Court Opinion

ID: 9552138
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 19:05:27.222096+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:25:41.153502
License: Public Domain

FADELEY, J.,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent.
I dissent from the answers given by the majority for use by the federal court. I would hold that the statute does indeed violate the right to a jury trial.
Simply put, the majority holds that the Oregon legislature has the power to prevent a fraud claim (or any tort claim) from being considered by a jury until after the claimant’s legal entitlement to any recovery at all, together with the degree or amount of such recovery for injury, is submitted to arbitration and that arbitration is completed.
Article I, section 17, of the Oregon Constitution provides:
*304“In all civil cases the right of Trial by Jury shall remain inviolate.” (Emphasis added.)
The majority violates that constitutional right in tort cases, in my view, by placing an inescapable hurdle involving cost and substantial delay in front of, and as a precondition to, exercise of the “right [that] shall remain inviolate.”
“Inviolate” is strong, direct language. Telling one who alleges injuries from tort that she or he has no claim to a jury trial until after an arbitration proceeding is concluded does not hold inviolate the right that the pioneers intended to guarantee to themselves and posterity when the state constitution went into effect in 1859.
Leaving aside the need to preserve inviolate the historic and constitutional right to trial by jury, I also believe that the majority leaves the law about insurer-insured arbi-trations potentially a mess. Heretofore this court has granted summary judgment to the insurer or its stand-in but has done so saying that the “claimant * * * cannot be required to arbitrate the claim.” Carrier v. Hicks, 316 Or 341, 352, 851 P2d 581 (1993). Here, the majority says to the contrary: Claimant must engage in a complete arbitration or there is no jury and no jury trial. 326 Or at 300, 303.1
I first warned of the loss of a jury trial in dissents with Justice Unis in Carrier and Mazorol v. Coats, 316 Or 367, 371-72, 852 P2d 178 (1993).
In the present case the majority supports its decision by the following sentence:
“The existence and amount of any damages for fraud requires proof that PIP benefits were due and were denied. Therefore, before she proceeds to trial on her claim and *305seeks a judgment for her damages, plaintiff first must arbitrate her contractual right to, and the reduction or denial of, PIP benefits.” 326 Or at 300.
Significantly, not even a bare citation to a law review, let alone a case or treatise, accompanies that statement of what is required, for actionable fraud — that a contract must first be enforced before conduct in some way related to the contract effectively may be actionable in fraud. To see that what the majority holds is not so, one need go no further than to check the definitions of “actionable fraud” or “fraud” in Black’s Law Dictionary. Moreover, the only substantive case cited by the majority is not about fraud.

 Perhaps I misjudge the majority and they are overruling Carrier andMazorol by citing only to a quite different predecessor, Molodyh v. Truck Insurance Exchange, 304 Or 290, 744 P2d 992 (1987). Molodyh, which in any event has nothing to do with fraud or negligence, is in reality authority requiring a result opposite to the majority result, even as to a simple contract matter. 304 Or at 300.
Molodyh also accurately recounts the kind of cases in which a jury trial has been required in Oregon for over a century. 304 Or at 295-97. Under Molodyh and all of the cases there cited, this case would go to a jury without a costly, delaying hurdle being placed in the way.