the "exclusive remedy" provisions of ORS 656.018
(1993).  The court concluded that the legislature had not
intended to prevent a worker whose workers' compensation claim
had been denied for failure to meet the major contributing cause
standard from pursuing civil negligence claims against the
employer in the effort to receive at least some damages for work-related injuries.  Errand, 320 Or at 525.  Because this court
decided Errand based on its analysis of the legislature's intent
when it enacted ORS 656.018 (1993), the court did not reach the
argument that the exclusive remedy provisions of the statute
violated the remedy clause.  See id. at 525 n 6 (so stating).  
	As we have explained, in response to Errand, the 1995
Legislature amended ORS 656.018 to make workers' compensation the
"exclusive remedy" for work-related injuries, whether or not a
claim is compensable.  That is, the legislature made clear that,
in enacting the 1995 amendments, it did intend what this court
had assumed it had not intended in Errand.  The question of the
constitutionality of the exclusive remedy provisions in ORS
656.018 that the court was not required to address in Errand
therefore is presented squarely in this case.
	Based on our analysis of the remedy clause of Article
I, section 10, we conclude that determining whether the exclusive
remedy provisions of ORS 656.018 (1995) violate that clause
involves a case-by-case analysis.  The first inquiry is whether a
workers' compensation claim alleges an injury to an "absolute"
common-law right that the remedy clause protects.  If it does,
and the claim is accepted and the worker receives the benefits
provided by the workers' compensation statutes, then the worker
cannot complain that he or she has been deprived of a remedial
process for seeking redress for injury to a right that the remedy
clause protects.  Neither can the worker complain that he or she
has been deprived of a remedial process if a compensation claim
is denied because the worker is unable to prove that the work-related incident was a contributing cause of the alleged injury,
which is what a plaintiff would have had to prove in a common-law
cause of action for negligence.  However, if a workers'
compensation claim for an alleged injury to a right that is
protected by the remedy clause is denied because the worker has
failed to prove that the work-related incident was the major,
rather than merely a contributing, cause of the injury, then the
exclusive remedy provisions of ORS 656.018 (1995) are
unconstitutional under the remedy clause, because they leave the
worker with no process through which to seek redress for an
injury for which a cause of action existed at common law.
	In this case, as noted, plaintiff alleges that he
suffered injuries to his lungs and other ailments when he was
exposed to sulfuric, hydrochloric, and hydrofluoric acid mist and
fumes at work.  As we have explained, for those injuries, he
would have had a common-law cause of action when the drafters
wrote the Oregon Constitution in 1857.  However, plaintiff
followed the procedures prescribed by Oregon statutes and first
filed a workers' compensation claim.  The ALJ held that plaintiff
had not suffered a compensable injury because, although the work
exposure might have contributed to his injuries, plaintiff could
not prove that the work exposure was the major contributing cause
of his injuries.
	As we have explained, plaintiff believed that he had
suffered an injury at work, albeit not a compensable injury as
defined under present workers' compensation law.  Therefore,
after his workers' compensation claim was denied, plaintiff filed
this action to seek redress for his injuries.  For the reasons
that we have explained, the remedy clause mandates that a remedy
be available to all persons -- including workers -- for injuries
to "absolute" common-law rights for which a cause of action
existed when the drafters wrote the Oregon Constitution in 1857. 
Having alleged an injury of the kind that the remedy clause
protects, and having demonstrated that there was no remedial
process available under present workers' compensation laws,
plaintiff should have been allowed to proceed with his negligence
action.  The Court of Appeals erred in affirming the trial
court's dismissal of plaintiff's complaint on the ground that the
exclusive remedy provisions of ORS 656.018 (1995) barred his
claim.
	The decision of the Court of Appeals is reversed.  The
judgment of the circuit court is reversed, and the case is
remanded to that court for further proceedings.


1. 	Thereafter, the Workers' Compensation Board affirmed
the ALJ's opinion and order, and the Court of Appeals affirmed
without opinion.  In the Matter of the Compensation of Smothers,
145 Or App 482, 928 P2d 366 (1996).

2. 	The 1995 Legislature also amended the policy statement
in ORS 656.012 to provide that the Workers' Compensation Act was
intended
	"[t]o provide the sole and exclusive source and means
by which subject workers, their beneficiaries and
anyone otherwise entitled to receive benefits on
account of injuries or diseases arising out of and in
the course of employment shall seek and qualify for
remedies for such conditions."
Or Laws 1995, ch 332, § 4 (emphasis added).   
In 1997, the legislature renumbered ORS 656.018(6) as
ORS 656.018(7).  Or Laws 1997, ch 491, § 1. 

3. 	In Neher v. Chartier, 319 Or 417, 428 n 10, 879 P2d 156
(1994), which involved an interpretation of Article I, section
10, the court noted the methodology prescribed in Priest, 314 Or
at 415-16 but stated that the parties had "not brought to the
court's attention any historical circumstances that shed light on
the meaning of Article I, section 10, of the Oregon Constitution,
and the court is aware of none."  Advocates since that time have
provided some insight into the historical circumstances.

4. 	A list of the states whose bills of rights contain
remedy clauses appears in David Schuman, The Right to a Remedy,
65 Temp L Rev, 1197, 1201 n 25 (1992).

5. 	The only text of the Magna Carta that was available to
Coke was the 1225 version.  Faith Thompson, Magna Carta:  Its
Role in the Making of the English Constitution, 1300-1629, 5
(1948).  However, Coke was aware that King John originally had
issued the Magna Carta in 1215, see Coke, Second Institute, A
Proeme at 4 (so stating).  King John had done so in response to a
list of grievances from his barons.  Among other things, the
barons contended that John, like his immediate predecessors, was
using unscrupulous methods for raising money to support foreign
wars that the barons did not support.  Goldwin Smith,
Constitutional and Legal History of England, 131 (1955).  For
example, the King had reorganized the royal courts, directing
revenues from the sale of writs to the Crown, thereby undermining
the baronial courts.  A. E. Dick Howard, Magna Carta:  Text and
Commentary, 4 (1964).  
		The Magna Carta of 1215 was law for about only nine
weeks, because King John persuaded the Pope to annul it. 
Theodore F. T. Plucknett, A Concise History of the Common Law, 23
(5th ed 1956).  The document was reissued in 1216, 1217, and
1225, each time with many revisions.  Smith, Legal History of
England at 136.  The reissue of the Magna Carta in 1225 by King
Henry III marked the final form of the document.  William
McKechnie, Magna Carta, 183 (1905).

6. 	The first American edition of English Liberties
appeared in the colonies in 1721.

7. 	For example, the first Virginia charter that King James
I issued in 1606, part of which Coke had drafted on the King's
behalf, guaranteed to the colonists all "Liberties, Franchises,
and Immunities * * * as if they had been abiding and born, within
this our Realm of England, or any other of our said Dominions." 
1 Bernard Schwartz, The Bill of Rights:  A Documentary History,
60 (1971) (setting out Virginia Charter; emphasis in original). 
The governors of proprietary colonies had made similar guarantees
as part of their effort to recruit colonists.  See id. at 68 
(inhabitants of Maryland "[s]hall have and enjoy all such rights
immunities priviledges and free customs within this Province as
any naturall born subject of England hath or ought to have or
enjoy in the realm of England by force or vertue of the common
law or Statute Law of England"). 
		The declarations in the royal charters that the
colonists had the rights of Englishmen were a powerful factor in
the spread of English constitutional principles and rights in the
colonies.  H. D. Hazeltine, The Influence of Magna Carta on
American Constitutional Development, 17 Colum L Rev 1, 8 (1917).

8. 	See Stevens, Sources of the Constitution of the United
States at 34 ("[The American Revolution] was fought on the part
of the colonists in defense of what they held to be their rights
as men of the English blood."); Report of the Committee Upon the
Duty of Courts to Refuse to Execute Statutes in Contravention of
the Fundamental Law, 38 Report of New York State Bar Assoc, 230,
238 (1915) ("[T]he American Revolution was a lawyers' revolution
to enforce Lord Coke's theory of the invalidity of Acts of
Parliament in derogation of common right and of the rights of
Englishmen.").

9. 	New Jersey had adopted a constitution that did not
contain a separate bill of rights.  However, the New Jersey
Constitution embedded many recognized liberties in the body of
the document (e.g., trial by jury, right to counsel, free
exercise of religion).  1 Schwartz, The Bill of Rights at 234 ff.

10. 	Constitutions were drafted with amazing speed -- New
Hampshire's in only a week; Delaware's, one of the few that was
drafted by a convention, in less than a month.  Nevins, The
American States During and After the Revolution at 128, 138. 
There was no time for lengthy deliberation and debate about
fundamental principles because, at the same time, the writers of
those constitutions had to attend to pressing matters such as
war, the economy, and statute-writing.  Id. at 136.

11. 	The common law also had a significant impact on federal
law.  For example, the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, the first
federal document to contain a bill of rights, contained six
articles that Congress stated would extend and "fix forever" in
the Northwest Territory fundamental principles of civil liberty. 
1 Henry Steele Commager, Documents of American History, 130 (8th
ed 1968).  One of the guarantees was that "[t]he inhabitants of
the said territory shall always be entitled to * * * judicial
proceedings according to the course of the common law."  Id. 
Another was that "[n]o man shall be deprived of his liberty or
property, but by the judgment of his peers or the law of the
land."  Id. at 130-31.  Both guarantees were intended to "bridle
the new national government."  Leonard W. Levy, Original Intent
and the Framers' Constitution, 146 (1988); see also Hazeltine,
The Influence of Magna Carta, 17 Colum L Rev at 31 (bills of
rights in American constitutions "delimit" government powers). 

12. 	Section XVII of the Maryland Declaration of Rights of
1776 provided:
		"That every freeman, for any injury done him in
his person or property, ought to have remedy, by the
course of the law of the land, and ought to have
justice and right freely without sale, fully without
any denial, and speedily without delay, according to
the law of the land."
1 Schwartz, The Bill of Rights at 281 (emphasis added).  Section
XXI provided that no free man should be deprived of life,
liberty, or property except by the judgment of peers "or by the
law of the land."  Id. at 282 (emphasis added).  The Maryland
Declaration of Rights used the phrase "by the law of the land" in
referring to remedy for both private injuries to person or
property and to official actions depriving a person of life,
liberty, or property.
		Section 12 of the Delaware Declaration of Rights of
1776 also closely paraphrased commentaries on the second sentence
of Chapter 29 of the Magna Carta of 1225:
		"That every freeman for every injury done him in
his goods, lands or person, by any other person, ought
to have remedy by the course of the law of the land and
ought to have justice and right for the injury done to
him freely without sale, fully without any denial, and
speedily without delay, according to the law of the
land."
1 Schwartz, The Bill of Rights at 277-78 (emphasis added). 
	None of the remedy clauses adopted after 1776 used the
phrase "by the law of the land."  Instead, beginning with the
Pennsylvania Constitution of 1790, the preferred phrasing was
"due course of law" or "the due course of law."  See generally
Sources and Documents of United States Constitutions (William F.
Swindler ed 1975) (quoting texts of remedy clauses in
constitutions of Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Ohio, Mississippi,
Connecticut, Massachusetts, Alabama, Texas, Tennessee, and the
1838 territorial constitution of Florida).  See Charles Groves
Haines, The Revival of Natural Law Concepts, 104 (1965) (phrase
"by the law of the land" transformed into more popular form "due
process of law"). 

13. 	Maryland and Delaware both abandoned their original
constitutions.  Maryland, however, retained the wording of its
remedy clause in its constitutions of 1851, 1864, and 1867.  See
4 Sources and Documents of United States Constitutions at 394,
418, 449 (reproducing constitutions).  Delaware, by contrast,
expanded its remedy-clause guarantee to include "reputation" and
"movable or immovable possessions" in its constitution of 1792,
and provided that remedy would be by "the due course of law." 
Id. at 206.  The text of the Delaware remedy clause has not
changed since 1792.  See id. at 206, 217, 237 (setting out
Delaware constitutions).

14. 	Article VIII, section 7, of the Ohio Constitution of
1802, provided:
		"That all courts shall be open, and every person,
for an injury done him in his lands, goods, person or
reputation, shall have remedy by the due course of law,
and right and justice administered, without denial or
delay."
		Article X, section 13, of the Kentucky Constitution of
1799, provided:
		"That all courts shall be open, and every person
for an injury done him in his lands, goods, person, or
reputation, shall have remedy by the due course of law;
and right and justice administered, without sale,
denial or delay."

15.   Contrary to one commentator's assertion, Sharpless v.
Mayor of Philadelphia, 21 Pa 147 (1853), does not support a
contrary view.  See Hoffman, Origins of the Open Courts Clause at
1290 and n 65 (Sharpless authority for theory that remedy clauses
in state constitutions merely intended to assure judicial
independence).  In Sharpless, the question was whether two
Pennsylvania statutes authorizing the City of Philadelphia to
issue bonds to raise revenue to subscribe to shares of stock in
two railroad companies violated Article IX, section 9, of the
Pennsylvania Constitution, which prohibited the state from taking
private property without compensation.  21 Pa at 164.  In
seriatim opinions, the three justices of the Pennsylvania Supreme
Court in the majority held that the revenue statute was within
the legislature's power to tax.
	 In his opinion, Justice Black canvassed every provision of
the Pennsylvania Constitution that might have had relevance to
the scope of the legislature's taxing powers.  Id. at 164-65. 
Regarding the remedy clause in  Article IX, section 11, he wrote:
	"[Article IX, section 11,] was clearly intended to insure
the constant and regular administration of justice between
man and man.  To say that it is violated by refusing a
judicial remedy for bad legislation, would be straining it
sadly.  Certainly a contract, such as that which the
defendants propose to make, however it may injure the
plaintiffs, is not an injury for which they are entitled to
redress if it be lawful to make it."
Id. at 166.  Justice Black's observations, in dicta, about the
remedy clause were that the clause played no role in resolving
whether the legislature properly had exercised its taxing power
because the remedy clause addressed only private injuries.

16. 	The plaintiff in Silver did not challenge the validity
of the Connecticut guest-passenger statute under that state's
remedy clause.  She limited her argument to the contention that
the statute violated the Equal Protection Clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment.

17.   The Perozzi court also rejected the plaintiff's
contention that Article I, section 10, preserves all common-law
remedies and that it is not within the province of the
legislature to take away or limit remedies in any way.  Perozzi,
149 Or at 345-47.  We discuss that aspect of Perozzi later in
this opinion.
	The legislature repealed the guest passenger statute, ORS
30.110, in 1961.  Or Laws 1961, ch 578, § 1.

18. 	The Holden court acknowledged that, in upholding a
statute that eliminated the right of a defamed person to recover
general damages for inadvertent libel by certain news media when
a retraction was made, it was adopting a minority view.  228 Or
at 410.  

19. 	Recently, this court has suggested that, in addition to
being a means for seeking redress for injury, the word "remedy"
also refers to the amount of damages that a person is entitled to
recover for an injury.  In Hale, for example, the court held
that, under Article I, section 10, the legislature may limit the
size of an award that can be recovered for an injury, so long as
"the remedy is a substantial one."  308 Or at 523.  See also
Greist v. Phillips, 322 Or 281, 290, 906 P2d 789 (1995)
(legislature entitled to amend amount of damages available in
statutory wrongful death action without running afoul of Article
I, section 10, "as long as the plaintiff is not left without a
substantial remedy"); Neher, 319 Or at 426 (Article I, section
10, not violated so long as injured party has substantial
remedy). 
		As we have explained, the only question in this case is
whether the legislature has deprived plaintiff of a means for
seeking redress for the injury that he alleges that he suffered
at work.  Accordingly, it is beyond the scope of this opinion to
address issues relating to the adequacy of the amount of damages
that may be available under a legislatively substituted process
for a common-law cause of action for injury to one of the rights
that is protected by the remedy clause.

20. 	The court in Evanhoff rejected the plaintiff's Article
I, section 10, challenge on the ground that the workers'
compensation scheme was voluntary, not compulsory.  78 Or at 517-19.  In 1965, the legislature made workers' compensation
insurance compulsory.  Or Laws 1965, ch 285, § 5.  With certain
exceptions, the legislature also made workers' compensation the
exclusive remedy for work-related injuries.  Or Laws 1965, ch
285, § 6(2).

21. 	Article XVIII, section 7, provides:  "All laws in force
in the Territory of Oregon when this Constitution takes effect,
and consistent therewith, shall continue in force until altered,
or repealed."

22. 	This court first used the "major contributing cause"
standard for establishing the compensability of occupational
disease claims in Dethlefs v. Hyster Co., 295 Or 298, 310, 667
P2d 487 (1983).  The Court of Appeals previously had done so in
SAIF v. Gygi, 55 Or App 570, 574, 639 P2d 665 (1982). 
Thereafter, the legislature codified the "major contributing
cause" standard in ORS 656.802(2)(a) and ORS 656.005(7)(a).  Or
Laws 1990, ch 2, §§ 3, 43 (Spec Sess).  Thus, to the extent that
the exclusive remedy provisions of ORS 656.018 (1995) are infirm
constitutionally in situations in which the worker must meet the
"major contributing cause" standard of proof for a claim to be
compensable, we acknowledge the appellate courts' inadvertent
contribution to the problem that we now are addressing in this
case.