Opinion ID: 1837726
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: the attack on the guest law

Text: Since a nonpaying guest can recover for damages caused by negligence of his host only if he can prove the intoxication, willful misconduct, or gross negligence of the driver, and only if his injury occurs upon a public highway, it will be seen that a passenger can recover for ordinary negligence if he pays for transportation, but not if he doesn't; if the accident occurs on private property, but not if it occurs on a highway, or if he is just outside the car, but not if he is barely inside it when the accident occurs. Since intoxication, as used in the statute has been construed, in Borstad v. La Roque, 98 N.W.2d 16 (N.D. 1959), to refer to ordinary negligence induced by intoxication, the guest can recover if ordinary negligence was caused by intoxication, but not otherwise. Further, the passenger can recover if he owns or provides the automobile and lets a former passenger drive. Degenstein v. Ehrman, 145 N.W.2d 493 (N.D.1966). The injured persons most frequently deprived of a remedy by the guest law are those the driver is most anxious to protecthis family and his friends. Because of these apparently anomalous and incongruous consequences of the guest law, the plaintiffs here and other critics of guest laws (inter alia, North Dakota Law Review, Fall, 1973, vol. 50, p. 139; Drake Law Review, Sept.1973, vol. 23, p. 216) claim that a guest law makes an impermissible classification between persons who cannot recover for ordinary negligence in automobile accidents and those who can recover for ordinary negligence in all other situations, that the statute violates the constitutional provision requiring all laws to have uniform operation, and that it grants special privileges and immunities to one class of citizens. They allege that there is no justifiable State purpose involved in the distinction made by the law and that it is arbitrary and oppressive and therefore violative of Sections 11, 13, and 20 of the North Dakota Constitution.