Opinion ID: 1439615
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: failure of chapter 89 to meet the constitutional tests. irrationality at its worst

Text: It now becomes time unencumbered by the anachronism or illusions to medieval English kings to look at what Wyo. Const. art. 1, § 8 really says: All shall be open and every person for an injury done to person, reputation or property shall have justice administered without sale, denial or delay. Suits may be brought against the state in such manner and in such courts as the legislature may by law direct. That basic right is not quantified or qualified with sometimes or maybe limitations nor does that text expand the availability to legislative choice denying any rights when speaking only to the obligation to provide forum and process. I will also consider that the non-self-executing characterization as an ingredient of discussion in immunity cases as an outdated subject of dissertation cannot apply to special legislation which presently authorizes the denial of justice dependent upon where on public property the injury might occur. The commonality of this character of crisis inspired immunity statute to the profusion of medical malpractice enactments provides persuasive logic for analysis of the modern direction of American law. Hoem, 756 P.2d 780 was not isolated in example reflecting a character of that constitutional law development. The statutes of repose creating a denial of constitutionally provided access to the courts is identically emplaced with a similarly created statutory bar to the injured as affected here by applied immunity. In a singularly perceptive analysis, Note, The Unconstitutionality of Medical Malpractice Statutes of Repose: Judicial Conscience Versus Legislative Will, 34 Vill.L.Rev. 397 (1989), the author traces the current progress of constitutional law as the emerging trend to find such statutes to be unconstitutional. The author identifies an identical direction earlier achieved in the guest statute litigation. See Comment, The Constitutionality of Automobile Guest Statutes: A Roadmap to the Recent Equal Protection Challenges, 1975 B.Y.U.L.Rev. 99 (1975) and Comment, The Common Law Basis of Automobile Guest Statutes, 43 U.Chi.L.Rev. 798 (1976). Those pervasive statutes as then enacted as an outgrowth of the depression were for a long time satisfied by adjudicatory approval and are now almost unanimously rejected, including Wyoming. Nehring, 582 P.2d 67. This newly understood constitutional interest of a right for access to the courts  right to a remedy provision  as accommodating due process and equal protection is now engineering the crescendo of cases invalidating dehabilitary statutes of repose. This brings to our attention a climactic redirection of the courts by a whole series of cases, many of which arise in states with the more modernized attention to a singularly emplaced immunity bar, which invalidate preclusive statutes of repose. [18] Obviously the medical malpractice injured claimant who was denied access to justice by passage of a statutory time before he knew that he was injured or a claim might exist is no different from the traveler negligently inflicted with injury by the public official and then denied access to the courts by the character of the perpetrator of that injury through this newly created applied immunity. It may well be despite the equal protection, due process and rights to a jury constitutional provisions that the premier objection to enforcement of statutes such as Chapter 89 arise from denial of the constitutional access to the courts, which guaranty is enumerated for Wyoming by Wyo. Const. art. 1, § 8. Inevitably, if guest statutes join dodo birds and statutes of repose follow the passenger pigeon to extinction, unconstitutional prohibition of remedy by specialized immunity cannot indefinitely be maintained as either morally or legally justified. [19] There should be a general system for justice that is generally followed instead of erratically and irrationally applied for pigeon-hole results. There should also be a predominating concept, if not foundation to every rationally constituted system of tort law, assuring recovery to the injured person where fault is found. How are Wyoming's citizens to understand the justice delivery system they are paying for? The state says it can injure them and whether or not they are compensated will depend on the good fortune of the place where they are (or are not) injured. The singular concept that is now produced by statutory deletion of these remedies for injury recovery and this majority opinion in construction absolution is that property is valued in protection when destroyed or taken by government, but damaged body or destroyed life should be unprotected from negligence and fault of the agents of government. As a further disintegration of reasoned principle for recovery within the umbrella of assertable protection provided by the constitution, I urgently dissent. Not only does the result lack practical moralism in individual rights to protection from society, but historical justification and precedential realism cannot be persuasively applied to authenticate the result achieved. We should compare constitutional inquiry for the right to sell used cars as a property interest, Roslindale Motor Sales, Inc. v. Police Com'r of Boston, 405 Mass. 79, 538 N.E.2d 312 (1989), with protection for negligent injury to body or life itself evidenced here. It is not too different from the right to price competitively as the constitutional right or the size of a newspaper, but not sanctity of body and existence. See Pirie v. Kamps, 68 Wyo. 83, 229 P.2d 927 (1951), as well as Langley, 84 P.2d 767 and cf. Bulova Watch Co., 371 P.2d 409. See also Quality Oil Co. v. E.I. du Pont De Nemours & Co., 182 Kan. 488, 322 P.2d 731 (1958). I cannot accommodate a degree of scrutiny to the right for recovery for injury to body or destruction of life with a lesser significance than acceptance of fair trade laws. This present standard for invoking or waiving immunity according to the place of injury extends the boundaries of irrationality when used to deny rights to the citizens as the users of public facilities. On the streets and onto the parking lot across the sidewalk, government can inflict injury with immunity; but into the building, government is expelled from statism to reacquire responsibility like any other building owner. [20] In assessing the creation of the 1986 immunities for government bodies in design, construction and maintenance of driveways and walkways, we need to reaffirm meaning to our constitution. Equality of all. In their inherent right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, all members of the human race are equal. Wyo. Const. art. 1, § 2. Due process of law. No person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law. Wyo. Const. art. 1, § 6. No absolute, arbitrary power. Absolute, arbitrary power over the lives, liberty and property of freemen exists nowhere in a republic, not even in the largest majority. Wyo. Const. art. 1, § 7. Compensation for property taken. Private property shall not be taken or damaged for public or private use without just compensation. Wyo. Const. art. 1, § 33. Uniform operation of general law. All laws of a general nature shall have a uniform operation. Wyo. Const. art. 1, § 34. Special and local laws prohibited. The legislature shall not pass local or special laws in any of the following enumerated cases, that is to say:    for limitation of civil actions   . In all other cases where a general law can be made applicable no special law shall be enacted. Wyo. Const. art. 3, § 27. Damages for personal injuries or death not to be limited; workmen's compensation. No law shall be enacted limiting the amount of damages to be recovered for causing the injury or death of any person. Wyo. Const. art. 10, § 4. Dealing as we are called to do in this appeal with the freedom of government and public employees to maim or kill its citizens by negligent misconduct upon roadways or walkways, I cannot fit the result to be achieved into the constitutional limitations opposed by this array of the Wyoming constitutional protection. As a universal principle, these provisions of the Wyoming Constitution limit the power of the legislature and no act of that body can be sustained which conflicts with them. Atchison Street Ry. Co. v. Missouri Pac. Ry. Co., 31 Kan. 660, 3 P. 284, 286 (1884). Likewise, as we said in Hoem, 756 P.2d 780, proper examination requires denial of this degree of near aimless venture of the legislature into denial of guarantees of its citizens. Victims of tortious injuries should be no less protected if caused by public employees than would be the victims of medical malpractice. No less than there, Hoem, 756 P.2d at 786, we again have strange bedfellows here, with directed interest to deny relief to those negligently injured. This enactment transgressed the Wyoming Constitution. Id. at 782. The really absurd result is now achieved. Stovall, 648 P.2d at 548. Lacking the capacity applied there to construe to rationality, I conclude that the test of constitutionality is unachievable here. The prayer of Justice Rose so forcefully stated in Jivelekas, 546 P.2d at 427-29 cannot be so casually discarded: In his writing against the age-old acceptance of the traditional mistakes of the law which he found moribund by the chains of legal doctrinaire, Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo said in Law and Literature, published in 1931: The time is ripe for betterment. `Le Droit a ses epoques,' says Pascal in words which Professor Hazeltine has recently recalled to us. The law has `its epochs of ebb and flow.' One of the flood seasons is upon us. Men are insisting, as perhaps never before, that law shall be made true to its ideal of justice. Let us gather up the driftwood, and leave the waters pure.       The judicial conscience must no longer permit us to tolerate a principle of human behavior which, out of hand, denies the injured, the maimed and the loved ones of the dead a right of action against wrongdoing just because the wrongdoer is a servant of the state or municipality. If the state and its entities are to expose the people and their property to negligent acts, then government must expect to respond to suit. The anachronism of immunity as first created and maintained by the inertia of the judiciary, Oroz, 575 P.2d 1155, becomes no less unfair to the injured or killed when reinstated by a crisis directed legislature which gives scant heed to the rights of its citizens and voters for security from publicly imposed tortious harm. [21] Again, although the origin of the variant theories of immunity may have been `one of the mysteries of legal evolution,' Oroz, 575 P.2d at 1158 (quoting Borchard, Government Liability in Tort (parts 13), 34 Yale L.Rev. 1, 4 (1924)), there should be no mistaking what the current emplacement does for access to justice in cases where those are unfortunately injured by the negligent acts of certain defined government employees who provide driveways and walkways for the public use. See for example, Recent Decision, Tort Law  Governmental Liability for Injuries Caused by Open and Obvious Dangers, 27 Ariz.L.Rev. 285 (1985). I cannot accept handwringing for the negligently injured. Due to the persistence of the doctrine of sovereignty and its corollaries, and to the various judicial doctrines that have grown up in respect to the responsibility of the state and its officers, great injustice is done to many individuals in connection with the functioning of the modern state. Most of the difficulties that have arisen in the past could be avoided by the establishment of a proper ethical and legal basis for responsibility. Blachly and Oatman, supra, 9 Law and Contemp.Probs. at 213. It is not my perception nor do I say that no immunity for any governmental activity which endangers rights of citizens can ever be created. Kaisner, 543 So.2d 732. Cf. McCracken v. City of Lawton, 648 P.2d 18, 20 n. 3 (Okl. 1982); Hershel v. University Hospital Foundation, 610 P.2d 237, 242 (Okl. 1980) (Opala, J., specially concurring). Nevertheless, Chapter 89 cannot be pulled through constitutional guarantees to extricate out a valid legislative act. Practical problems of government do not require this kind of injustice accommodation. Dandridge v. Williams, 397 U.S. 471, 90 S.Ct. 1153, 25 L.Ed.2d 491, reh'g denied 398 U.S. 914, 90 S.Ct. 1684, 26 L.Ed.2d 80 (1970). Nor can I find a distinction rationally drawn to address a legitimate purpose, Western and Southern Life Ins. Co. v. State Bd. of Equalization of California, 451 U.S. 648, 101 S.Ct. 2070, 68 L.Ed.2d 514 (1981); Vance v. Bradley, 440 U.S. 93, 99 S.Ct. 939, 59 L.Ed.2d 171 (1979), except to reduce rights of citizens for justice at an anticipated saving by absolved negligent conduct of government. No more fundamental interest can be perceived than freedom from unjustified negligent activity to damaging body or denying continued life. Certainly, neither a life insurance premium tax nor retirement age is intrinsic to maintenance of Wyoming's constitutional guarantees. Injury or loss of life is no less effacious whether resulting from simple negligence or gross misbehavior. White, 661 P.2d at 1275. Pain after injury cannot differentiate the intent of the perpetrators. Cf. Lentz v. Morris, 236 Va. 78, 372 S.E.2d 608 (1988). Justification is again not advanced by comparison or litigation resulting from congressional efforts to promote nuclear power. See Duke Power Co. v. Carolina Environmental Study Group, Inc., 438 U.S. 59, 98 S.Ct. 2620, 57 L.Ed.2d 595 (1978), where a remedy is granted to provide due process and equal protection on the monstrous difference where no remedy will be provided for death or injury. Neither can absolution from liability and responsibility as provided by Chapter 89 be compared with the discretionary function immunity since differentiation between discretionary ministerial conduct has already been abolished by W.S. 1-39-102(b). See Grant v. Davis, 537 So.2d 7 (Ala. 1988). Cf. Denver Buick, Inc. v. Pearson, 465 P.2d 512 (Wyo. 1970), which distinguished the difference now abolished. In equal protection and due process perspectives, attacks for justice may have usually failed where sovereign immunity was invoked if the claim sounded in tort except for the private bill disconsonance of constitutional application. Had the text of Chapter 89 been confined to issues of only sovereign immunity, then we would have this case confined to the irrationality special interest classification for applied immunity and a somewhat relatable thesis that original injustice may not be unconstitutional until eliminated and then reinstated by succeeding legislation. Cf. O'Bannon, 770 S.W.2d 215. This calls us to consider that even though the original injustice was unchallengeable, its reinstitution as reinstatement after elimination can be proscribed constitutionally. Tested is the question whether the socially absurd structure of injustice and denied rights when once forsaken by society can then be constitutionally restored to directly infect due process, equal protection and rights of access to the judicial system. An opposite view would almost believe that Brown v. Board of Education, might be written out of our collective knowledge and that the prior idiom of separate but equal restored to the social practice of this nation for education and existence. In a broader context, we are called to recognize that Rasputin is not dead. Immunity's intrinsic invalidity, unjustified constitutionality, yet its political resiliency confounds rational analysis. See Comment, The Doctrine of Sovereign Immunity in Wyoming: Current Status of the Doctrine and Arguments for Abrogation, XX Land & Water L.Rev. 221 (1985). See also Borchard, supra, 34 Yale L.J. 1; Minge, supra, VII Land & Water L.Rev. at 229-62, 618-62; Comment, Wyoming's Governmental Claims Act: Sovereign Immunity With Exceptions  A Statutory Analysis, XV Land & Water L.Rev. 619 (1980); Note, Sovereign Immunity of the State of Wyoming. Oroz v. Board of County Commissioners of Carbon County, 575 P.2d 1155 (Wyo. 1978), XIV Land & Water L.Rev. 271 (1979); and Note, Sovereign Immunity  A Still Potent Concept in Wyoming, 16 Wyo.L.J. 304 (1962). The second problem is the irrationality of combining planning-design defects-discretionary and governmental decision making to accomplish a character of protected governmental activity from plain negligence in operation and maintenance of the facilities of society which cause injury to its citizens. Likewise, unjustified is failure to recognize the differing thesis invoked in comparisons between ministerial action and proprietary responsibility. Perhaps the major problem now presented is the lack of logic and justification that attends a protected character of public activities for roadways, parking and sidewalks but not for buildings, recreation facilities, schools or the multitude of other activities within which government is the performer and the citizen is the user. I cannot rationalize the government retaining liability for vehicles on the roads but escaping liability for the roads upon which the vehicles ride. How all of that rationalization is justified despite the constitutional mandate escapes me. The broadened problem with Chapter 89 does not end with the state and sovereign immunity since the liability denial is charged to descend also to governmental immunity and the local units of government wherein past immunity may never have existed. If a road can be paved with uncompensated injury, a stopped sewer can also be plugged with immunization.