Opinion ID: 1427083
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: rational relationship

Text: To pass constitutional strictures, the Aircraft Guest Statute must also bear a rational relation to its objectives. The scant legislative history on the Aircraft Guest Statute fails to reveal the legislature's objectives in enacting it. Writers and courts that have dealt with the subject have equated its objectives with those of the Automobile Guest Statute. Longnecker v. Noordyk-Mooney, Inc., 394 Mich. 696, 232 N.W.2d 654, 655 (1975); Ayer v. Boyle, 37 Cal. App.3d 822, 112 Cal. Rptr. 636 (1974); Messmer v. Ker, 96 Idaho 75, 524 P.2d 536 (1974); Sanders, Aviation Guest Laws: A Modern Anachronism, 36 J. Air Law and Commerce 185. Two primary goals are generally given as objectives to justify the classification created by the statute. One is to protect insurance carriers from fraudulent payouts arising out of collusion between the pilot/owner and the passenger. The other is to promote hospitality by preventing ungrateful hitchhikers from suing their hosts. Secondary objectives sometimes given are reduction in insurance rates and a desire to hold back the supposed tide of lawsuits which would be filed by guests in order to prevent them from hampering the administration of justice. Sanders, supra, at 187, 188. We rule, as did the Idaho Supreme Court in Messmer v. Ker, supra, that an analysis of the rejected justifications for the Automobile Guest Statute indicates an even stronger case for declaring the Aircraft Guest Statute unconstitutional. The Aircraft Guest Statute promotes no more hospitality in favor of would-be aircraft hitchhikers than the Automobile Guest Statute did for automobile hitchhikers. Depression era economics may have justified automobile guest statutes when the bulk of them were enacted, but no such necessity exists today to justify them. Just as the promotion of hospitality is too weak a justification to sustain the Automobile Guest Statute, it is a fortiori too weak to sustain the Aircraft Guest Statute because aircraft hitchhiking occurs much less frequently. Id. Indeed, only one other case involving the Aircraft Guest Statute has come to this Court since the statute was enacted in 1953. However, numerous cases have been before this Court based on the Automobile Guest Statute. No case involved a hitchhiker, either in an aircraft or an automobile. The application of the guest statutes has served only to prevent an injured guest from recovering for injuries caused by a friend's or relative's negligence. An overinclusive classification is created by the Aircraft Guest Statute in its attempt to prevent collusive suits between the host and the injured guest. Malan, supra. Parties willing to risk perjury in order to attribute negligence to a pilot or owner to advance a collusive suit are not deterred by the statute. As stated in Malan, supra: The plain fact is that if an injured guest and his host will run the risk of perjury as to the driver's negligence to obtain a recovery from an insurance company, they would just as likely run the risk of perjury as to payment for the ride to obtain a recovery. Courts would probably have been less clogged with collusive lawsuits than they have been with suits that have forced them to define such terms as guest, payment and willful misconduct in attempts to avoid the bar of the guest statutes. Reduction in insurance rates is not a valid reason to single out nonpaying aircraft guests and deny them recovery. Insurance rates are not directly related to the existence of guest statutes. Sanders, supra, at 238. We do not stand on uncertain ground in ruling that the Aircraft Guest Statute is unconstitutional. As of 1972, there were thirteen states that had aircraft guest statutes. With the current trend of declaring automobile guest statutes unconstitutional, aircraft guest statutes have also faired poorly. Arkansas, Illinois and Nevada have repealed their statutes. In California, Idaho and Michigan, the courts have held them unconstitutional. Ayer v. Boyle, supra; Messmer v. Ker, supra; Longnecker v. Noordyk-Mooney, Inc., supra. Indiana has amended its statute to foreclose recovery only by the immediate family. Aircraft guest statutes face almost certain death in Ohio, New Mexico and South Carolina where the courts have stricken automobile guest statutes with almost identical language. In North Dakota, where the automobile guest statute has been declared unconstitutional but is worded differently than the airplane guest statute, the airplane guest statute may also come under attack. The only logical reason visible to this Court for the enactment of the Aircraft Guest Statute was a desire by the 1953 Legislature to achieve symmetry between automobile and aircraft legislation. Whatever symmetry of legislation might have been attained 31 years ago, the Aircraft Guest Statute, like its sister the Automobile Guest Statute, does not operate uniformly upon all persons and lacks a rational relationship to its intended objectives. As such, it violates Utah Const. art. I, § 24. The judgment below is reversed and the case is remanded for further proceedings. Costs are awarded to appellant. HALL, C.J., and STEWART and DURHAM, JJ., concur. OAKS, J., having resigned, does not participate herein.