Court Opinion

ID: 9791723
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:16:42.883147+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:38.137695
License: Public Domain

CROCKETT, Justice
(dissenting):
I am unable to agree with the decision affirming the defendant’s conviction. It does not address itself to, nor in any way dispose of, Point I as stated in the defendant’s brief: that the evidence failed to prove he had committed any crime.
The statute upon which the accusation is based, Section 41-6-107.8(a), Utah Code Annotated 1953, under which the appellant is charged, reads :
No person shall operate or ride upon a motorcycle or motor-driven cycle upon a public highway posted for speeds higher than 35 miles per hour, unless he is wearing protective headgear which complies with standards established by the commissioner of public safety.
Focusing attention upon the emphasized portion of the statute, he states:
* * * there is no evidence whatsoever as proof of the last required element of the offense, i. e., noncompliance with standards established by the Commissioner of Public Safety.
He further argues that he
* * * is unaware of and unable to find any standards in this area that have been established by the Commissioner of Public Safety.
On this first point of his brief defendant is uncontestably correct. There is nothing in the record as to any proof concerning any “standard established by the Commissioner of Public Safety” nor that any such standard was adopted, or in any manner promulgated and made available to the public. And the State does not even contend that there was in this record any such proof offered or referred to, or in any wise made part of the record. In the absence of proof to establish an essential element of the offense, the conviction cannot properly be sustained.
Proceeding beyond the question of the defendant’s conviction: Inasmuch as the statute here in question is a new enactment, on a public issue, and consequently its validity must eventually be passed upon by this court, it does no violence to my sense of procedural propriety that the court go ahead and make an adjudication on this statute. But with respect thereto I desire to make some further observations. The first is that any such statute should state the regulation it imposes with suffi*109cient certainty and clarity that persons of ordinary intelligence will be able to understand and ascertain from the statute itself what it means, and thus be enabled to comply with its requirements.1 Moreover, it should not delegate the legislative function to some official such as a “Commissioner of Public Safety” so that he might, by his own ukase, set arbitrary or unreasonable standards which are neither known nor made reasonably accessible to the people they affect. Beyond this, even if such an arbitrary procedure were accepted as proper, there certainly should be provision made for some method of publicizing, or otherwise advising or making available to the public, information concerning the standard set. And all of the foregoing should be ascertainable within the four corners of the statute itself. The statute as set forth herein does not meet that test and is unenforceable for vagueness.2
I would decide this case on the bases stated above. Nevertheless, I appreciate the fact that the decision of the court goes to the heart of a more fundamental matter: Assuming as a hypothesis that there was adequate proof of violation of a properly drafted law requiring motorcyclists to wear helmets, would a conviction thereunder be sustained? This, I confess, poses an interesting and troublesome question. It is another example of the age-old and frequently-recurring controversy between the rights of an individual as compared to the rights of the group. In my opinion the answer depends upon where the greater emphasis is placed.
I have no reason to disagree that it is desirable for a motorcyclist to wear a helmet any more than that it is desirable for him to brush his teeth, wash his ears, or wear a coat in cold weather, or any number of things pertaining to personal behavior which may be beneficial for one’s personal health, safety or welfare. But in such matters the fundamental premise is that each person should be accorded the highest degree of individual freedom of action consistent with respecting similar rights in all others. The correlativé of this is that his rights and conduct can be restricted or prohibited if the greater good, the protection of the public health, safety or welfare is sufficiently involved to justify such restriction of individual rights. The application of that principle to this case requires consideration as to the degree this so-called “helmet law” is designed to protect the public as compared to the protection of the individual himself.
*110I am- not quite overcome by the boldly declared generalities that “this law is for the protection of the public”; nor with what impresses me as the somewhat specious attempts to make it appear to be so ■ rather than for the protection of the individual motorcyclist. Nearly all of the vehicles driven by the public, 'certainly more than 95 per cent,- are automobiles and ■trucks. In any collision they certainly have a great advantage over the much lighter motorcycle;- and it -seems to me that in. any collision the damage or injury to them (the public) would not be appreciably -affected by whether the motorcyclist . had on a. helmet, or even- a suit of armor, or not. I likewise-think-it is but an unsubstantial ,and conjectural figment; percent-agewise, -that motorcyclists might be struck by a pebble; disabled and thus made erratic ■drivers.. ,In sum, the “helmet law” im- . presses me as being at least 95 per cent for the .ppptectipn :of the motorcyclist (which may be-a good thing but it is his own business), with- the, rest of the effect, and a very minimal part, being for the protection of-the public.
If the conclusion is to be based upon the possibility that they may become hospitalized, or on welfare, that opens a wide door indeed to paternalistic controls over innumerable aspects of human conduct as to what may or may not be good for one’s individual health, morals or safety. The difficulty is that if the obliteration of individual rights is permissible whenever there is any possibility, even indirect or remote, of injury to the public, then the line of demarcation as to the permissible intrusions of law, and its implementing functionaries, into conduct which should be one’s private and personal concern becomes blurred almost to the vanishing point.
I do not see how this court’s decision can take much comfort in mere reference to a “greater number” of jurisdictions as giving it support.3 Considerations of legal concept, reasoning and policy should' carry much more weight.4 This statute is-a good example of the continuous process of imposing ever more limitations upon individual freedoms. This results from the combined bureaucratic and legislative ingenuity discovering practically everything everyone does that can be regulated, then implé-menfing it with the imposition of multifarious duties, applications, specifications, procedures, inspections and fees. Howsoever necessary this may be in' certain phases of our complex society, caution and restraint should be exercised not to destroy the spirit of individual liberty which has *111nurtured the initiative and enterprise which created the whole structure and upon which its continuance depends. Personal freedom should be given preference, except only where there is some compelling, or at least preponderant reason to restrict it for the common good.
It is well to reflect that history from ancient to modern times is dotted with examples of governments which have extended their controls until they have “controlled” themselves into decay and out of existence. As long ago as ancient Rome, the wise man, Tacitus, declared:
When the government is most corrupt, the laws are most multiplied.
Again in the era of the origins of our own government, one of the most perceptive of the founding fathers, James Madison, wrote:
I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.
The statute here under consideration joins the onward march of the ever-increasing volumes of regulatory laws concerning which it is extremely questionable whether the benefits outweigh the burdens in the loss of personal freedoms and the expanding bureaucracy involved in their enforcement. I have interposed this dissent as an objection to what appears to be a limitless process of spreading tentacles of control into what ought to be matters of personal and private conduct. There ought to be a halt somewhere, and in my judgment this law reaches that point.5 (All emphasis added.)
CALLISTER, C. J., concurs in the views expressed in the dissenting opinion of CROCKETT, J.

. Skaggs Drug Centers, Inc. v. Ashley et al., 26 Utah 2d 38, 484 P.2d 723 (decided April 1971).

. The reference to Appendix A in respondent’s brief, not a part of this record, which respondent apparently attempts to gratuitously import into this record, even if so considered, is no more comprehensible than the statute, and has all of the frailties pointed out in this dissent.

. See cases cited in footnote 2 of main opinion.

. American Motorcycle Ass’n v. Davids, 11 Mich.App. 351, 158 N.W.2d 72 (1968); Illinois v. Fries, 42 Ill.2d 446, 250 N.E. 2d 149 (1969); State v. Betts, 21 Ohio Misc. 175, 252 N.E.2d 866 (1969).

. To footnote 3 of the main opinion, which adds a reference to this dissent, I make these comments: Once this court acquires jurisdiction, it decides the case on the merits on all issues. The parties so assumed and did not raise that point. Nor, according to their briefs, did either party regard the quoted colloquy as a “stipulation.”