Opinion ID: 1439615
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: private bills

Text: The salve to conscience that has in recent time been used by the Wyoming legislature to absolve injustice from operation of immunity has been by a private act, immunity waiver and appropriation, which is clearly unconstitutional. These enactments violate both the expressed limitations and the uniformity philosophy of this state's constitution. Cloe and Marcus, Special and Local Legislation, 24 Ky.L.J. 351 (1936). Nevertheless, this back door hand-out process has been used by the legislature four times as a recognition of the expertise of lobbying, willingness of most legislators to ignore special bill limitations imposed in the constitution and to avoid injustice created by the out-dated deterrent earlier created by the judiciary called immunity. It is unfortunate, as reflected in this record, that this unconstitutional approach is now suggested as an alternative to a uniform and fair adjudicatory system as a basis upon which this recreated immunity is justified in legislation. It is improper to suggest that unconstitutional private bills as waiver and appropriation should continue to be used in the future rather than a rational and even-handed state plan encompassing a dissection of constitutional responsibility and morality by this eager effort to provide individualized justice for those persons fortunate enough to have the needed legislative contacts. With such a process, I cannot assent and will not now as in the past ever join. See 1975 Wyo. Sess. Laws. ch. 171, serious injury to an inmate at the Wyoming Industrial Institute in 1970, authorization $100,000; 1981 Wyo. Sess. Laws ch. 61, Worthington, 598 P.2d 796, highway construction site accident, appropriation $500,000; 1982 Wyo. Sess. Laws ch. 24, serious highway accident, appropriation $500,000 and waiver of immunity; and 1983 Wyo. Sess. Laws ch. 10, serious Wyoming highway accident, appropriation $250,000 and waiver of immunity. [22] See Wyo. Const. art. 1, § 34, uniform operation of general law; Wyo. Const. art. 3, § 27, special, local laws prohibited; and Wyo. Const. art. 3, § 36, prohibited appropriations. The specific subject of private bills or special acts to remove immunity for one injured by an act of the governmental agent was directly addressed in Rector v. State, 495 P.2d 826, 827 (Okl. 1972) (quoting Article V, Section 59, Okla. Const.), by analysis of a provision similar to the Wyoming Constitution: Laws of a general nature shall have a uniform operation throughout the State, and where a general law can be made applicable, no special law shall be enacted.[ [23] ] The premier emplacement of a special law proscription came in Nehring, 582 P.2d 67, which invalidated Wyoming's forty-seven-year-old guest statute on the basis of its nature as special legislation after a dozen prior validating appellate decisions.