Court Opinion

ID: 9791393
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:10:09.304587+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:35.908516
License: Public Domain

Mr. Chief Justice Frantz
dissenting:
The common law of America is evolutionary; it is not *603static and immutable. It is in constant growth, going through mutations in adapting itself to changing conditions and in improving and refining doctrine. By its very nature, it seeks perfection in the achievement of justice.
Thus it has been said that courts may reshape ancient rules of the common law so as to fit them to present conditions; verily, it is their duty to keep the common law abreast of changes wrought by time. Courts should not be averse to molding common law principles to meet the dictates of experience and observation. Indeed, it is a sad commentary on the common law if it can be said of it that it cannot profit by the experiences and observations of the past and that thus the present shall always and irrevocably be controlled by the past.
One of the oldest maxims of the common law is “that where the reason of the rule ceased the rule also ceased, and it logically followed that when it occurred to the courts that a particular rule had never been founded upon reason, and that no reason existed in support thereof, that rule likewise ceased, and perhaps another sprang up in its place which was based upon reason and justice as then conceived.” Funk v. United States, 290 U.S. 371, 54 S.Ct. 212, 78 L. Ed. 369; Ketelsen v. Stilz, 184 Ind. 702, 111 N.E. 423. See Biggerstaff v. Zimmerman, 108 Colo. 194, 114 P. (2d) 1094; Rains v. Rains, 97 Colo. 19, 46 P. (2d) 740; “Collected Legal Papers,” Holmes, p. 187; “The Nature of the Judicial Process,” Cardozo, p. 152; “A Concise History of the Common Law,” Plucknett, 2nd Ed., pp. 272-274. Perhaps the following excerpt from Funk v. United States, supra, contains the classic statement concerning the constant evolution of the common law:
“To concede this capacity for growth and change in the common law by drawing ‘its inspiration from every fountain of justice,’ and at the same time to say that the courts of this country are forever bound to perpetuate ■ such of its rules as, by every reasonable test, are *604found to be neither wise nor just, because we have once adopted them as suited to our situation and institutions at a particular time, is to deny to the common law in the place of its adoption a ‘flexibility and capacity for growth and adaptation’ which was ‘the peculiar boast and excellence’ of the system in the place of its origin.”
I respectfully suggest to my confreres on this Court that in any consideration of the doctrine of stare decisis, we keep a balance between concepts: that in recognizing the merit of stare decisis we not lose sight of the importance of the healthy growth inherent in the common law. As between a resort to stare decisis and a growth in the law which effectuates justice, there should be no dragging of feet once it is ascertained that a true advance in the dispensation of justice and in the science of law can be achieved.
The very subject under consideration reveals the evolutionary process of the common law as this Court has performed its duties day by day.
All will concede that there was a time when the doctrine of sovereign immunity was applied with unanimity by the members of this Court as then constituted in cases involving the doctrine then before it. But during the last decade the doctrine has been much criticized by members of this Court. Indeed, it had apparently been discarded by en banc decisions in three cases. Certain members reject the doctrine insofar as contractual relations with the state are involved, on the theory that by its contract the state has given consent to suit by the other contracting party.
There is thus revealed a condition of unquiet flux on the subject. Where once the doctrine had smooth sailing, it is now rocking along in troubled waters.
In 1952 this Court acting en banc decided the case of Boxberger v. State Highway Department, 126 Colo. 438, 250 P. (2d) 1007. The decision was unanimous. It was there said that “the rights of a citizen remain the same whether they collide with an individual or a govern*605ment, and judicial tribunals were wisely established to correct such matters without the individual being relegated to the position of no other remedy except to appeal to a legislature, maybe to no avail, as all the people, or the citizens, are, in fact, the sovereign under our desirable form of government.”
The doctrine of sovereign immunity was again considered in Ace Flying Service, Inc., v. Colorado Dept. of Agriculture, 136 Colo. 19, 314 P. (2d) 278 (1957). Three opinions were written, revealing a diversity of views among the members of the Court. No majority could be marshalled to act as the voice of the Court in the disposition of that case.
Two months later the Court released its opinion in the case of Colorado Racing Commission v. Brush Racing Association, 136 Colo. 279, 316 P. (2d) 582, an en banc decision in which it was said of cases cited by the State of Colorado that they “are outmoded by more recent pronouncements of this Court. In Colorado ‘sovereign immunity’ may be a proper subject for discussion by students of mythology but finds no haven or refuge in this Court.” We decried “the State’s archaic contention.”
A year and a half later the Court in an en banc opinion, Justice Day not participating, decided the case of Stone v. Currigan, 138 Colo. 442, 334 P. (2d) 740 (1959). We there said that the “doctrine of sovereignty in Colorado is in limbo, only the memory lingers on. Sequiturs that emanated from the doctrine such as ‘immunity from suit, ‘immunity from paying interest,’ ‘immunity from the statute of limitations,’ etc., have with the demise of the doctrine become non-sequiturs.”
Then followed four cases in which the majority held that sovereign immunity was still applicable in tort cases. Denver v. Madison, 142 Colo. 1, 351 P. (2d) 826; Liber v. Flor, 143 Colo. 205, 353 P. (2d) 590; Faber v. Colorado, 143 Colo. 240, 353 P. (2d) 609; Berger v. Dept. *606of Highways, 143 Colo. 246, 353 P. (2d) 612 (all handed down in 1960).
Should the doctrine of sovereign immunity prevail in Colorado today? To those who believe that sovereign immunity was adopted as a part of the common law, may I propose that conditions have so changed as to make it an anachronism today. To those who believe it never had a proper place in the American common law (and I am of this opinion, as shown by my several dissents in the cases above cited), my proposal does no violence.
To those who believe that sovereign immunity was a part of our common law, I point out the vast difference in conditions as they exist today as compared with those in being at the time there seemed to be no contention over the application of the doctrine. In former days the theory that the least governed were the best governed was effectuated as a fact. Certainly on both the federal and state levels there was a minimum of control over the lives of citizens in all aspects.
But today the activities of government touch upon every phase of a citizen’s life. These activities have become expansive and they affect more and more the lives of all citizens. There is hardly an activity of a citizen which is not colored by some control exercised by government.
The very case that we are now considering involves circumstances wholly different from those existing when sovereign immunity was first the subject of discussion in opinions of this Court. Compulsory education was unknown in the early days of Colorado. Today children must go to school until they reach sixteen years of age. Neither parent nor child has any choice in the matter. Whether there exist hazards at the school to which the pupil is assigned makes no difference. If a child is injured by reason of such hazards, are parents and child helpless because of sovereign *607immunity or have they a right of action where the pupil attends under a species of compulsion?
It is my firm belief that sovereign immunity is completely out of tune with conditions as they exist today where governmental activity creeps into all phases of a citizen’s life and the citizen’s freedom thereby necessarily shrinks so that there are a myriad more chances of being injured by government than there were when sovereign immunity was a doctrine in swaddling clothes in this state.
This doctrine should go the way of other principles of old English law which outlived their usefulness or which became outmoded by reason of change. It should go the way of such principles as compurgation, feoffment, the doctrine that a husband may inflict corporal punishment upon his wife, primogeniture, the importance of seals to documents, wergild, attornment by tenants, to mention but a few doctrines that have fallen by the wayside in the evolutionary progress of the common law.
This Court has said in respect to stare decisis that “above and beyond all this is the more important question of being right, and unless there is some particular reason why an erroneous ruling should be followed no court should be above reversing itself when it has been clearly demonstrated that it has made a mistake in one of its conclusions * * *; in such case the precedent should not be blindly followed simply because it has been announced.” Imperial Securities Company v. Morris, 57 Colo. 194, 141 Pac. 1160.
I am in accord with the statement of this Court in People ex rel. v. Denver, 125 Colo. 167, 243 P. (2d) 397, and believe it sustains my view of sovereign immunity. The Court said that “it is universally recognized that, notwithstanding the rule of stare decisis and the inclination to follow precedent, the courts of last resort have the power, and it sometimes is their duty, in serving the interests of justice, to depart from rules previously *608established by court decision.” (Emphasis supplied.) See Cooper Motors v. Comm’rs, 131 Colo. 78, 279 P. (2d) 685.
I say a devout “Amen” to this excerpt from an opinion of this Court in the case of People v. Schaefer, 129 Colo. 215, 268 P. (2d) 420: “With reference to the rule of stare decisis upon which the administratrix relies, suffice it to say that this is not the first time, nor will it he the last, in which we, for definite and valid reasons, have felt obligated to overrule a former decision.” (Emphásis supplied.)
During the last decade the members of this Court have spoken with many tongues regarding sovereign immunity. The Court has not, nor have its individual members, been wholly consistent in the statement of views on this subject. To me this unsettled condition is symptomatic of the evolutionary process- — -a judicial ferment regarding an unsound condition in the law — so typical of the common law, and which is truly its greatest glory.
I fondly hope that a strabismal outlook concerning sovereign immunity will some day be overcome; that those who subscribe to the theory that sovereign immunity is part of our law will recognize that the more frequently governments impinge on individual citizens the more chances there are for governments to hurt citizens, and that therefore governments of necessity must become subject to liability for injuries.
Governmental immunity has been under attack in a number of states during the last few years. It is moribund or dead as the result of decisions in states which have recently weighed its merits. Oddly enough, opinions of this Court have been used as persuasive authority for repudiating the doctrine, as revealed by reading Muskopf v. Corning Hospital District, 55 Cal. (2d) 211, 359 P. (2d) 457 (1961); Spanel v. Mounds View School District, 264 Minn. 279, 118 N.W. (2d) 795 *609(1962); Stone v. Arizona Highway Commission, 93 Ariz. 384, 381 P. (2d) 107 (April 1963).
In 1957 in the case of Hargrove v. Town of Cocoa Beach, (Fla.) 96 So. (2d) 130, 60 A.L.R. (2d) 1193, the first serious recent break with the past regarding the doctrine of sovereign immunity was made. The Court reasoned that “[¿judicial consistency loses its virtue when it is degraded by the vice of injustice.” Since then the doctrine has been repudiated in a number of jurisdictions. Molitor v. Kaneland Community Unit District No. 302, 18 Ill. (2d) 11, 163 N.E. (2d) 89, 86 A.L.R. (2d) 469, 14 N.C.C.A. (3rd) 409 (1959); Muskopf v. Corning Hospital District, supra; Williams v. City of Detroit, 364 Mich. 231, 111 N.W. (2d) 1; Holytz v. City of Milwaukee, 17 Wis. (2d) 26, 115 N.W. (2d) 618; Spanel v. Mounds View School District, supra; Stone v. Arizona Highway Commission, supra.
I believe that most of these cases speak eloquently and with irresistible logic in rejecting governmental immunity. It is difficult to resist the temptation to quote from these decisions. Perhaps the opinion of Judge Traynor, as he spoke for the Supreme Court of California in the case of Muskopf v. Corning Hospital District, supra, is the most persuasive.
Forthrightly it is declared by the California Supreme Court that “[ajfter a re-evaluation of the rule of governmental immunity from tort liability we have concluded that it must be discarded as mistaken and unjust.”
In thus repudiating the doctrine, Justice Traynor observed that “[tjhe rule of governmental immunity for tort is an anachronism, without rational basis, and has existed only by the force of inertia.”
Surprisingly, according to Judge Traynor:
“At the earliest common law the doctrine of ‘sovereign immunity did not produce the harsh results it does today. It was a rule that allowed substantial relief. It began as the personal prerogative of the king, gained *610impetus from sixteenth century metaphysical concepts, may have been based on the misreading of an ancient maxim, and only rarely had the effect of completely denying compensation. How it became in the United States the basis for a rule that the federal and state governments did not have to answer for their torts has been called ‘one of the mysteries of legal evolution.’ ”
This quotation has particular application to the theme of this dissent. Early use of the doctrine was so rare as to have little adverse effect, but today, with federal and state government touching all phases of a citizen’s life, it does have an unjust and harsh effect.
Of additional interest is the comment of Judge Tray-nor that the doctrine’s origin as part of the American common law is so obscure as to be a mystery of “legal evolution.”
I would have Colorado join the ranks of states which repudiate the doctrine of sovereign immunity. Various reasons are adopted for repudiation. Some decisions adopt one or more of these reasons, but they all indicate that in present day America the doctrine is an anachronism.
An unjust error does not ripen into something that is right merely because repeatedly committed. Stare decisis thus enshrined is a false legal idol to which I refuse to bend my knee. Forty decisions, more or less (I have never counted them), erroneously enunciating a doctrine having its genesis and raison d’etre in absolutism, a concept wholly foreign to our way of government, do not by repetition inject the doctrine with vitality and validity. One does not gather “figs off thistles.”