Opinion ID: 2516613
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: conclusion

Text: ¶ 19 USF & G is not liable for a tax but is liable, if at all, for the loss to the state for Sun River's failure to perform it sales tax obligations. USF & G, acting as a surety, is not a taxpayer for purposes of section 202 of title 68. Thus, the forfeiture order was not directly appealable to this Court under section 225 of title 68. The Court of Civil Appeals' opinion is vacated. The appeal is dismissed. HARGRAVE, C.J., HODGES, LAVENDER, SUMMERS, BOUDREAU, JJ., concur. WINCHESTER, J., concurs in result. KAUGER, J. (joins OPALA, J.), concurs in part; dissents in part. WATT, V.C.J. (joins OPALA, J.), OPALA, J. (by separate writing,), dissents. OPALA, J., with whom WATT, V.C.J., and KAUGER, J., join, dissenting. ¶ 1 The court dismisses this appeal from the Oklahoma Tax Commission's [OTC] order declaring forfeiture of a statutory § 1368(A) bond [1] upon concluding that appellate review of that order is unauthorized by statute. [2] ¶ 2 I recede from the court's pronouncement. It is fraught with serious constitutional flaws. Today's denial of a surety's access to direct appeal from OTC's forfeiture order clearly offends the state as well as the federal fundamental law. It is also contrary to the legislative intent. Violated by the court's pronouncement are these constitutional mandates: (a) equal, uniform and unimpeded access to judicial review must be accorded to all final agency orders (Art. 2 § 6, Okl. Const.), [3] (b) uniformity of procedure must be extended to judicial review of agency forfeitures of statutory bonds (Art. 5 § 46, Okl. Const.), [4] (c) agency procedures must comply with the strictures of equal protection [5] (as well as of the antidiscrimination component of the state due process clause, Art. 2 § 7, Okl. Const.) [6] and (d) de novo judicial review of agency-found jurisdictional facts (Due Process Clause of the 14th Amend., U.S. Const., and of Art. 2 § 7, Okl. Const.) [7] must be accorded to litigants adversely affected by the administrative process of adjudication. Moreover, the appeal's dismissal exposes OTC's bond forfeitures to a serious risk of fundamental-law attacks on the fairness and neutrality of the agency process. [8] ¶ 3 The only judicial review of an OTC bond forfeiture declaration to be recognized as statutorily prescribed is by appeal to this court  which alone may afford corrective relief. A bond forfeiture order stands impervious to a collateral attack. If it is not made subject to direct attack by appeal (or by some other authorized method), as the court holds today, it becomes forever unassailable unless, of course, it be facially void. The court's rejection of the surety's appeal denies it the law's only avenue of relief by direct appeal. What is even more shocking is that today's opinion injects into the enforcement process for statutory bonds a fatal fundamental-law flaw of court-created procedural asymmetry by setting apart OTC's forfeitures as a distinct subclass that alone is made impervious to judicial re-examination via direct review in any forum. [9]