Court Opinion

ID: 9545787
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:19:32.023485+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:15:32.844688
License: Public Domain

LOHR, Justice,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent. The majority holds that the Mandatory Arbitration Act, §§ 13-22-401 to 13-22-409, 6A C.R.S. (1987), violates neither the Colorado Constitution nor the due process or equal protection clauses of the fourteenth amendment to the United States Constitution. Unlike the majority, I am persuaded that the Mandatory Arbitration Act violates the right of every person to obtain access to the courts as guaranteed by article II, section 6, of the Colorado Constitution. I would therefore make the rule issued in this case absolute. Because I would resolve the case on right of access grounds, I would not reach the other constitutional arguments raised by the defendant, Firelock Incorporated.
Article II, section 6, of the Colorado Constitution states:
Courts of justice shall be open to every person, and a speedy remedy afforded for every injury to person, property or character; and right and justice should be administered without sale, denial or delay.
We have previously recognized that this provision “guarantees to every person the right of access to courts of justice in this state.” Board of County Comm’rs v. Barday, 197 Colo. 519, 522, 594 P.2d 1057, 1059 (1979); see also People v. Spencer, 185 Colo. 377, 381, 524 P.2d 1084, 1086 (1974). The constitutional right of access to the courts means “that for any act of another which constitutes an injurious invasion of any right of the individual which is recognized by or founded upon any applicable principle of law, statutory or common, the courts shall be open to him *1101and he ‘shall have remedy, by due course of law.’ ” Goldberg v. Musim, 162 Colo. 461, 469, 427 P.2d 698, 702 (1967) (quoting Cason v. Baskin, 20 So.2d 243, 250 (Fla.1945)) (emphasis in original). Article II, section 6, “limits very stringently the power to exclude resident plaintiffs from our court system where jurisdiction has otherwise been properly established.” McDonnell-Douglas v. Lohn, 192 Colo. 200, 201, 557 P.2d 373, 374 (1976) (because of article II, section 6, the doctrine of forum non conveniens has only the most limited application in Colorado courts); accord Casey v. Truss, 720 P.2d 985 (Colo.App.1986), cert. denied, No. 86SC114 (Colo.Sup.Ct. June 16, 1986). The lesson of McDonnell-Douglas is that we must carefully scrutinize any innovative procedure, however well intended, that interferes with the fundamental right1 of every person to obtain access to the courts to obtain redress for their legally cognizable grievances.
I do not read the cases cited by the majority, People v. Spencer, 185 Colo. 377, 524 P.2d 1084 (1974), and Board of County Comm’rs v. Winslow, 706 P.2d 792 (Colo. 1985), cert. denied, 475 U.S. 1018, 106 S.Ct. 1204, 89 L.Ed.2d 317 (1986), as holding that “a burden on a party’s right of access to the courts will be upheld as long as it is reasonable.” Maj. op. at 1096. Rather, I view Spencer and Winslow as holding only that the trial courts of this state are not constitutionally prohibited from enjoining pro se appearances in certain extreme cases involving a history of abuse of the judicial process. In reaching this conclusion in Spencer and Winslow, we acknowledged that under some circumstances a litigant’s right of access to the courts “must yield to the interests of other litigants and of the public in general in protecting judicial resources from the deleterious impact of repetitious, baseless pro se litigation.” Winslow, 706 P.2d at 794. Additionally, we held in Winslow that “[f]or-bidding a party from filing cases pro se does not infringe upon his constitutional right of access to the courts because he may still obtain access to judicial relief by employing an attorney authorized to practice in the state of Colorado.” Winslow, 706 P.2d at 794-95; accord Barday, 197 Colo. at 522, 594 P.2d at 1059 (also noting that the enjoined litigant “is still free to appear pro se in his own defense ”) (emphasis in original).
The cases assigned to mandatory arbitration are not chosen for reasons relating to their deleterious impact on the judicial process. On the contrary, all cases in which a party seeks money damages in the sum of $50,000 or less, and only those cases, are siphoned off from the courts and diverted into the arbitration forum. § 13-22-402(2). The special concerns that motivated the issuance of injunctions against pro se litigants in cases such as Spencer and Wins-low — preventing abuse of the judical process, refusing to allow the judicial process to be used to harass others, and conserving limited judicial resources by not devoting them to the resolution of repetitious, merit-less claims — are not present in this case. See Winslow, 706 P.2d at 794.
The procedure by which a litigant must submit his claim for mandatory arbitration as a condition precedent to trying his case in a court restricts access to the courts in two important ways. First, the litigant may not present his claim to a court until he has undergone the delay2 and expense *1102attendant to an arbitration proceeding. § 13-22-402(2). Second, in order to obtain access to a court after arbitration has been completed, the litigant must accept the consequence that he will be required to pay the costs of the arbitration proceeding, including arbitrator fees, up to a maximum of $1,000 should he fail to improve his position by more than ten percent. § 13-22-405(3). These burdens of time and expense are considerable and will likely have the practical effect of preventing litigants with smaller claims from ever obtaining access to the courts to assert them. In short, for some litigants these barriers to access to the courts will not simply burden such access but as a practical matter will bar entry into a judicial forum. The majority does not explain why these obviously important limitations on a litigant’s fundamental right of access to the courts are permissible except to analogize them to the collection of docket fees, the award of costs to a prevailing party, and the imposition of certain other incidental costs of litigation applicable in special situations. See maj. op. at 1096. The majority simply offers the conclusion that the burdens are reasonable. I cannot agree that it is constitutionally permissible to burden the fundamental right of access to the courts in these significant ways.
In sum, I regard the mandatory arbitration process at issue in this case as limiting access to the courts in a manner that conflicts with both the spirit and the letter of article II, section 6, of the Colorado Constitution. See Aldana v. Holub, 381 So.2d 231, 238 (Fla.1980) (medical mediation statute violated due process because application of its rigid jurisdictional periods proved arbitrary and capricious, and enlargement of these periods would effectively deprive claimants of access to the courts); People ex rel. Christiansen v. Connell, 2 Ill.2d 332, 118 N.E.2d 262, 265-69 (1954) (statute that imposed mandatory waiting period before divorce action could be filed held to obstruct litigants’ constitutional right of access to the courts without delay); State ex rel. Cardinal Glennon Memorial Hosp. v. Gaertner, 583 S.W.2d 107, 110 (Mo.1979) (statute requiring that medical malpractice claims be referred to medical malpractice review panel before being filed in court held unconstitutional based on fact that it “imposes a procedure” as a precondition to constitutionally established right of access to the courts); Jiron v. Mahlab, 99 N.M. 425, 659 P.2d 311, 313 (1983) (statute requiring medical malpractice claimant to appear before a review commission prior to filing suit deprives plaintiffs of their constitutional right of access to the courts if the review requirement “causes undue delay prejudicing a plaintiff by the loss of witnesses or parties”); cf. Mottos v. Thompson, 491 Pa. 385, 421 A.2d 190, 195-96 (1980) (striking as unconstitutional a statute giving arbitration panel original jurisdiction over medical malpractice claims where delays involved in statutory procedures oppressively burdened. the right to a jury trial so as to “make the right practically unavailable”).
In reaching the conclusion that the Mandatory Arbitration Act cannot be squared with the constitutional right of access to the courts, I do not mean to imply that all efforts and methods to resolve disputes outside of the judicial forum violate that constitutional right. I would hold only that the particular mandatory procedure involved in this case imposes constitutionally impermissible burdens on that right. I would therefore make the rule absolute.

. Cf. Protect Our Mountain Environment, Inc. v. District Court, 677 P.2d 1361, 1365 (Colo.1984), in which we stated that “collective activity undertaken to obtain meaningful access to the courts has been recognized as ‘a fundamental right within the protection of the First Amendment,’ ” (quoting United Transportation Union v. State Bar of Michigan, 401 U.S. 576, 585, 91 S.Ct. 1076, 1082, 28 L.Ed.2d 339 (1971)), and that "the right to petition the government for redress of grievances necessarily includes the right of access to the courts” in order to "seek vindication of federal and state rights and ensure accountability in the affairs of government." We recognized that the right of access to the courts also finds expression in article II, section 6, of the Colorado Constitution. Protect Our Mountain Environment, 677 P.2d at 1365 n. 5.

. The arbitration proceeding “shall be held within ninety days of the date on which the case is at issue between the parties.” § 13-22-404(1). “The arbitrators shall file their decision with the court within ten days of the hearing....” § 13-22-404(7). Each party has thirty days after the arbitrators' decision is filed to demand a trial de novo. §§ 13-22-404(8), 13-22-405(1). Thus, the arbitration process is designed to de-*1102itself. fer resort to the courts for up to 130 days, exclusive of the time required for the hearing