Opinion ID: 2411574
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Mandatory rate reduction.

Text: A showcase feature of the act is that for at least one year beginning on July 1, 1975, the rates for minimum bodily injury liability coverage plus BRB and uninsured motorist coverage must be decreased by not less than 10% from the pre-existing rates for the same bodily injury coverage plus uninsured motorist and $1,000 per person medical expense coverage. [32] It is of interest here only because it does not apply to any policy under which a person who would otherwise be entitled to BRB [33] has rejected the limitations on his tort rights and liabilities. [34] Almost half the states have enacted no-fault insurance laws of one kind or another. Five courts of last resort have decided constitutional challenges. [35] The Illinois act was declared invalid on grounds not applicable to this case. The personal injury portion of the Florida act was found valid in all respects except for the threshold criteria based on bone fractures, which were held discriminatory. [36] This background information has significance to the controversy now before us only because most of the main issues raised here were discussed and decided in one or more of the other cases. [37] None of them, however, involved the precise question presented by Sec. 54 of the Kentucky Constitution, which reads as follows: The General Assembly shall have no power to limit the amount to be recovered for injuries resulting in death, or for injuries to person or property. If the act meets the test of that provision (and we think it does), there can be no serious doubt that Secs. 7 (right of trial by jury), 14 (access to the courts) and 241 (recovery for wrongful death) [38] also are satisfied. If one has no right of action the guaranties of Secs. 7 and 14 can have no application. If, moreover, the Sec. 54 argument is overcome on the theory of implied consent, which obviously is the keystone of the act's validity, then it would seem that the due process and equal protection arguments should fall by the same sword, because a public policy sufficient to justify an implied waiver of one constitutional protection ought to provide an equally reliable basis for the implied waiver of other constitutional protections that are of no higher value in the context of the given circumstances. Hence the focus of our analysis in this case is directed mainly at the Sec. 54 question. At the outset, the implied-consent theory must be recognized for what it is. As in the instance of contracts implied in law vis-a-vis contracts implied in fact, it necessarily stands on fiction rather than fact. But it is not thereby degraded or denigrated, because the venerated fictions of the law have been deliberately created to achieve what is right. The law simply declares that as done which ought to have been done. If implied-consent laws (or, for that matter, any other laws) had to depend on actual notice they could not exist. It seems to us, therefore, that the proper test of such a law is whether under all the circumstances, considering the public purpose sought to be accomplished and the nature and extent of detriment to the individual, it is reasonable for it to presume a consent where none exists in fact. The argument of amicus curiae that the waiver of a constitutional right must be knowing, voluntary and intelligent [39] rests, of course, on the premise that the acceptance of no-fault limitations depends on consent implied in fact. As we have said, however, no implied-consent law could survive on that fare. That the right waived under an implied-consent law is a constitutional right does not of itself conjure any special magic. [40] Ordinarily, indeed, consent need be implied only because it is a constitutional right. Counsel's notion that the familiar statutes under which a nonresident motorist is deemed to have appointed the secretary of state as his agent for service of process [41] do not involve the loss of constitutional protections might, we suggest, be quickly dispelled by a review of Pennoyer v. Neff, 95 U.S. 714, 24 L.Ed. 565 (1877), and its subsequent history. Certainly the protection of an absent nonresident from a personal judgment rests upon the fundamental right of due process guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. If it were not so it would be unnecessary for the law to imply his acquiescence. Motor vehicles are dangerous machines, and, even when skillfully and carefully operated, their use is attended by serious dangers to persons and property. In the public interest the state may make and enforce regulations reasonably calculated to promote care on the part of all, residents and non-residents alike, who use its highways.. . . And, in advance of the operation of a motor vehicle on its highway by a non-resident, the state may require him to appoint one of its officials as his agent on whom process may be served in proceedings growing out of such use. . . . The difference between the formal and implied appointment is not substantial, so far as concerns the application of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Hess v. Pawlowski, 274 U.S. 352, 356-357, 47 S.Ct. 632, 633, 71 L.Ed. 1091 (1927). Our views in this respect do not reflect a diminished conception of Sec. 54 as applied in Saylor v. Hall, Ky., 497 S.W.2d 218 (1973), Happy v. Erwin, Ky., 330 S.W.2d 412 (1959), and the earlier opinions they affirm. The statutes considered in those cases did not purport to imply consent of the persons whose rights were affected, and we do not say here that they could validly have done so. In Wells v. Jefferson County, Ky., 255 S.W.2d 462 (1953), this court held valid, against the contention that it violated Sec. 54, an amendment of our Workmen's Compensation Act [42] providing that an employe is deemed to have accepted the act unless and until he files a written notice of rejection with his employer. There are differences, of course, between that case and this, but the fundamental similarities far outweigh the differences. Those of us who join in this opinion cannot fairly distinguish it or avoid it by declaring it unsound. There is no doubt that much reliance was placed upon its integrity as a guiding precedent by the members of the General Assembly in drafting and enacting the no-fault law. The responsibility of pronouncing life-or-death judgment on a piece of legislation so important as this cannot be discharged by any exercise of legal virtuosity. It would be all too easy to tear it down and look brilliant in the execution, but it is the duty of the court to save it if possible, and not to condemn it if there is a reasonable doubt of its unconstitutionality. Cf. Harbison v. George, 228 Ky. 168, 14 S.W.2d 405, 406 (1929). We resolve any such doubt in its favor. As one of the briefs suggested, the arguments have tended to obscure the fact that from the standpoint of what the individual gives up, this really is a rather innocuous law. The compulsory insurance aspect, about which there seems to be no legal question, is likely to rip off more skin than the limitation of tort rights. Considering the modest extent to which the scope of tort recovery is constricted, the no-fault law gives much more to the many than it takes from the few. The object of our sharpest concern is the impact of the law upon infants and other persons under disability, but in this respect a misplaced emphasis has been placed on the right of rejection. The argument that a parent waives his child's right to sue by failing to exercise the right of rejection for him misses the point that it is the child's act in using an automobile, or the parent's act in causing or permitting him to do so, that subjects him to the limitations imposed by the no-fault law. As expressly stated in KRS 304.39-060(1), implied consent to the law hangs on one's use of the highways, not on the failure to reject, which really is in the nature of an added attraction. Parents and custodians of persons under disability necessarily have the liberty to exercise or forego many options affecting the rights and welfare of the child or ward. A next friend may file suit for an infant, waive trial by jury, and lose the case, all without let or hindrance. [43] What he can or cannot do depends very largely on the gravity and likelihood of harm to which the child is thereby exposed. In the field of criminal law much protection has been thrown about the juvenile, but the policy considerations there cannot reasonably be equated with those involved in this case. Usually, parents can be depended upon to do what they think best for their children, that being the generally reliable instinct of mankind. Considering the no-fault benefits that are disclaimed by a rejection, who is to say whether its exercise in a child's behalf gives him more or takes more from him? This point was settled in the context of the workmen's compensation law by Greene v. Caldwell, 170 Ky. 571, 186 S.W. 648, 653 (1916). Since that time the rights of children have come to be regarded with far greater solicitude, but it is still a prerogative of the state to define the authority of a parent to act for a child. Being of the opinion that a state's undoubted authority to place conditions upon the use of its highways includes the power to require liability insurance and the acceptance of a no-fault system of loss distribution, we do not regard the option to reject as indispensable to the legal presumption that any person, sui juris or not, who uses the highways accepts those conditions, particularly in view of the obvious benefits to himself. Whether the option to reject is exercised does not involve the waiver of a constitutional right. If, on the other hand, the law did not provide for its exercise in some manner for a person under disability there might be real cause for a claim of discrimination. Heretofore our statutes of limitation have been extended to permit one who is a minor when a right of action accrues in his behalf to bring suit within the same period of time after he reaches his majority. [44] To the extent that KRS 304.39-230(5) may provide otherwise it is claimed to be invalid. There is no authority, however, for a conclusion that such a saving provision is a constitutional necessity. It is a matter of legislative choice. Aside from the Sec. 54 question, enough has been written by other courts on the due process and equal protection issues raised by this type of legislation to obviate any need for further extension here. We could add nothing to the fine opinions of Mr. Justice Reardon in Pennick v. Cleary, 360 Mass. 1, 271 N.E.2d 592 (1971), and Chief Justice Fatzer in Manzanares v. Bell, 214 Kan. 589, 522 P.2d 1291 (1974). Suffice it to say that in our opinion these constitutional protections are not violated. The brief for appellee Kentucky Association of Trial Attorneys contends that the act does not apply to motor vehicles engaged in the transportation of persons for hire, and thereby violates Const. Sec. 59, which forbids special legislation where a general law can be made applicable. This argument is based on the exclusion contained in KRS 186.020. Such vehicles are, however, covered by KRS 186.050, [45] so in fact they are not excluded. The same constitutional point is made with reference to KRS 304.39-080(4), which excludes governmental agencies from the compulsory insurance requirement. This is not an unreasonable classification and therefore does not offend Sec. 59. The brief for amicus curiae American Insurance Association suggests that none of the complaining parties had standing to litigate the rights of nonresident motorists and workmen's compensation carriers. We agree. In conclusion, it should not escape the attention of any of the litigants and other persons and parties interested in this case that essentially, much of the argument has amounted to little more than a questioning of the public policy on which the General Assembly based its action. It is elementary that the legislative branch of government has the prerogative of declaring public policy and that the mere wisdom of its choice in that respect is not subject to the judgment of a court. To those who may think, for example, that this law does not rest on considerations of policy comparable with those underlying the workmen's compensation law, the answer is that the question has been settled by the only body having the legal right to make that judgment. Nothing we have said here is intended to leave an inference that those of us joining in this opinion actually doubt the wisdom or soundness of the legislative action. The General Assembly has faced up to the responsibility, never easy under a constitution adopted before the day of carnage on the highways, of adapting the law to the exigencies of the 20th century. It is difficult for us to believe that those great men, conservative as they were, who labored so diligently in bringing forth that constitution, but nevertheless misjudged the efficacy of the amendment process, would really have it otherwise. To the extent that it resolves issues the parties had no standing to raise, the judgment should be modified. As so modified it is affirmed. All concur except for JONES, LUKOWSKY and STERNBERG, JJ., who dissent.