Opinion ID: 2633040
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: trial court reversed in part, affirmed in part, and remanded.

Text: EDMONDSON, V.C.J., HARGRAVE, KAUGER, WATT, COLBERT, JJ., concur. OPALA, J., dissents. TAYLOR, J., concurs in part, dissents in part, with whom WINCHESTER, C.J., joins: I concur in Part I.I dissent to Part II. For the same reasons stated by the Court of Civil Appeals, I would enforce the agreement not to sue. This agreement was negotiated by the plaintiff's counsel in order to secure the physicians' assistance in the plaintiff's suit against the hospital. The plaintiff accepted all benefits of that agreement. The physicians acted in reliance upon the agreement. REIF, J., disqualified. OPALA, J., dissenting. ¶ 1 The court reverses today a trial court order sustaining a physician's (Holter) plea in bar based on her contractual immunity from suit. Today's pronouncement declares and gives retrospective effect to a new rule of Oklahoma common law which requires judicial approval of a covenant not to sue that is made on behalf of a minor plaintiff in tort. The court's opinion gives this plaintiff [1] alone the benefit of the newly crafted norm. ¶ 2 I recede from the court's opinion. State due process is violated by today's retroactive application of a newly crafted norm of Oklahoma common law given birth in the face of a total past jurisprudential silence and absent any testimonial proof of the norm's pre-existence in Oklahoma practice by long-established and widespread antecedent use. Short of such probative underpinnings, a newly pronounced rule of state common law must be applied only prospectively. Lawyers and litigants should be accorded adequate notice before they may be expected to conform their contracts for immunity to some obscure rule of local common law plucked from nowhere which stands unsupported by proof of its actual existence in prepronouncement practice. Even if the norm were to be made applicable prospectively only, I would prefer awaiting the completion of an ALI examination and its full consideration of the new norm's impact on the existing common law. [2] Moreover, I would be most hesitant to deal today with the problem of a new norm's recognition. Neither the factum of plaintiff's promise not to sue nor the binding force of the contract that gave birth to the claimed immunity was either directly or obliquely presented to the trial court for its resolution.
THE HASTE SHOWN TODAY IN THE PROCESS OF ADOPTING A NEW NORM OF OKLAHOMA'S COMMON LAW IS INCONSISTENT WITH THE LONG ACCEPTED NATIONAL STANDARD OF THE ALI FOR RECOGNIZING CHANGES IN NORMS OF UNENACTED LAW PRIOR TO THEIR INCLUSION IN THE RESTATEMENT
The ALI's Restatements Of Law Carefully And Deliberatively Monitor And Track The Development And Growth Of American Common Law ¶ 3 Restatements of the common law on chosen subjects have long been recognized as a material source for tracking or monitoring the development and growth of common-law norms. [3] The American Law Institute (ALI), a private national organization of judges, practitioners, and law teachers, [4] crafts the restatements, whose purpose is to identify, simplify and clarify selected common-law norms. [5] The restatement process is slow and deliberative. [6] An ALI restatement on a given legal subject is developed gradually over a period of years. [7] Today's hasty recognition of a new state common-law norm shortcuts severely the accepted restatement process by adopting into Oklahoma law a new legal norm on the basis of a single state's jurisprudential development of very recent vintage.
Today's Adoption of a Yet Untested Legal Norm From a Single State's Jurisprudence Imposes A Severe Restriction On the Freedom of Advocacy ¶ 4 Today's adoption of an untested legal norm from North Carolina [8] imposes a severe restriction upon the freedom of advocacy without the analytical benefit of an ALI examination and full consideration of the new norm's impact on the legal system and on the existing common law. While settled Oklahoma common law recognizes a court's duty to protect a minor from liability for an excessive attorney's fee [9] and from an inadequate in-court settlement of a minor's claim, [10] that is not an issue before us. There is no showing here of a single weighty element of public policy that would convincingly justify judicial intervention in private attorney-client relationships. ¶ 5 The contract tendered in this case as the basis of a physician's plea in bar based on her contractual immunity deals solely with a tort lawyer's trial strategy. By that strategy immunity from suit was allegedly extended to a physician in exchange for her favorable testimony in a minor's tort case against a hospital. [11] I would not restrict an advocate's strategy choices by injecting the judiciary into a field in which it lacks the same quantum of expertise as that possessed by a practitioner. [12] ¶ 6 For the reasons to be explained in Part II infra, even if I were inclined to join today's pronouncement, I would not in this case give retrospective sweep to the rule's efficacy in order to relieve this tort plaintiff from her contractual obligation.
GIVING RETROSPECTIVE EFFECT TO THE HASTILY ADOPTED NEW NORM OF OKLAHOMA COMMON LAW VIOLATES THE DUE PROCESS CLAUSE OF THE OKLAHOMA CONSTITUTION, ART. 2, § 7
Judicial Development Of Unenacted Law Norms Is Guided By Different Process From That Which Is Employed When Dealing With Enacted Law ¶ 7 Federal constitutional law fails to provide a meaningful precedent for according either retroactivity or prospectivity to a pronouncement of a new common-law norm. We are dealing here not with enacted norms of constitutional law but rather with unenacted (unwritten [13] ) law rules plucked from a single foreign court decision. Had the norm chosen for today's adoption been one of English common law, which lawyers are presumed to know, it could have been implanted without added study. [14] When we are dealing with a norm of common law in the state, its pre-existence (existence antecedent to today's pronouncement) could be established either by extant state jurisprudence or, in its absence, by expert testimonial proof of the norm's general acceptance in the state by long-established and widespread use. [15] But if the rule to be adopted today is one of American common law but found neither in Oklahoma jurisprudence nor in the common law of England, litigants and their lawyers should not be bound to notice its existence sans proof.
A Court May Not Give Retroactive Effect To A New Norm Of Oklahoma Common Law Whose Pre-Existence  Antecedent To Its Judicial Pronouncement  Has Not Been Established of Record ¶ 8 There is no record proof here that shows a pre-existent Oklahoma anchor for the attempted transplantation of the common-law norm. The court applies neither the common law of England nor an established state common law. Instead it recognizes a legal norm plucked from a single sister state's body of common law of which no one may be bound to have knowledge. In the absence of knowledge and testimonial proof of the rule's pre-existence in Oklahoma practice, it is inherently unfair to impose the new norm retroactively and bind the physician in this case. [16] In short, today's retrospective application of the North Carolina common-law norm to benefit the plaintiff violates the due process clause of the Oklahoma Constitution. [17]
THE TRIAL COURT'S DISMISSAL ORDER FROM WHICH AN APPEAL WAS BROUGHT DETERMINED BUT A SINGLE ISSUE DEHORS THE PLAINTIFF'S CLAIM; NO ISSUE PERTAINING TO THE CLAIM OR DEFENSES AGAINST THE CLAIM WAS DECIDED BELOW ¶ 9 This appeal is neither from a summary judgment nor from any other judgment [18] for Dr. Holter. The trial court's disposition does not deal with a single issue on the merits of the case. [19] The so-called judgment is a claim's dismissal based on the physician's plea in bar  based on her contractual immunity  which is entirely dehors the merits. Before a final order could be rendered in favor of the defendant physician, the trial court would have had to decide, antecedent to trial, (a) whether the parties had in fact entered into a contract for immunity which the doctor pleaded in bar [20] and, if so, (b) whether that contract will qualify for the trial court's approval. That stage had not occurred here before the dismissal order's entry. ¶ 10 Because there is clearly a factual dispute over whether there had been an offer, acceptance and a meeting of the minds on the terms of the immunity agreement and the trial court had not been urged to consider the norm of common law pronounced today, I would abstain from dealing with that issue but would allow the parties to press it on remand. The physician's contractual immunity and the retrospective application of its judicial approval, if one is given, are both prematurely tendered and dealt with by the court.