Court Opinion

ID: 9606352
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 02:49:21.306752+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:01:19.873739
License: Public Domain

*830Dolliver, J.
(dissenting) — In 1974, plaintiff filed a negligence action against defendants, who were the owners and operator of an automobile in which plaintiff's wife had been killed. Plaintiff sought a declaration by the trial court that the old host-guest statute (Laws of 1974, 1st Ex. Sess., ch. 3, p. 2) did not apply as a defense in the action. The trial court ruled that the repeal of that statute was not intended to be retroactive, a ruling which we held to be erroneous on the first appeal of this action. Lau v. Nelson, 89 Wn.2d 772, 575 P.2d 719 (1978). However, we upheld the court's ruling that plaintiff would have to prove gross negligence on the part of the driver. We applied this state's common-law rule of gross negligence which was the same standard as that contained in the host-guest statute and which took effect upon repeal of the statute. Because plaintiff had contended that the general common-law rule of ordinary negligence was reinstated by the repeal of the statute, he had not attacked the validity of the premises upon which the gross negligence common-law rule in Washington was based.
Nine months later, we abandoned the gross negligence common-law rule in Roberts v. Johnson, 91 Wn.2d 182, 588 P.2d 201 (1978). The Roberts case was heard after the decision in Lau v. Nelson, supra, had been published, and counsel in that case, taking a hint from our statement in Lau that we might abandon the rule if proper arguments were submitted to us, argued the injustice of the gross negligence rule and won a victory for his clients. Now a majority of this court is not willing to allow plaintiff to take advantage of the abandonment of the gross negligence common-law rule.
We held in Lau v. Nelson, supra, that, when the statute repealing the host-guest statute was enacted, its effect was retroactive and the plaintiff in that case received the benefit of the retroactivity. In the present case the circumstances are identical except that, instead of the repeal of the statutory standard of gross negligence by the legislature, we have the "repeal" of this common-law standard of gross negligence by the court.
*831I am unable to discern from the language of the court in Lau v. Nelson, supra, or the majority in this case a rational distinction between the two circumstances. If plaintiff was entitled to retroactivity in the first case, there is no valid reason in logic or law why retroactivity should not be granted here.
Plaintiff's counsel, by arguing the inapplicability of the gross negligence rule on the first appeal, unquestionably paved the way for the Roberts decision. His client should be given the benefit of the abandonment of that rule, and is entitled to a new trial in which the defendants' standard of care is defined as ordinary negligence. To do otherwise, in my opinion, commits an unconscionable and unexplainable injustice against plaintiff.
In accordance with the general rule that an overruling decision is to be given retroactive effect unless the decision specifies otherwise (Haines v. Anaconda Aluminum Co., 87 Wn.2d 28, 549 P.2d 13 (1976)), I would reverse the trial court and remand for a new trial.
Utter, C.J., and Brachtenbach, J., concur with Dolliver, J.