Opinion ID: 1665404
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Right of Access to the Courts

Text: Article I, § 14 of the Missouri Constitution provides that the courts of justice shall be open to every person ... and that right and justice shall be administered without sale, denial or delay. The plaintiffs argue that the screening process of § 538.225 that requires a health care provider's written report not only violates the guarantee that courts be open without denial or delay, but also imposes an unreasonable precondition to free access to the courts. They cite State ex rel. Cardinal Glennon Memorial Hosp. v. Gaertner, 583 S.W.2d 107 (Mo. banc 1979). Cardinal Glennon invalidated a statutory procedure for compulsory, albeit nonbinding, arbitration before a professional liability review board before a medical malpractice claim could be filed in any court within this state. It violated art. I, § 14, this Court ruled, to impose a procedure as a precondition to access to the courts. Id. at 110. It rested on the rationale that such a period of enforced waiting before suit necessarily destroyed the remedies which depended on obtaining personal service on defendants. The opinion distinguished the validity of a procedure where the screening panel is convened after the court proceedings are commenced. Id. Section 538.225, of course, does not operate until after the petition is filed and the incidents of jurisdiction to adjudicate are met. Thus the concerns of Cardinal Glennon over the disadvantages to a plaintiff from a delayed suit do not apply to § 538.225. The plaintiffs were not denied access to the courts in the constitutional sense by that procedure. Art. I, § 14 does not create rights, but is meant to protect the enforcement of rights already acknowledged by law. The right of access means simply the right to pursue in the courts the causes of action the substantive law recognizes. Harrell, 781 S.W.2d at 62. The substantive law requires that a plaintiff who sues for personal injury damages on the theory of health care provider negligence prove by a qualified witness that the defendant deviated from an accepted standard of care. Without such testimony, the case can neither be submitted to the jury nor be allowed to proceed by the court. The affidavit procedure of § 538.225 serves to free the court system from frivolous medical malpractice suits at an early stage of litigation, and so facilitate the administration of those with merit. Thus, it denies no fundamental right, but at most merely [re]design[s] the framework of the substantive law to accomplish a rational legislative end. Harrell 781 S.W.2d at 62; see also, Ortwein v. Schwab, 410 U.S. 656, 659, 93 S.Ct. 1172, 1174, 35 L.Ed.2d 572 (1972). The affidavit procedure neither denies free access of a cause nor delays thereafter the pursuit of that cause in the courts. It is an exercise of legislative authority rationally justified by the end sought, and hence valid against the contention made here. Blue Cross Hosp. Service, 681 S.W.2d at 930; see also, Thomas v. Fellows, 456 N.W.2d 170, 173 (Iowa 1990).