Court Opinion

ID: 9631120
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 10:29:37.967447+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:07:49.095153
License: Public Domain

OPALA, Vice Chief Justice,
with whom KAUGER, Justice, joins solely for the exposition of Art. 5 § 46, Okl.Const., and of 76 O.S.1981 § 21,
concurring in judgment.
Today the court affirms the trial court’s judgment in a medical malpractice case on the jury verdict for the defendants, holding, inter alia, that the trial court correctly refused to instruct the jury on our codified version of the common law’s res ipsa loquitur doctrine, which is found in 76 O.S. 1981 § 21.1 Although I fully support the judgment’s affirmance, I would not pause today to consider, as the court does, whether the plaintiffs were entitled to the requested res ipsa loquitur instruction.2 Rather, I would assume they were and *728then proceed to address the defendants’ frontal attack upon the constitutionality of the § 21 variant of the common-law res ipsa loquitur doctrine. This provision was enacted for application solely to claims against health providers. In my view, the statutory doctrine in § 21 violates Art. 5 § 46, Okl.Const.,3 because it governs only a subclass of tort litigants.
Article 5 § 46 mandates statewide procedural uniformity. It expressly prohibits the legislature from enacting “any local or special law ... [rjegulating the practice ... or changing the rules of evidence in judicial proceedings_” (Emphasis mine.) The terms of § 21 create a presumption of negligence against only health care providers. The presumption arises when the plaintiff shows that the injury was proximately caused by an instrumentality within the defendant’s sole control and the harm “does not ordinarily occur under the circumstances absent negligence on the part of the defendant.”4 The statute manifests a sharp departure from the common law’s parameters of res ipsa loquitur.5 In no other (non-medical) negligence case would the law compel a lack of due care to be presumed. Under the common-law rule, the trier generally is permitted to infer negligence only if direct evidence of negligence is beyond the plaintiff’s ability to secure but lies within the reach of the defendant.6 Moreover, evidence of specific acts of want of due care renders the doctrine inapplicable.7 Today’s opinion distinguishes § 21 further: “Instead of allowing an inference of negligence as the common law rule did, the statute establishes a presumption thereof.” (Emphasis in original.) In sum, these distinctions create a dichotomous res ipsa doctrine — one that generally governs negligence cases and the other that is limited to medical malpractice litigation.
In Reynolds v. Porter8 this court held that when Art. 5 § 46, Okl. Const., is invoked to challenge a statute’s validity, the only issue to be resolved is whether the enactment — addressing a subject enumerated in § 46 — “targets for different treat-*729merit less than an entire class of similarly situated persons or things.” 9 Clearly, the statutory version of res ipsa loquitur singles out medical malpractice defendants for a special or different treatment. No other negligence litigants are subject to the same evidentiary presumption found in § 21. I would today follow this court’s teachings in Reynolds and invalidate that part of the statute which alters the elements of the common-law doctrine exclusively for medical malpractice litigation. All negligence actions must be governed by identical parameters of the common-law doctrine.
For all these reasons I would affirm the trial court’s judgment.

. The pertinent terms of 76 O.S.1981 § 21 are:
“In any action arising from negligence in the rendering of medical care, a presumption of negligence shall arise if the following foundation facts are first established:
"1. The plaintiff sustained any injury;
"2. Said injury was proximately caused by an instrumentality solely within the control of the defendant or defendants; and
“3. Such injury does not ordinarily occur under the circumstances absent negligence on the part of the defendant.
" * * * ” (Emphasis added.)

. In an opinion promulgated but not carried to mandate, a majority of this court, whose personnel have not changed since that pronouncement, had held that the evidentiary predicate (or “the statutorily required foundation facts”) for invoking the res ipsa loquitur doctrine, which are embodied in § 21, may be established by inference. See Pearson v. Presbyterian Hospital, Inc., 59 O.B.J. 3458, 3460-3461 (No. 65,982 December 6, 1988). The opinion was later vacated and withdrawn from publication on February 7, 1989 — upon the parties’ joint motion to dismiss that followed the claim’s settlement.

. The pertinent terms of Art. 5 § 46, Okl. Const., provide:
"The Legislature shall, not, except as otherwise provided in this Constitution, pass any local or special law authorizing:
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"Regulating the practice or jurisdiction of, or changing the rules of evidence in judicial proceedings or inquiry before the courts_”
(Emphasis added.)

. See 76 O.S.1981 § 21, supra note 1.

. See Middlebrook v. Imler, Tenny & Kugler M.D.'s Okl., 713 P.2d 572 (1986), where the court recognized that the statutory approach to the application of res ipsa loquitur in medical malpractice cases differs from the generally obtaining norms of common law in other tort cases. While the § 21 presumption-of-negligence standard is applicable in "any action” for medical negligence, including those in which there is evidence of specific acts of negligence, the same cannot be said of the common-law doctrine of res ipsa loquitur. (See Middlebrook v. Imler, Tenny & Kugler M.D.’s, supra at 587 (Simms, C.J., dissenting).) In Middlebrook, the constitutional validity of § 21 was not implicated. In the instant case it is directly challenged.

. St. John’s Hospital & School of Nursing v. Chapman, Okl., 434 P.2d 160, 166-167 (1967). Where the injury involves an instrumentality, the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur is invocable only if the plaintiff shows that the defendant had exclusive control over it. When no inanimate object is implicated,
"it is the peculiar situation involved ... that ‘speaks’ and, in effect, says that negligence on the part of the defendant must have been involved in causing the injury or damage because, as a matter of common experience, in such a situation and in the ordinary course of things, the injury or damage to the plaintiff would not have occurred if the defendant had been exercising the ordinary care required in such a situation.” Chapman, supra at 162 (the court’s syllabus ¶ 2).
Indeed, the doctrine’s purpose
"is to aid the plaintiff in such a situation to make a prima facie case of negligence ... by allowing the trier of the facts to infer negligence on the part of the defendant as a legitimate deduction of fact from the fundamental facts established by direct evidence....” Chapman, supra at 162 (the court's syllabus ¶1)-
See also Lawton Coca-Cola Bottling Co. v. Shaughnessy, 202 Okl. 610, 216 P.2d 579 (1950) (the court’s syllabus ¶ 1).

. Flick v. Crouch, Okl., 555 P.2d 1274, 1276 (1976). See also St. John’s Hospital & School of Nursing v. Chapman, supra at 162 note 6 (the court’s syllabus ¶ 4).

. Okl., 760 P.2d 816 (1988).

. Reynolds v. Porter, supra at 823 note 8.