Opinion ID: 1118827
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Heading: The Scope of Constitutional Protection

Text: We interpret constitutional provisions by examining the text and, where necessary, history in an attempt to determine the framers' intent. County of Apache v. Southwest Lumber Mills, Inc., 92 Ariz. 323, 327, 376 P.2d 854, 856 (1962). We have previously traced the history of art. 18, § 6 in the Constitutional Convention of 1910 and concluded that the clause is a more specific and stronger open court provision. Kenyon v. Hammer, 142 Ariz. 69, 74, 79-81 n. 9, 688 P.2d 961, 966, 971-73 n. 9 (1984); see also Barrio v. San Manuel Division Hospital, Magma Copper, 143 Ariz. 101, 105, 692 P.2d 280, 284 (1984). [4] Thirty-seven states have open court or certain remedy provisions. Note, Constitutional Guarantees of a Certain Remedy, 49 IOWA L.REV. 1202 (1964). [5] The provision is of ancient origins, having its roots in the Magna Carta and having been given more modern currency in Sir Edward Coke's comments on the Magna Carta in his Second Institute. Id. at 1203. [6] As we stated in Kenyon and Barrio, art. 18, § 6 is an open court guarantee intended to constitutionalize the right to obtain access to the courts and a remedy for damages sustained. Kenyon, 142 Ariz. at 73-75, 79-83, 688 P.2d at 965-67, 971-75; Barrio, 143 Ariz. at 105, 692 P.2d at 284. We still must decide, however, exactly what types of actions and damages the framers intended to constitutionalize. Did the framers intend to limit the protection of art. 18, § 6 to negligence cases in which bodily injury was sustained or to extend it to all actions recognized at common law?
The language of art. 18, § 6 gives no hint that the framers intended to restrict its protection in the manner defendants suggest. Its language is plain, clear, and all-inclusive. Kilpatrick v. Superior Court, 105 Ariz. 413, 419, 466 P.2d 18, 24 (1970). Section 6 does not speak of negligence actions, but of the right of action to recover damages. [7] It mentions no particular type of damage, but speaks instead to the broad right... to recover damages for injuries. Article 18, § 6 contains no restrictive adjectives or phrases. The constitutional text being unrestricted, it would be inappropriate for this court to restrict the guarantee by adding words of limitation contrary to the plain language used. Kilpatrick, 105 Ariz. at 419-20, 466 P.2d at 24-25. We should not narrowly interpret the provision in direct derogation of the express rights guaranteed in Section 6, id., unless compelled to do so by prior construction that illuminates the framers' intent.
Defendants contend that precedent binds us to apply art. 18, § 6 to protect only negligence actions. The defendants and amici cite decisions in which this court stated that the constitution's framers intended that art. 18, § 6 protect the common-law action of negligence  by giving it constitutional standing. Alabam's Freight Co. v. Hunt, 29 Ariz. 419, 443, 242 P. 658, 665 (1926) (emphasis added); see also Kenyon, 142 Ariz. at 79-83, 688 P.2d at 971-75; Moseley v. Lily Ice Cream Co., 38 Ariz. 417, 420, 300 P. 958, 959 (1931); Inspiration Consolidated Copper Co. v. Mendez, 19 Ariz. 151, 172, 166 P. 278, 1184 (1917) (Ross, J., dissenting), aff'd sub nom., 250 U.S. 400, 39 S.Ct. 553, 63 L.Ed. 1058 (1919); Landgraff v. Wagner, 26 Ariz. App. 49, 54, 546 P.2d 26, 31 (App. 1976), appeal dismissed 429 U.S. 806, 97 S.Ct. 40, 50 L.Ed.2d 67 (1976) ( for want of jurisdiction ). They contend that these decisions limit art. 18, § 6's protection to common law negligence actions only. It is equally true, however, that this court has more expansively interpreted art. 18, § 6. For instance, Chief Justice Struckmeyer wrote: There is no room for quibbling. The language of Section 6 is simple, explicit and all-inclusive. It cannot be misunderstood. Without limitation it confers the right to recover damages for injuries as existing under the common law. Kilpatrick, 105 Ariz. at 419, 466 P.2d at 24; see also Halenar v. Superior Court, 109 Ariz. 27, 504 P.2d 928 (1972) (legislature bound by the constitution in dealing with common law rights of action). We do not find the language of any of the cases determinative. None of the cases cited actually dealt with the issue presented here. So far as we can determine from citations provided by counsel and from our own research, no Arizona appellate court has ever been asked to determine whether art. 18, § 6's protection is limited to the right to recover for negligent torts or for those torts in which bodily injury has been sustained. Thus, the issues before us are questions of first impression. Defendants argue that we must adopt the narrow interpretation of art. 18, § 6 espoused in Justice Ross's dissent in Inspiration Consolidated Copper, 19 Ariz. at 169 et seq., 166 P. at 1183 et seq., which eventually became the law in Alabam's Freight Co. Kenyon, 142 Ariz. at 82, 688 P.2d at 974. The narrow interpretation favored by Justice Ross, however, was directed to the question of whether art. 18, § 6 applied to causes of action created by the legislature but previously unrecognized by the common law. The issue in Inspiration Consolidated Copper, for instance, was whether art. 18, § 6 applied to the provisions of the new Employers' Liability Law. Justice Ross stated: That the above constitutional provisions [art. 18, §§ 4, 5, 6 and art. 2, § 31] do not apply to or affect the newly created rights of action for compensation against the employer is evident, or else our Workmen's Compensation Act would be violative of the Constitution, in that it [the statute] does limit the amount of recovery. For like reasons I think they do not apply to the liability created by the statute known as the Employers' Liability Act. This latter act creating new liability,  one not known to the common law and in derogation thereof,  it would seem that the power of the legislature to fix the measure of compensation in disregard of the common-law rule is as absolute as under the compensation act. Inspiration Consolidated Copper, 19 Ariz. at 172, 166 P. at 1185 (Ross, J., dissenting). The Inspiration Consolidated Copper court, however, held that art. 18, § 6 protected common-law measures of recovery even in actions previously unknown to the common law. 19 Ariz. at 166-67, 166 P. at 284-85. A majority eventually approved Justice Ross's narrower view in Alabam's Freight. Using language similar to that used by Justice Ross in Inspiration Consolidated Copper, the court described art. 18, § 6 as a guarantee of the common-law action of negligence. 29 Ariz. at 443-44, 242 P. at 665. Again, however, the issue was whether art. 18, § 6 applied not only to common law actions, but also to those actions created by the legislature. Alabam's Freight 's negative response to that question is not determinative in this case because the cause of action for defamation was not a legislative creation. Thus, nothing in past decisions demonstrates that the framers intended to limit the broad language of the constitutional guarantee to protect actions for negligent torts, excluding protection for tort actions based upon strict liability.
The theory behind strict liability is that one who engages in conduct so far socially questionable that it does not justify a no-fault immunity can be held strictly liable for any damages he or she causes. W. PROSSER & W. KEETON, THE LAW OF TORTS § 75, at 538 (5th ed. 1984). Strict liability is based upon the creation of an undue risk of harm to other members of the community. Id. Under turn-of-the-century common law, strict liability was recognized for torts involving damages caused by keeping wild animals, id. § 76, at 541, collecting and releasing water on land owned by others, storing explosives or inflammable liquids, blasting, accumulating sewage, creating nuisances, and other abnormally dangerous activities. Id. § 78, at 546-47; Inspiration Consolidated Copper, 19 Ariz. at 165, 166 P. at 283, quoting New York Central Railroad Co. v. White, 243 U.S. 188, 204, 37 S.Ct. 247, 253, 61 L.Ed. 667 (1917). See generally Smith, Tort and Absolute Liability  Suggested Changes in Classification, 30 HARV.L.REV. 319 (1917). Given the historical milieu in which Arizona's constitution was adopted, See generally J.R. MURDOCK, CONSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF ARIZONA 25-55 (1933), it is difficult to believe that the framers would have intended to deprive the legislature of the power to abrogate the right to recover for negligent torts while allowing it the power to abrogate actions dealing with many of the things held most dear by the state's residents. For instance, why would the framers have intended to prohibit the legislature from abrogating actions for negligent torts but allow it to abrogate the cause of action brought by a landowner whose property was destroyed by blasting in defendant's mining shaft? Smith, supra, 30 HARV.L.REV. at 330-31. Why would the framers have intended that the legislature have the power to abolish recovery by farmers and ranchers whose land had been damaged by a neighbor's diversion of surface water? Cf. The Revised Statutes of Arizona Territory § 3252-53 (1901) (mine owners failing to provide for drainage liable for cost of pumping or draining overflow into another's mine); The Revised Statutes of Arizona Territory § 2353 (1887) (same). To adopt the construction of art. 18, § 6 urged by defendants would fly in the face of much of what history tells us the framers considered most dear and important. See generally J.R. MURDOCK, supra. It is equally incomprehensible to imagine why the framers would have intended to limit the protection of art. 18, § 6 to bodily injury damages, thus excluding cases of injury to real property, personal property, reputation, privacy, and other noncorporeal rights. The framers considered these rights quite important. See, e.g., Ariz. Const. art. 2, § 6 (guaranteeing to each person the right to freely speak, write, and publish ..., being responsible for the abuse of that right.); Ariz. Const. art. 2, § 8 (guaranteeing the right to privacy). We can deduce no reason, and none has been suggested to us, for attributing to the framers any reasoned intent to narrow the scope of this broadly-worded provision. We turn, then, in our search for framers' intent, to the construction given open court provisions prior to our adoption of a stronger version. We seek to determine, in other words, what the framers thought they were adopting.
Even before 1912, other states had applied the protection of their open court provisions to the right to recover damages for injury to reputation. See Post Publishing Co. v. Butler, 137 F. 723 (6th Cir.1905) (applying Ohio Constitution); [8] Moore v. Stevenson, 27 Conn. 13, 27 (1858); [9] Hanson v. Krehbiel, 68 Kan. 670, 75 P. 1041 (1904); [10] Allen v. Pioneer Press, 40 Minn. 117, 41 N.W. 936 (Minn. 1889); [11] Osborn v. Leach, 135 N.C. 628, 47 S.E. 811 (1904); [12] see also Meyerle v. Pioneer Publishing Co., 45 N.D. 568, 178 N.W. 792 (1920) (per curiam); [13] Byers v. Meridian Printing Co., 84 Ohio St. 408, 95 N.E. 917 (1911) (per curiam). [14] That same principle has been followed in modern cases. [15] See Madison v. Yunker, 180 Mont. 54, 589 P.2d 126 (1978); [16] Davidson v. Rogers, 281 Or. 219, 574 P.2d 624 (1978). [17] To our knowledge, no court in an open court provision state has ever held the clause inapplicable to the right to seek relief for injury to reputation. In fact, one state with no constitutionally compelled open court guarantee was willing to strike down its retraction statute: There is no room for holding in a constitutional system that private reputation is any more subject to be removed by statute from full legal protection than life, liberty, or property. It is one of those rights necessary to human society that underlie the whole social scheme of civilization. Park v. Detroit Free Press Co., 72 Mich. 560, 566, 40 N.W. 731, 733 (1888). But see Werner v. Southern California Associated Newspapers, 35 Cal.2d 121, 216 P.2d 825 (1950) (upholding retraction statute against equal protection and due process challenges in state without open court provision). The scope of open court or access to justice constitutional guarantees was well characterized in an early Oregon case that dealt with a legislative enactment prohibiting tort actions against counties. Holding that the statute violated Oregon's open court provision, see n. 16, ante, the Oregon Supreme Court quoted from Eastman v. Clackamas County, (C.C.) 32 Fed. 24, 32 (1887): Whatever injury the law, as it ... stood [at the time of the Constitution], took cognizance of and furnished a remedy for, every man shall continue to have a remedy for by due course of law. When this Constitution was formed and adopted, it was and had been the law of the land, from comparatively an early day, that a person should have an action for damages against a county for an injury caused by its act or omission. If this 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? and, if it cannot do so in such cases, why can it in this? Theiler v. Tillamook County, 75 Or. 214, 217, 146 P. 828, 829 (1915). The Kansas Supreme Court long ago invalidated a retraction statute similar to ours, holding that it violated the Kansas access to justice provisions guaranteeing a remedy by due course of law. Hanson, 68 Kan. at 672-78, 75 P. at 1042-44. [18] Assuming that the framers of our constitution were familiar with contemporaneous principles of jurisprudence and constitutional law, [19] we must conclude that their use of all-inclusive language in art. 18, § 6 was intended to provide the same type of broad protection that resulted from construction given such clauses in our sister states. After examining the text, the history, our prior case law, and the law of other states construing similar open court provisions, we conclude that the framers did not intend the protection of art. 18, § 6 to extend only to actions for negligent torts involving bodily injury claims. We hold, therefore, that art. 18, § 6 protects the right to recover damages for injury to reputation.
As we have shown, art. 18, § 6 was intended to take the right to seek justice out of executive and legislative control, preserving the ability to invoke judicial remedies for those wrongs traditionally recognized at common law. Defendants argue that even if art. 18, § 6 protects a plaintiff's right to sue for damage to reputation, the provision does not protect recovery for emotional distress because that type of damage was not recognized in a defamation action until 1922. Conard, 23 Ariz. at 605, 206 P. at 169. [20] Defendants would have us freeze the principles and incidents of common law actions as of 1912. We reject this argument. Although art. 18, § 6 preserves common law rights, our common law is not frozen as of 1912. Summerfield v. Superior Court, 144 Ariz. 467, 698 P.2d 712 (1985). [21] The constitutional protection extends to wrongs recognized at common law, but it is not limited to those elements and concepts of particular actions which were defined in our pre-statehood case law. Article 18, § 6 protects the right of people to seek remedy by due course of law  for injury to their lands, goods, person, or reputation. Proposed Constitution of 1891, art. 2, § 15 (emphasis added). The law must allow for evolution of common-law actions to reflect today's needs and knowledge. Any other rule would allow those long dead to dictate solutions to problems of which they could not have been aware. Lewis v. Wolf, 122 Ariz. 567, 568, 596 P.2d 705, 706 (App. 1979) (citing Douglas, Stare Decisis, 49 COLUM.L.REV. 735, 736 (1949)). Nor is responsibility for and power over such evolution taken from the legislature. We are not diminishing the legislature's power to regulate the incidents of common-law actions. We have noted previously that a statute is not an alien intruder in the house of the common law. Summerfield, 144 Ariz. at 473, 698 P.2d at 718 (citing Stone, The Common Law in the United States, 50 HARV.L.REV. 4, 15 (1936)). We have held also that the common law may participate in the growth and evolution of a statutorily created action. Summerfield, 144 Ariz. at 473, 698 P.2d at 718. Article 18, § 6 does eliminate the legislature's power to control the existence of tort law. The guarantee of access to judicial remedy prevents the legislature from closing the courthouse door to those claiming to have suffered a wrong recognized by the common law. History teaches us that despite the shortcomings of the judicial system, only in a court of justice may the rights of all be recognized and treated equally. Our founders adopted this concept in creating separate but equal branches of government and imposing each as a check and balance on the others. Thus, while the legislature may regulate what is done in the courthouse, it may not turn the courts into a useless structure by barring access. Regulation is a shared power, but abrogation by abolishing access to judicial remedy is beyond legislative power. This brings us to defendants' final argument: that the retraction statutes do not violate art. 18, § 6 because they only regulate the right to recover for defamation.