Court Opinion

ID: 9787427
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 00:16:25.11386+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:36:55.812623
License: Public Domain

ARMSTRONG, J.,
dissenting.
The majority dismisses our review of a decision of the Land Use Board of Appeals (LUBA) on the ground that petitioner’s claims are not justiciable. It reaches that conclusion by holding that petitioner failed to establish that it has an interest in the dispute that meets the constitutional requirements for it to obtain judicial relief. The majority’s decision is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the judicial power and of the authority of the Oregon Legislature to modify the law that bears on who has standing to invoke that power.
The function of courts is to adjudicate disputes between contestants. That means that the necessary elements of a justiciable controversy are contestants, a dispute, and relief that a court can grant regarding the dispute. Every *575Oregon case that has held a case to be nonjusticiable as a constitutional matter, that is, on the ground that the Oregon Constitution barred Oregon courts from adjudicating it, has involved an absence of one of the necessary elements.
Oregon cases have held, for example, that a dispute is not justiciable if it is not ripe or is moot.1 Both of those principles implement the requirement for a justiciable controversy that it be one in which a court can grant effective relief. A case that is ripe is one in which judicial relief is necessary to resolve the dispute, because nothing remains to be done that could obviate the need to obtain judicial relief. Conversely, a case is not ripe if steps remain to be taken that could lead to a circumstance in which there is no need for judicial relief. Similarly, a moot case is one in which there is no judicial relief to grant, because the result that the contestants seek to achieve in the case has already been achieved or there is no way to grant relief that would achieve it.
Oregon courts have also rejected as nonjusticiable cases in which there is no genuine dispute between the contestants. The most prominent example of such a case is Oregon Medical Association v. Rawls, 281 Or 293, 574 P2d 1103 (1978), which involved an action in which the plaintiff sought a declaration that a statute that the defendant administered was constitutional. There was no dispute between the plaintiff and the defendant about the constitutionality of the statute, so the case was not justiciable.
There also are Oregon cases involving the third of the three requirements for a justiciable controversy: the requirement that there be contestants on opposite sides of it. Gruber v. Lincoln Hospital District, 285 Or 3, 588 P2d 1281 (1979), is a good example of such a case. Gruber involved an action by a taxpayer and resident of the defendant hospital district who sought declaratory and injunctive relief against the enforcement of a contract between the defendant and a physician. Because the plaintiff brought the action under the state Declaratory Judgment Act, he had to meet the standing *576requirement established by the act, which meant that he had to be someone whose “rights, status or other legal relations” were affected by the contract about which he sought a declaration. See id. at 6-7; ORS 28.020. The court held that the plaintiff had failed to allege facts that met that standard, so the case was not justiciable because it lacked a necessary contestant: a plaintiff who could bring it.
Significantly, Gruber and the other Oregon cases involving the third justiciability requirement — the requirement that there be contestants — have all involved instances in which the plaintiffs failed to meet the legal standards established by the legislature or the courts for who could be contestants in a particular dispute. No Oregon case of which I am aware has held or even suggested that a standard set by the legislature for who could be a contestant in a case violated a constitutional limit on who could be one.2
The reason that there is no such case is because it is unclear that there is such a limit. In contrast to the three, fixed requirements for a justiciable controversy — contestants, a dispute, and the ability to grant relief — the content of the three requirements is subject to adjustment by both the legislature and the courts. In other words, who can be contestants, the disputes that are justiciable, and the relief that courts can grant are all subject to change. The Oregon cases have all dealt with the absence of one of the three requirements. None has suggested that there are constitutional limits on the choices to be made by the legislature and the courts concerning the content of those requirements.3
In that light, it should be apparent that the majority has taken a radical step in this case. It holds that there is a *577limit imposed by the Oregon Constitution on the legislature’s authority to determine who can be a contestant in an Oregon court in a case involving judicial review of a governmental action undertaken by a body charged with complying with a regulatory regime established by the legislature. No Oregon case has done that or anything remotely similar to it.
It is undisputed that the legislature and the courts have authority to adjust the content of the three justiciability elements and to make disputes justiciable that, before the adjustments, were not. For example, the legislature enacted the Oregon Administrative Procedures Act, which altered the body of disputes that could be adjudicated in Oregon courts, the contestants who could bring them, and the relief that could be granted in them.4 It did the same thing when it enacted the Declaratory Judgment Act.5
Courts have done that as well. Whenever they recognize a new claim for relief they expand the group of contestants and disputes that can be heard in court. For example, before courts recognized the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress, people who suffered extreme emotional distress from actions directed against them by others did not suffer an effect that the law would recognize, so there was no dispute about the objectionable conduct to adjudicate.
As Oregon courts have developed that tort, they have been careful to impose strict limits on it, by requiring the emotional distress to be extreme and the conduct giving rise to it to be outrageous in the extreme.6 What if, instead, Oregon courts chose to expand the claim to cover any emotional distress caused by unlawful or unprivileged conduct and to provide that the relief that a court would award for claims involving emotional distress that fell short of extreme distress was a required apology from the tortfeasor. Leaving aside the wisdom of that, the effect of doing it would be to give legal recognition to an interest in being free from emotional *578distress caused by the specified conduct and to create a remedy for that distress that would have meaning to people. That would appear to make claims for that relief justiciable— because there would be contestants, a genuine dispute, and effective relief to be granted on the claims — even though the interest addressed by the claim and the relief granted on it are not now legally cognizable.
The point is that the interests that can give people a basis to seek judicial relief are not static or constitutionally fixed. Emotional, psychological, and aesthetic reactions to governmental actions are real even if they cannot readily be quantified in money. If a governmental action would impose a $100 cost on a person, the person would have a recognized stake that would entitle the person to seek judicial relief against the action, even though it would cost more than that amount to hire a lawyer to prevent the imposition of that cost. If, instead of a monetary cost, the proposed governmental action would have consequences sufficiently important to the person to move her to incur the time and expense to challenge it, why has she not put a price on the value to her of stopping the action that a court or legislature could recognize?7 Nothing about the nature of the judicial power suggests to me that the Oregon Constitution prevents the courts or the legislature from implicitly recognizing interests of that kind by giving people a broad right to challenge governmental actions, so long as doing so does not substantially impair the ability of courts to adjudicate cases.8
*579Oregon residents do not have a generalized right to live in a state in which the state and local governments comply with the law. Would Oregon courts act unlawfully if they recognized that right? If they did recognize it, would it not follow that claims by Oregon residents challenging the lawfulness of any state or local governmental action would be justiciable, because the people who brought the claims would have a legally recognized interest that would be protected through the relief that courts could grant against the unlawful conduct? Again, it might not be wise for Oregon courts to recognize such a right, but I do not believe that they would violate the Oregon Constitution if they did.9
Global warming is recognized by most climatologists to be a real phenomenon that conceivably could have harmful effects on everyone living on the planet in 40 to 50 years. Although the effect of any one energy-generating plant on the global climate is small, the harmful consequences of global warming may not be felt for a long time, and the effect of those consequences on any specific claimant is necessarily uncertain, all of us may nevertheless have a stake in energy facility siting decisions, or at least the legislature could reasonably believe that we do. If the legislature enacted a statute that gave everyone the right to participate in the energy facility siting proceedings of the Energy Facility Siting Council and gave every participant in those proceedings the right to seek judicial review of a decision whether to site an energy-generating facility, would that grant of a right to *580seek judicial review violate the Oregon Constitution? Would it make a difference to the analysis if the legislature enacted a statute that provided that everyone has a right to be free from state decisions that could have a harmful effect on the global climate? Leaving aside, again, the wisdom of such an enactment, would it not follow that anyone could seek judicial review of an energy facility siting decision, because everyone would have a legally cognizable interest that would be affected by the decision?10
Mandamus actions are proceedings that can be brought by people in the name of the state to compel governmental officials to comply with the law. Oregon law is not entirely clear about the interest that a relator must have in the action to entitle the relator to bring it.11 Nevertheless, the state certainly has an interest in having its law enforced. If the state legislature is willing to deputize anyone who chooses to accept the assignment as a person who can act for the state to secure governmental compliance with state law, which is what it has done by giving people the ability to bring the proceeding in this case, has it violated the constitution?12 Why would we be barred from adjudicating such a dispute?
*581Federal law gives people the authority to bring proceedings in the name of the federal government to recover certain funds to which the government is entitled.13 A person who is successful in such a proceeding is entitled to receive a percentage of the amount recovered,14 which serves as both an incentive for the person to act as a private attorney general to bring the action and, incidentally, gives the person an interest in it. Consistent with that model, the Oregon Legislature presumably could couple its grant of standing in Oregon land use cases with a right of the successful litigant to receive a $100 payment from the local government, thereby, in the majority’s view, giving all litigants a personal stake in those cases and making them justiciable. If people would take the initiative on their own to seek compliance with the land use laws, why must the government create a further financial incentive in order to make the disputes justiciable?
Here, the legislature has given people who participate in a local land use proceeding the right to seek review by LUBA of the decision in that proceeding and, if dissatisfied with LUBA’s decision, to seek review by us. The legislature essentially has determined that, by investing time, effort, and, often, money in trying to persuade a governmental body to comply with the land use laws, the participants have earned a cognizable stake in the proceeding that entitles them to seek judicial review to compel governmental compliance with the land use laws. I do not see how the constitution prohibits the legislature from making that choice.
There are, of course, legitimate policy concerns that bear on the decision to give people the right to seek judicial review of governmental actions. Perhaps the most prominent among them is the concern that people without a direct and meaningful stake in the proceedings will not litigate the matter effectively, which could lead to an erroneous decision that could have durable and untoward effects on others. I believe that that is one of the concerns that underlies the federal standing cases cited by the majority and the majority’s decision itself.
*582Whatever role that concern should play, it does not impose a constitutional limit on the legislature’s authority to give people the right to adjudicate the legality of governmental actions undertaken pursuant to a legal regime established by the legislature. A broad statutory grant of standing has the effect of creating a body of private attorneys general who can act to ensure that the law enacted by the legislature is enforced. That benefit is balanced against the harm that those same people can have on the enforcement effort by making the enforcement process more cumbersome and costly and by litigating cases in which they are indifferent to the result or, worse, actually would prefer a result different from the one that they ostensibly seek. However, it is the legislature that must decide how to strike that balance. Nothing about the nature of the judicial power denies the legislature the authority to couple an enactment of substantive law with a grant of standing to people whom the legislature believes will help ensure the enforcement of that law. The legislature may be wrong about the benefits to be achieved from a particular grant of standing, such as its decision to give anyone who participates in a local land use decision the right to seek review of that decision with LUBA and with us, but its mistake is a prudential and not a constitutional mistake.
It should go without saying that the majority completely misconstrues my position. It contends that my analysis essentially permits the legislature to eliminate the practical effect requirement that the Supreme Court held in Barcik v. Kubiaczyk, 321 Or 174, 895 P2d 765 (1995), to be one of the constitutional requirements for justiciability. Because it permits the legislature to eliminate that requirement, it follows that my analysis would permit the legislature to eliminate all of the justiciability requirements, which means that my analysis cannot be reconciled with the Oregon cases that have made it clear that the legislature lacks the power to eliminate those requirements. 176 Or App at 555-56.
The majority is wrong. Barcik"s discussion of the practical effect requirement concerns mootness, which is concerned, in turn, with whether the relief that a court can grant will have any effect on the parties. If, as here, the state legislature has established that certain parties have a right to *583secure lawful conduct by state and local governments, a decision that vindicates that right and prevents unlawful governmental conduct has a practical effect on the rights of those parties. Contrary to the majority’s view, upholding that legislative judgment does not eliminate the practical effect requirement that is embodied in the requirement that the court be able to grant meaningful relief, and it does not open the door to legislative authority to eliminate the other justiciability requirements.15
I should note one final point. By law, every action filed in an Oregon court must be brought in the name of the *584real party in interest. ORCP 26 A. If a person with a contractual claim assigns the claim to someone else, the claim must be brought in court by the person to whom the claim has been assigned. However, the objection that a claim has not been brought by the real party in interest is waived if it is not raised by motion or in a responsive pleading. See ORCP 21 G(2). Consequently, if the objection is waived, a contractual claim can be brought and litigated to judgment by a party for whom the decision in the case will have no practical effect. The decision will have a practical effect on the real party in interest, but that party will not be a party to the litigation. If the majority is right, it would appear that, contrary to ORCP 21 G(2), the objection that a claim has not been brought by the real party in interest cannot be waived, because the constitution bars adjudication of a claim that is brought by someone who lacks a stake in the outcome of it. That will come as a surprise to most lawyers and judges in Oregon.
To be sure, someone other than the defendant will be affected by litigation brought by a person other than the real party in interest, but, by the same token, someone other than respondents will be affected by the proceedings in this case. At a minimum, the state will be affected by the result in this case, because the state has an interest in having its land use laws enforced. If the state could be a petitioner in this proceeding, and I assume as a constitutional matter that it could, and if the state could authorize people to bring the proceeding on its behalf, and I assume, again, that it could, then the failure to name the state as the petitioner would constitute a failure to bring the proceeding in the name of the real party in interest, but that would be a waivable defect.16 The state has essentially created a legal regime in which it has dispensed with the requirement that proceedings of this kind be brought in its name by a party authorized to act on its behalf. Instead, it has authorized people who meet certain criteria to bring the proceedings directly, thereby waiving as a matter of law the objection that the proceeding has not been *585brought by the real party in interest. If the Oregon Constitution would permit the state to do what I have just described, and I believe that it would, I do not believe that it operates to make this case nonjusticiable.
In summary, this case has a contestant that the legislature has determined can be a contestant that can seek governmental compliance with the state land use laws, there is a dispute between the contestants over the requirements of that law, and there is effective relief that a court can grant to resolve that dispute. That is all that the Oregon Constitution requires for a justiciable controversy. The majority errs in concluding otherwise.

 See, e.g., Mclntire v. Forbes, 322 Or 426, 434-35, 909 P2d 846 (1996); Brumnett v. PSRB, 315 Or 402, 405-06, 848 P2d 1194 (1993).

 In Gruber, for example, the court referred to the ongoing debate over taxpayer and other forms of citizen standing to challenge governmental actions and suggested that the resolution of the issues presented by that debate “must await a systematic reexamination of the statutory framework of judicial review.” Gruber, 285 Or at 7-8 & n 2 (emphasis added). The court did not suggest that there was a constitutional dimension to that debate.

 1 do not mean to imply that the freedom to adjust the content of those elements is truly limitless. An adjustment to an element that has the effect of eliminating it is not permitted. See, e.g., Rawls, 281 Or at 296-300. That means that the legislature and the courts cannot make justiciable a case that lacks contestants who have a genuine dispute on which a court can grant effective relief.

 See ORS 183.310 to ORS 183.550.

 See ORS 28.010 to ORS 28.255.

 See, e.g., Hall v. The May Dept. Stores, 292 Or 131, 134-37, 637 P2d 126 (1984).

 See generally William A. Fletcher, The Structure of Standing, 98 Yale LJ 221, 228-34 (1988) (discussing principle in terms of federal standing law). Petitioner self-evidently has an interest in having respondents in this case comply with the land use laws, otherwise it would not have bothered to take the actions that it did. The legislature has recognized that interest by giving participants in the local land use process the right to obtain judicial review of the legality of local land use decisions. A decision favorable to petitioner will vindicate its interest in having the government comply with the land use laws at issue in the case, and, as a consequence, the decision will have a practical effect on petitioner by ensuring compliance with those laws.

 The qualifying language in that statement recognizes that the separation-of-powers principle embodied in the Oregon Constitution prevents one branch of government from taking actions that substantially impair the ability of another branch to perform the functions that the constitution has assigned to it. See, e.g., Note, Probing the Limits of Legislative Power To Regulate the Bar, 56 Or L Rev 387, 391 (1977). Nothing suggests that the grant of standing at issue in this case could conceivably impair the ability of courts to perform their adjudicatory role.

 Most courts that have confronted the issue of taxpayer or citizen standing have chosen to recognize that type of standing to challenge governmental actions. See, e.g., Louis L. Jaffe, Standing To Secure Judicial Review: Public Actions, 74 Harv L Rev 1265, 1276-78 (1961); Note, Taxpayers' Suits: A Survey and Summary, 69 Yale LJ 895, 900-02 (1960). By doing so, the courts have effectively recognized that taxpayers and citizens have an interest in having a government that complies with the law. If courts have the authority to permit taxpayers or citizens to seek judicial relief against unlawful governmental action without regard to whether they have a direct, personal stake in the action, it is difficult to see why the legislature lacks authority to do the same thing. In fact, judicial rejection of legislative authority to determine who has the right to seek judicial enforcement of laws enacted by the legislature presents a significant separation-of-powers problem. Professor William A. Fletcher makes that very point in the course of his trenchant critique of federal standing law. See Fletcher, 98 Yale LJ at 228-34. His discussion makes clear, at least to me, that federal standing law is analytically and doctrinally incoherent and constitutes a body of law that we should reject rather than embrace under the Oregon Constitution.

 I am not sure that the enactment of a statute giving people the right to environmentally sound governmental decisions would affect the justiciability analysis, because the very decision to give people a right to seek judicial review of a governmental decision, which is what the legislature did in this case, gives them a legally cognizable interest in the proceedings. The legislature cannot create a dispute where there is none, see, e.g., Rawls, and it cannot require a court to act in a case where there is no effective relief that the court can grant, see, e.g., Mclntire, but it can create rights and interests, and its very act in doing that affects the ability of the beneficiaries to obtain judicial relief to vindicate their interests.

 See, e.g., Putnam v. Norblad, 134 Or 433, 436-37, 293 P 940 (1930); State ex rel. Durkheimer v. Grace, 20 Or 154, 156-58, 25 P 382 (1890); State ex rel. Shaw v. Ware, 13 Or 380, 382-83, 10 P 885 (1886); see also Dickman et al v. School Dist. No. 62C et al, 232 Or 238, 244-45, 366 P2d 533 (1961), cert den 371 US 823 (1962) (holds that standing of plaintiff to bring an action is not jurisdictional).

 In other words, could the legislature enact a law that gave people the right to bring a court action in the name of the state to seek compliance by state and local officials with state law? I assume that it could, because, as noted, the state has an interest in having state and local officials comply with state law. If the legislature could do that without violating the constitution, why would it matter if it dispensed with the requirement that the state be named as the nominal plaintiff and gave people the right to bring the action directly? I can think of no reason why it would matter, which means that the legislature can do what it has done in this case.

 See 31 USC §§ 3729, 3730.

 See id. § 3730(d).

 See, e.g., Fletcher, 98 Yale LJ at 247-49. The majority contends that my approach to justiciability will lead courts to issue advisory opinions. 176 Or App at 555-56. It will not, and this case confirms that it will not. Even if the relief awarded in this case will have no practical effect on petitioner, it will nevertheless cause respondents to take specific steps to comply with the land use laws, which means that the relief will do more than provide an answer to an abstract or hypothetical question. It will have a practical and immediate effect on the parties against whom petitioner sought court relief, which, for these purposes, is all that the Oregon Constitution requires. The point is further confirmed by comparing petitioner’s situation with that of a neighbor of the proposed motorcycle park. Assume that petitioner and the neighbor separately seek review by LUBA and by us of the local government’s approval of the park, and that we overturn the approval in both cases. Our decision certainly would not be an advisory decision as to the neighbor, but I do not see how it could be characterized as an advisory decision as to petitioner. The decision would do more than give either the neighbor or petitioner advice about the relevant land use law; it would enforce that law by requiring the local government to comply with it. The purpose of the practical effects component of the mootness doctrine is to prevent the issuance of advisory opinions. When the component is applied properly, it achieves that purpose. The majority misapplies it in this case by applying it to standing rather than mootness, which leads it to treat the decision in this case as advisory when it is not. Because most claims involve an effort to secure relief that is personal to the claimant, mootness generally focuses on whether the claimant will receive any benefit from the relief that a court could grant on the claims. If, as here, the claimant has a statutory right to seek governmental compliance with the land use laws, that right is not secure and the claim is not moot until the local government has complied with the law. In such a case, the court’s decision will have a practical effect on the right that the claimant seeks to secure, which is governmental compliance with the law.
The majority also suggests that my analysis reflects a justiciability model that was first proposed in the 1970s and that could not have been contemplated by those who framed the Oregon Constitution in 1857. 176 Or App at 556 n 11. The same point could be made about the majority’s analysis. It is based on a body of law that the United States Supreme Court began to develop in the 1930s that was no more within the contemplation of the drafters of the Oregon Constitution than was the body of law that the majority claims that I have advanced. See, e.g., Fletcher, 98 Yale LJ at 224-28. The issue for us to resolve is whether this case is justiciable under the Oregon Constitution. I have no doubt that it is.

 ORCP 21 G(2) does not, in fact, apply to this case, because the Oregon Rules of Civil Procedure do not, by their terms, apply to judicial review proceedings. See ORCP 1 A. However, the waiver principle that it embodies is relevant to the justiciability issue in the case. See Dickman, 232 Or at 244-45 (holding that standing of plaintiff to bring an action is not jurisdictional).