Opinion ID: 3207079
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The remedy clause and Oregon common law

Text: Article I, section 10, provides: “No court shall be secret, but justice shall be admin- istered, openly and without purchase, completely and without delay, and every man shall have remedy by due course of law for injury done him in his person, property, or reputation.” Textually, Article I, section 10, differs from other sections included in Oregon’s bill of rights. It is not a protection against the exercise of governmental power. State ex rel Oregonian Pub. Co. v. Deiz, 289 Or 277, 288, 613 P2d 23 (1980) (Linde, J., concurring). Rather, “[i]t is one of those provisions of the constitution that prescribe how the functions of government shall be conducted.”4 Id. Specifically, “[s]ection 10 as a whole is plainly concerned with the administration of justice.” Hans A. Linde, Without “Due Process”: Unconstitutional Law in Oregon, 49 Or L Rev 125, 136 (1970). Each of the three independent clauses that comprise Article I, section 10, addresses that topic.5 The first independent clause prohibits secret courts while the second provides that justice shall be adminis- tered “openly and without purchase, completely and without delay.” The third independent clause provides that “every man shall have remedy by due course of law for injury done him in his person, property, or reputation.” Textually, the third independent clause can be read in two ways. On the one hand, the clause can be seen as a guarantee that courts will provide “every” person a “remedy by due course of law” for 4 The issue in Deiz was whether closing a juvenile adjudication to the public violated the open courts clause of Article I, section 10. 289 Or at 279. In distinguishing Article I, section 10, from other provisions in the Oregon Constitution, Justice Linde did not limit his discussion to the open courts clause of that section but wrote more broadly. 5 Article I, section 10, consists of three independent clauses (“No court shall,” “justice shall be administered,” and “every man shall have”), which are joined by two conjunctions. Although Smothers stated that Article I, section 10, consists of two independent clauses, 332 Or at 91, Smothers may not have been using the phrase “independent clause” in its grammatical sense. 180 Horton v. OHSU certain kinds of injuries. As Professor Linde observed, the clause could be nothing “more than a procedural guarantee that the ‘due course of law’ will be open to ‘every man’ who is entitled to a remedy under the substantive law, whatever that might be at any time.” Linde, Without “Due Process,” 49 Or L Rev at 136. On the other hand, characterizing the remedy clause solely as a guarantee of equal access to the courts fails to account for all the clause’s text. The text provides that “every man shall have remedy by due course of law for injury done him in his person, property, or reputation.” Focusing on the phrase “by due course of law” can obscure the remainder of the text, which provides that, when a person has had “injury done him in his person, property, or reputation,” he “shall have remedy.” The text is as much about the availability of a remedy as it is about the “due course of law” by which the remedy is to be administered. In a related vein, this court had held that the remedy clause does not apply to every injury a person sustains to a legally protected interest. Juarez v. Windsor Rock Products, Inc., 341 Or 160, 173, 144 P3d 211 (2006) (loss of deceased’s society, guidance, and emotional support did not constitute injury to person, property, or reputation within meaning of remedy clause). Rather, the clause applies only to remedies for three specified types of injuries. Id. The clause’s focus on providing remedies for specified types of injuries implies that it was intended to guarantee some remedy for those injuries, and not merely be a guarantee of procedural regularity for whatever injuries may, at the moment, enjoy legal protection. To the extent that the text guarantees that some remedy will be available for injuries done to persons in their person, property, and reputation, the question that the text leaves unanswered is what the content of that remedy is. Certainly, nothing in the text of the remedy clause says that its protections are limited to the common law as it existed at a particular point in time. The clause lacks words used elsewhere in the constitution that connect a constitutional guarantee to a single point in time. Compare Or Const, Art VII, § 3 (“thereafter”); Or Const, Art I, § 31 (1857) (“hereafter”); Or Const, Art IV, § 24 (“at the time of the adoption of this constitution”). Cite as 359 Or 168 (2016) 181 Not only does the text of the remedy clause not provide express support for the historical limitation that Smothers perceived, but the context of the remedy clause is also at odds with that limitation. Both Article I, section 10, and Article XVIII, section 7, were adopted as part of the original Oregon Constitution. The Oregon Constitution and Proceedings and Debates of the Constitutional Convention of 1857 402, 431 (Charles Henry Carey ed., 1926). Article XVIII, section 7, provides that “[a]ll laws in force in the Territory of Oregon when this Constitution takes effect, and consistent therewith, shall continue in force until altered, or repealed.” As this court explained in Land Bd. v. Corvallis Sand & Gravel, 283 Or 147, 156, 582 P2d 1352 (1978), Article XVIII, section 7, “continued in force the substantive principles of the common law which were adopted by the provisional government and sanctioned by the federal act establishing the territorial government.” However, “[t]he common law, as it existed in England at the time of the settlement of the American colonies, has never been in force in all of its provisions in any colony or state of the United States.” Peery v. Fletcher, 93 Or 43, 52, 183 P 143 (1919). Rather, “[i]t has been adopted so far only as its general principles were suited to the habits and conditions of the colonies, and in harmony with the genius, spirit and objects of American institutions.” Id. Oregon accordingly departed from the “old common law [rule]” that defendants would be liable in trespass for damages caused by their cattle straying onto another person’s land. Perozzi v. Ganiere, 149 Or 330, 348, 40 P2d 1009 (1935). Similarly, in the arid west, the common-law riparian right of property owners to use water appurtenant to their land gave way to a more limited property right to use water based on a system of prior appropriation. Re Water Rights of Hood River, 114 Or 112, 166-81, 227 P 1065 (1924), cert dismissed sub nom Pac. Power & Light Co. v. Bayer, 273 US 647, 47 S Ct 245, 71 L Ed 821 (1926). In modifying common-law rights to meet conditions unique to this state, Oregon continued a process that began when the original colonies first adopted and then modified English common law. As one author has explained, “[b]y 182 Horton v. OHSU 1820 the legal landscape in America bore only the faintest resemblance to what existed forty years earlier” when the original colonies first adopted English common law. Morton J. Horwitz, The Transformation of American Law, 1780-1860 at 30 (1977). As Horwitz describes, from 1780 to 1860, state legislatures modified property and other common-law rights to accommodate both the differing conditions in this country and the industrial growth that the country was experiencing. It follows that, when the framers drafted Oregon’s constitution in 1857, they would not have viewed the common law as static or unchanging—a proposition that is apparent from Article XVIII, section 7, which both continued the common law, as modified to meet Oregon’s needs, and recognized that the common law remained subject to change. See Peery, 93 Or at 52-53 (recognizing that common law can be “altered” or “repealed”). Consistent with that recognition, the common law has continued to evolve as the premises on which it rests have changed. See Buchler v. Oregon Corrections Div., 316 Or 499, 518, 853 P2d 798 (1993) (Peterson, J., concurring) (explaining that the “beauty and strength of the commonlaw system is its infinite adaptability to societal change”). For example, this court has held that the common-law doctrine of interspousal immunity no longer bars negligence actions by one spouse against another, Heino v. Harper, 306 Or 347, 374-76, 759 P2d 253 (1988), and it has rejected the doctrine of parental immunity, Winn v. Gilroy, 296 Or 718, 733-34, 681 P2d 776 (1984). In 1975, the legislature abolished the common-law torts of criminal conversation and alienation of affections because those “actions for invasion of the family relationship were considered outmoded by changing views of marriage, divorce, and sexual relations, as reflected in the repeal in 1971 of criminal laws against adultery and enactment of no-fault divorce laws.” Norwest v. Presbyterian Intercommunity Hosp., 293 Or 543, 563, 652 P2d 318 (1982). More recently, we explained that, in light of legislative changes to joint defendants’ liability, “commonlaw indemnity” is no longer “necessary or justified” for civil claims that are subject to the comparative fault statute. Eclectic Investment, LLC v. Patterson, 357 Or 25, 38, 346 P3d 468 (2015). Cite as 359 Or 168 (2016) 183 Contrary to the premise that underlies Smothers, when the framers drafted the Oregon Constitution in 1857, they would have understood that the common law was not tied to a particular point in time but instead continued to evolve to meet changing needs. See State v. Supanchick, 354 Or 737, 765, 323 P3d 231 (2014) (looking to common law as it evolved in America to determine scope of state confrontation clause). Put differently, nothing suggests that, when the framers drafted the remedy clause, they would have sought to tie the protections of that clause to the common law as it existed at a single point in time. We find no basis in the text of the remedy clause, its context, or its history from which we can conclude that the framers intended to limit the meaning of that clause to the concept of injury as it was defined in 1857. In reaching a contrary conclusion, Smothers relied on dicta from a federal district court decision, Eastman v. Clackamas Cnty., 32 F 24 (CCD Or 1887). See Smothers, 332 Or at 122. We accordingly discuss that decision briefly. The plaintiff in Eastman had been injured in 1886 as a result of Clackamas County’s negligence in maintaining one of its bridges, and he sued the county to recover his damages. Eastman, 32 F at 26. Under the common law, a county was not liable for an injury resulting from a defect in one of its highways or roads. Rankin v. Buckman, 9 Or 253, 256 (1881).6 Before the adoption of the Oregon Constitution, the Oregon territorial legislature changed that common-law rule and permitted tort and breach-of-contract actions against counties. Eastman, 32 F at 30-31. In 1887, 30 years after the constitution had been drafted and one year after the plaintiff in Eastman had been injured, the legislature amended the territorial statute that had permitted counties to be sued. Id. at 31. It deleted the part of the statute allowing tort actions against counties, 6 In Eastman, the court explained that the county’s common-law immunity derived from Russell v. Devon Co., 2 Term R 667 (1788), which had held that an unincorporated county was immune from liability for its negligence, primarily to avoid the prospect of a judgment “be[ing] satisfied out of the property of any one of the men of Devon, [with] the result [that there] would be ‘an infinity of actions’ among the defendants for contribution.” Eastman, 32 F at 28-29. 184 Horton v. OHSU with the result that the statute, as amended, permitted actions against counties only for breach of contract. Id. Before the federal district court, the county argued that the plaintiff’s action should be dismissed. The county explained that it was not liable for its torts at common law, and it noted that the territorial statute permitting tort actions against counties had been repealed. In considering the county’s argument, the district court first observed in dicta that the remedy clause froze in place both the common-law and statutory remedies that existed when the Oregon Constitution was enacted. Id. at 32. The district court reasoned: “To begin with, it may be admitted that the remedy guaranteed by [the state remedy clause] is not intended for the redress of any novel, indefinite, or remote injury that was not then regarded as within the pale of legal redress. But whatever injury the law, as it then stood, took cognizance of and furnished a remedy for, every man shall continue to have a remedy for by due course of law. When [the Oregon] 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?” Id. Having raised the remedy clause as a possible answer to the county’s defense, the federal district court decided the case on a narrower ground. It held that the plaintiff had been injured before the legislature had repealed the statute permitting actions against counties for their torts, that the plaintiff’s cause of action had “vested” when he had been injured, and that nothing in the 1887 amendment suggested that the legislature had intended the amendment to apply retroactively and take away a vested right. Id. at 34. Because the federal court held only that the 1887 amendment did not apply retroactively, its discussion of the remedy clause was dicta and had no binding effect in federal district court, much less in Oregon state courts.7 7 Of course, even if the federal district court’s interpretation of state law had been part of its holding, a federal court’s interpretation of state law would not bind a state court faced with the same question. Cite as 359 Or 168 (2016) 185 Five years later, a plaintiff brought a negligence action in state court against a county to recover for an injury that occurred after the legislature had repealed the statute making counties liable for their torts. Templeton v. Linn County, 22 Or 314, 316-17 (1892). Although the plaintiff relied on the dicta in Eastman to argue that the remedy clause barred the legislature from repealing the statute giving him a right to sue the county for its torts, this court rejected that argument, describing it as “startling.” Id. at 316. This court reaffirmed that the legislature cannot take away a party’s “[v]ested rights” (the right to recover for injuries that had occurred while the statutory remedy was in place), but it held that the same limitation did not apply to “expectancies and possibilities in which the party has no present interest.” Id. at 318. Not only did Templeton reject the dicta in Eastman, but this court later explained that it had never adopted that dicta. Noonan v. City of Portland, 161 Or 213, 249, 88 P2d 808 (1939); Gearin v. Marion County, 110 Or 390, 400-01, 223 P 929 (1924). Smothers based its holding tying the meaning of the remedy clause to Oregon common law in 1857 on federal dicta that this court described in Templeton as “startling” and that the court explained in Noonan and Gearin that it had never adopted.8 It follows that the central premise of Smothers’ holding finds no support in the text of the remedy clause, and it is at odds with the text of Article XVIII, section 7, and the history underlying that section and Article I, section 10. As Professor Linde observed more than 30 years before Smothers was decided, “one doubts 8 Smothers stated that Theiler v. Tillamook County, 75 Or 214, 146 P 828 (1915), had adopted the dicta in Eastman. 332 Or at 122. Smothers misperceived what Theiler held. In Theiler, the construction of a county highway caused a creek to change its course and, as a result, periodically “flo[w] over and upon the plaintiff’s premises, destroying the trees, shrubs, and grass growing thereon, and washing away the soil.” 75 Or at 215. In deciding whether the landowner could bring a claim against the county, Theiler quoted the dicta from Eastman and also discussed the holdings in Templeton and two other state supreme court cases. Id. at 217-18. This court then held that the plaintiff could sue the county, a holding that rested on the court’s conclusion that causing water to invade the plaintiff’s land “practically amount[ed] to a taking of    part of the premises without condemnation.” Id. at 218. Government liability for taking property follows from the state takings clause. See Or Const, Art I, § 18. Recognizing that constitutional liability is not the same thing as adopting the dicta in Eastman. 186 Horton v. OHSU that by the words ‘remedy by due course of law,’ Oregon’s constitution meant to freeze tort law as it stood either in 1859, or when this guarantee first entered state constitutions almost 200 years ago.” Linde, “Without Due Process,” 49 Or L Rev at 136. Indeed, both Justice O’Connell’s