Opinion ID: 835357
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Overview of Article I, section 10

Text: We begin our overview by again quoting the text of Article I, section 10: No court shall be secret, but justice shall be administered, openly and without purchase, completely and without delay, and every man shall have remedy by due course of law for injury done him in his person, property, or reputation.  (Emphasis added.) In Priest v. Pearce, 314 Or. 411, 415-16, 840 P.2d 65 (1992), this court set forth a methodology for interpreting provisions of the Oregon Constitution. That methodology requires an examination of the text of the provision, the history of the provision, and the case law concerning the provision. Id. This court applied that methodology to the second clause of Article I, section 10, in Smothers v. Gresham Transfer, Inc., 332 Or. 83, 23 P.3d 333 (2001). In Smothers, the court first examined the text of Article I, section 10. Smothers, 332 Or. at 91-94, 23 P.3d 333. The court noted that the second clause of Article I, section 10, by using the word shall, affirmatively mandated that a remedy by due course of law be available in the event of injury to rights respecting person, property, and reputation. Id. at 91, 23 P.3d 333. The court also noted that contemporaneous dictionaries indicated that remedy referred 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. Id. at 92, 23 P.3d 333. However, the court concluded that no definitive picture of the scope or effect of the remedy clause emerges from examining only the text of the clause. Id. at 94, 23 P.3d 333. The court then turned to the historical circumstances of the provision. Id. The Remedy Clause, the court explained, can be traced to Edward Coke's commentary on the second sentence of Chapter 29 of the Magna Carta of 1225. Id. The translation of Chapter 29 provides: 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. Id. at 95, 23 P.3d 333 (quoting Edward Coke, The Second Part of the Institutes of the Laws of England, 45 (1797)) (internal quotation marks omitted). According to Coke's commentary on that chapter, the second sentence evolved to a guarantee that every subject had a remedy by the course of law for injury to goods, land, or person. Smothers, 332 Or. at 96-97, 23 P.3d 333. That guarantee made its way to the American colonies through, among other things, Coke's commentary on the English common law. Id. at 103-04, 23 P.3d 333. The court summarized the results of its historical inquiry: 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. Id. at 112, 23 P.3d 333. Finally, the court examined the case law surrounding Article I, section 10. Id. at 115-124, 23 P.3d 333. Early cases, Smothers explained, 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. Id. at 116, 23 P.3d 333 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). This court's jurisprudence changed course, however, following a United State Supreme Court decision that upheld a guest passenger statute facing an Equal Protection Clause challenge. Id. at 116-17, 23 P.3d 333 (discussing Silver v. Silver, 280 U.S. 117, 50 S.Ct. 57, 74 L.Ed. 221 (1929)). Thereafter, this court relied on Silver to hold that the Remedy Clause does not prohibit the legislature from abolishing common-law rights that existed when the Oregon Constitution was drafted. Smothers, 332 Or. at 117, 23 P.3d 333 (discussing Perozzi v. Ganiere, 149 Or. 330, 345, 40 P.2d 1009 (1935)). This court followed Silver and Perozzi in subsequent decisions. Smothers, 332 Or. at 117-19, 23 P.3d 333. In Smothers, however, this court disavowed the line of cases beginning with Perozzi. It did so because of Perozzi's erroneous reliance on Silver's interpretation of the Equal Protection Clause in deciding a Remedy Clause claim, to the extent that those cases held that the legislature could abolish absolute rights respecting person, property, or reputation without violating the Remedy Clause. Id. at 118-19, 23 P.3d 333. Instead, Smothers cited with approval cases predating Perozzi. Id. at 119, 23 P.3d 333. Those cases included Mattson v. Astoria, 39 Or. 577, 580, 65 P. 1066 (1901), which held that [the Remedy Clause] was intended to preserve the common-law right of action for injury to person or property, and while the legislature may change the remedy or the form of procedure, attach conditions precedent to its exercise, and perhaps abolish old and substitute new remedies,    it cannot deny a remedy entirely. (internal citations omitted), and Batdorff v. Oregon City, 53 Or. 402, 408-09, 100 P. 937 (1909), which held unconstitutional a city ordinance that took away a remedy from those injured by negligent failure to maintain the city streets. Smothers also looked to an early federal court opinion written by Judge Matthew Deady, who had been president of the Oregon Constitutional Convention in 1857, that explained the meaning of the Remedy Clause as follows: [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). Based on those, and other early cases, Smothers concluded that (1) the Remedy Clause mandates that remedy by due course of law shall be available to every person in the event of injury; (2) remedy includes both the remedial process as well as what is required to restore a right that has been injured; and (3) injury is a wrong or harm for which a cause of action existed when the drafters wrote the Oregon Constitution in 1857. Smothers, 332 Or. at 124, 23 P.3d 333. After reviewing the text, history, and case law as outlined above, the court in Smothers set forth the following analysis to be applied to Remedy Clause claims: [T]he 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. Id. at 124, 23 P.3d 333. We now apply the Smothers analysis to plaintiff's arguments under Article I, section 10.