Opinion ID: 1135610
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: whiffen i

Text: The majority notes, but devotes little time to, Whiffen I. More should be said. That case involved essentially the same parties now before this court. In Whiffen I, however, this court stated specifically that it was deciding the case on a subconstitutional basis. 307 Or. at 680, 773 P.2d 1294. However, as the following discussion will show, the attempt by the court to put the Whiffen I decision on a subconstitutional footing left it with no footing at all. In Whiffen I, the defendants were persons who had entered Lloyd Center to gather signatures for three initiative petitions. The management of Lloyd Center asked the defendants and others who sought to gather such signatures to stop their signature-gathering activity. The defendants refused and continued to enter Lloyd Center to gather signatures. Lloyd Corporation then sought and obtained an injunction barring the defendants from `entering    [Lloyd Center] to exercise their expressions of opinions or to gather signatures in the initiative and referendum process without plaintiff's permission or consent.' Id. at 677, 773 P.2d 1294 (emphasis supplied). Before this court, the defendants argued that they had a right under the Oregon Constitution to enter Lloyd Center to gather signatures for initiative petitions. Id. at 679 n. 2, 687, 773 P.2d 1294. As noted, this court chose not to decide the constitutional issues. Instead, the court specifically held that on a subconstitutional level    [the] plaintiff [was] not entitled to the broad injunction [that] it sought and received. Id. at 680, 773 P.2d 1294 (emphasis supplied). The court stated in Whiffen I that [w]hether a judicial decision of a private claim invades constitutional rights depends on whether the remedy fashioned by the court invades constitutional rights. Ibid. (emphasis supplied). The remedy fashioned by the trial court in Whiffen I was too broad, the court held, under equitable principles, because it enjoined the defendants not only from entering Lloyd Center to gather signatures for initiative petitions, but also from expressing their opinion. The court stated that [t]he same judicial remedyfor instance, an injunction may be permissible in one case but not in another.  Id. (emphasis supplied). The court described the effect of the trial court injunction in Whiffen I this way: Equity simply will not spread a complete blanket over all political activity. People can and do peaceably and unobtrusively talk politics at [Lloyd] Center without creating a need for the extraordinary remedy of an injunction forbidding people engaged in this type of political activity [talking politics] from even venturing onto the property. The trial court went too far in issuing an injunction providing that `defendants are hereby restrained and enjoined from entering upon plaintiff's property to exercise their expressions of opinion. '    In short, defendants cannot be enjoined from entering [Lloyd] Center to express their opinion, so long as they do so reasonably and without interfering with plaintiff's commercial enterprise. Id. at 686-87, 773 P.2d 1294 (emphasis supplied). In the court's view, the trial court effectively had enjoined the defendants from entering Lloyd Center and expressing any opinion in any mannereven opinions as to the quality of merchandise at a retail store or whether a certain retail store was politically correct. For that reason, the injunction    went far beyond its justification. Id. at 689, 773 P.2d 1294. So it was that the court considered itself entitled to say that Whiffen I was resolved on equitable, not constitutional, principles. Had the Whiffen I majority left the matter at that, the opinion would have beenat mostinnocuous. But at least some of the court's discussion in Whiffen I concerned the effect of the trial court's injunction on the public interest in gathering signatures for initiative petitions. For example, the court stated in dictum that not all petition signature-gathering activity on [Lloyd Center] can be enjoined. Id. at 687, 773 P.2d 1294. The court further stated that the trial court's remedy of enjoining signature-gathering activity went too far. Id. The defendants could gather petitions if they do so reasonably and peaceably. Id. Moreover, plaintiff is not entitled to an injunction to prohibit peaceful solicitation of signatures in the mall or on its walkways that does not substantially interfere with the commercial activity on the premises. The solicitation of signatures of patrons does not in and of itself constitute substantial interference. The public policy behind the signature-gathering process limits equitable enforcement of plaintiff's preferred total exclusion of signature solicitors. Id. None of that discussion was essential to the holding in Whiffen I, however. Moreover, that discussion occurred in the context of a discussion as to why Lloyd Center should not have been granted discretionary, equitable relief. The court said, It bears repeating, to avoid misunderstanding, that the only issue which must be decided in this case as to [Lloyd Corporation's] claim is the scope of equitable intervention, not all legal rights and liabilities that might arise from the acts of either party. An equitable order may be denied, limited, or qualified regardless whether a defendant technically is a trespasser   . [A]ny residual legal issues may well be left to [Lloyd Corporations's] remedies at law. Id. at 688, 773 P.2d 1294. Although the majority in Whiffen I was at pains to keep its decision on a subconstitutional basis, that effort now appears to me to have rendered that opinion essentially meaningless. It is true that, as that opinion asserted, the injunction issued in Whiffen I went too far in that it enjoined any peaceful and nondisruptive expression of opinion at the Lloyd Center, even if that expression were a soto voce exchange between friends. But the court's criticism of the scope of the trial court's injunction in Whiffen I was merely abstract and irrelevant unless, after paring down that injunction, the trial court would be under some remaining, affirmative duty to permit the signature-gatherers to exercise to some extent their particular form of political speech, viz., signature-gathering, within Lloyd Center. And, if the trial court had a duty to permit that particular form of expression, that duty must derive from some right belonging to the defendants that trumped Lloyd Center's right to control both who came onto its private property and what those people did while they were there. The opinion asserted that the petition-gatherers had certain rights, but it did not identify the constitutional (or other) source of those rights. See generally, Whiffen I, 307 Or. at 693-95, 773 P.2d 1294 (Carson, J., dissenting). There was a very good reason for that failure to announce a constitutional justification for the Whiffen I result: There is no satisfactory constitutional justification for that result. Unlike the trial court remedy in Whiffen I, the trial court remedy in the present case does not affect any activity of defendants beyond the gathering of signatures for initiative petitions. The present case, therefore, directly presents the issue that the Whiffen I court was at pains not to decide, viz., whether gathering signatures for initiative petitions is a right protected under the Oregon Constitution when that signature-gathering occurs on private property like Lloyd Center. Before I examine that question, however, I believe that it is helpful to review in some detail the way in which the question whether there was some constitutional right to free expression on even private property has evolved, over time, throughout the country. [2]