Opinion ID: 1118827
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Open Court Provisions of Other States

Text: Even before 1912, other states had applied the protection of their open court provisions to the right to recover damages for injury to reputation. See Post Publishing Co. v. Butler, 137 F. 723 (6th Cir.1905) (applying Ohio Constitution); [8] Moore v. Stevenson, 27 Conn. 13, 27 (1858); [9] Hanson v. Krehbiel, 68 Kan. 670, 75 P. 1041 (1904); [10] Allen v. Pioneer Press, 40 Minn. 117, 41 N.W. 936 (Minn. 1889); [11] Osborn v. Leach, 135 N.C. 628, 47 S.E. 811 (1904); [12] see also Meyerle v. Pioneer Publishing Co., 45 N.D. 568, 178 N.W. 792 (1920) (per curiam); [13] Byers v. Meridian Printing Co., 84 Ohio St. 408, 95 N.E. 917 (1911) (per curiam). [14] That same principle has been followed in modern cases. [15] See Madison v. Yunker, 180 Mont. 54, 589 P.2d 126 (1978); [16] Davidson v. Rogers, 281 Or. 219, 574 P.2d 624 (1978). [17] To our knowledge, no court in an open court provision state has ever held the clause inapplicable to the right to seek relief for injury to reputation. In fact, one state with no constitutionally compelled open court guarantee was willing to strike down its retraction statute: There is no room for holding in a constitutional system that private reputation is any more subject to be removed by statute from full legal protection than life, liberty, or property. It is one of those rights necessary to human society that underlie the whole social scheme of civilization. Park v. Detroit Free Press Co., 72 Mich. 560, 566, 40 N.W. 731, 733 (1888). But see Werner v. Southern California Associated Newspapers, 35 Cal.2d 121, 216 P.2d 825 (1950) (upholding retraction statute against equal protection and due process challenges in state without open court provision). The scope of open court or access to justice constitutional guarantees was well characterized in an early Oregon case that dealt with a legislative enactment prohibiting tort actions against counties. Holding that the statute violated Oregon's open court provision, see n. 16, ante, the Oregon Supreme Court quoted from Eastman v. Clackamas County, (C.C.) 32 Fed. 24, 32 (1887): Whatever injury the law, as it ... stood [at the time of the Constitution], took cognizance of and furnished a remedy for, every man shall continue to have a remedy for by due course of law. When this Constitution was formed and adopted, it was and had been the law of the land, from comparatively an early day, that a person should have an action for damages against a county for an injury caused by its act or omission. If this 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? and, if it cannot do so in such cases, why can it in this? Theiler v. Tillamook County, 75 Or. 214, 217, 146 P. 828, 829 (1915). The Kansas Supreme Court long ago invalidated a retraction statute similar to ours, holding that it violated the Kansas access to justice provisions guaranteeing a remedy by due course of law. Hanson, 68 Kan. at 672-78, 75 P. at 1042-44. [18] Assuming that the framers of our constitution were familiar with contemporaneous principles of jurisprudence and constitutional law, [19] we must conclude that their use of all-inclusive language in art. 18, § 6 was intended to provide the same type of broad protection that resulted from construction given such clauses in our sister states. After examining the text, the history, our prior case law, and the law of other states construing similar open court provisions, we conclude that the framers did not intend the protection of art. 18, § 6 to extend only to actions for negligent torts involving bodily injury claims. We hold, therefore, that art. 18, § 6 protects the right to recover damages for injury to reputation.