Court Opinion

ID: 9503357
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-06 19:42:47.814176+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:03:24.627502
License: Public Domain

*268DE MUNIZ, J.,
dissenting.
In Smothers v. Gresham Transfer, Inc., 332 Or 83, 23 P3d 333 (2001), this court concluded that, because Article I, section 10, of the Oregon Constitution guarantees a remedy for any “injury” to absolute common-law rights respecting person, property, or reputation, the legislature does not have plenary authority to deprive an injured person of their damages for such injuries. Id. at 135-36. Today, the majority retreats from that interpretation of Article I, section 10, by concluding that the legislature may bar injured litigants from seeking a remedy for harm to an absolute common-law right. I respectfully dissent.
Article I, section 10, of the Oregon Constitution provides that “justice shall be administered * * * completely” and that “every man shall have remedy by due course of law for injury done him in his person, property, or reputation.” In Smothers, this court explained the wisdom of the remedies clause:
“[T]he remedy clause of Article I, section 10, protects rights respecting person, property, and reputation that, in 1857, the common law regarded as ‘absolute,’ that is, that derive from nature or reason rather than solely from membership in civil society. By the seventeenth century, the remedial side of the common law had developed to protect those rights in the event of injury by any other subject of the English realm. The function of common-law causes of action was to restore ‘justice’ or ‘right’ following injury. ‘Injury’ at common law meant any harm or wrong to absolute rights for which a cause of action existed.”
Smothers, 332 Or at 123-24. Smothers reached the foregoing conclusion by tracing the history and meaning of the remedies clause, from its origins in the Magna Carta to its inclusion in the Oregon Constitution. Id. at 94-115; see also Thomas R. Phillips, The Constitutional Right to a Remedy, 78 NYU L Rev 1309 (2003) (reviewing history of concept). Smothers focused on the ideas of Sir Edward Coke and Sir William Blackstone, because both Coke and Blackstone influenced the drafters of early American constitutions significantly. 332 Or at 94-99.
*269Coke expanded the laconic protections found in the Magna Carta — “We will sell to no man, we will not deny or defer to any man either justice or right” — into a workable concept of free access to the courts and justice. The assurance in the Magna Carta that the government would not sell, deny, or defer justice or right meant that, in Coke’s words:
“* * * every subject of this realme, for injury done to him in bonis, terris, vel persona, by any other subject, be he ecclesiastical, or temporall, free, or bond, man, or woman, old, or young, or be he outlawed, excommunicated, or any other without exception, may take his remedy by the course of the law, and have justice, and right for the injury done to him, freely without sale, fully without any deniall, and speedily without delay.”
Smothers, 332 Or at 96-97 (quoting Edward Coke, The Second Part of the Institutes of the Laws of England 55 (1797)). Based on that proposition, this court observed, “Coke asserted that the common law of England had come to guarantee every subject a legal remedy for injury to goods, lands, or person caused by any other subject.” Id. at 97. Coke also emphasized that justice must be “plena, quia justitia non debet claudicare,” which means that justice must be “full, for justice should not limp.” Coke, Second Part of the Institutes at 55. That is the source, in our own state constitution, of the requirement that “justice shall be administered * * * completely.” Or Const, Art I, § 10. Coke thus established the intellectual underpinnings of the modern constitutional protection of remedies for civil wrongs.
Blackstone later presented Coke’s ideas within the philosophical context of eighteenth-century ideas regarding natural law. Blackstone located the right to a remedy squarely within the framework of what he termed absolute rights — that is, rights of the individual that find their provenance in natural law:
“The rights of persons considered in their natural capacities are also of two sorts, absolute, and relative. Absolute, which are such as appertain and belong to particular men, merely as individuals or single persons: relative, which are incident to them as members of society, and standing in various relations to each other. * * * By the absolute rights of individuals we mean those which are so in their primary *270and strictest sense; such as would belong to their persons merely in a state of nature, and which every man is entitled to enjoy whether out of society or in it.”
1 William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 119 (1765) (emphasis in original). Absolute rights, thus understood, are individual liberties of the highest importance. Based on Blackstone’s discussion, Smothers observed that,
“ [t] o Blackstone, the guarantee of legal remedy for injury ‘is what we mean properly, when we speak of the protection of the law.’ Smothers, 332 Or at 99 (quoting William Blackstone, 1 Blackstone commentaries *56). Hence, the maxim of English law, Ubi jus, ibi remedium: ‘for every right, there must be a remedy.’ ”
Id. According to Smothers, the remedies clause reflects an absolute right.
Many states adopted remedies clauses in their own constitutions. Smothers, 332 Or at 104. During the nineteenth century, state courts used their remedies clauses to prevent legislative interference with judicial proceedings. Id. at 108-12. Smothers ascertained:
“[Wlhen the Oregon Constitutional Convention convened in 1857, courts and commentators had provided considerable insight into the background and meaning of remedy clauses in state declarations or bills of rights. Those cases and commentaries revealed that the purpose of remedy clauses was to protect ‘absolute’ common-law rights. For injuries to those rights, the remedial side of the common law had provided causes of action that were intended to restore right or justice. Remedy clauses mandated the continued availability of remedy for injury to absolute rights. The requirement that remedy be by due course or due process of law was intended as a limitation on the legislature’s authority when it substituted statutory remedies for common-law remedies. It was the duty of courts to enforce those restraints in evaluating whether particular statutory remedies satisfied the requirement that remedy be by ‘due course of law.’ ”
Id. at 112. In light of its historical analysis, the court confirmed that “the history of the remedy clause indicates that *271its purpose is to protect absolute common-law rights respecting person, property, and reputation, as those rights existed when the Oregon Constitution was drafted in 1857.” Id. at 118.
Based on the foregoing understanding of the remedies clause, Smothers struck down the legislature’s imposition of a barrier to recovery for an injury that the court determined was compensable at common law, namely, an employee’s cause of action against an employer for failing to provide a safe work environment. 332 Or at 135-36. Smothers observed that, in 1857, a citizen enjoyed the right to recover for injuries suffered through negligence of others. Id. at 129. The plaintiff in Smothers was unconstitutionally denied his right to a remedy when the legislatively created workers’ compensation system failed to award him damages for his injuries. More generally, however, Smothers established that the Oregon Constitution protects the compensatory purpose of the civil justice system from legislative interference.
In this case, the legislature has imposed a barrier to recovery of noneconomic damages in certain kinds of motor vehicle accidents, based on whether the plaintiff has contracted for motor vehicle insurance before the time of the accident.1 The majority concludes that the legislature may raise such a barrier because plaintiffs common-law right to *272recover for injuries negligently inflicted by another person was not unfettered or absolute at the time that the Oregon Constitution was drafted. Unfortunately, rather than basing its reasoning in the constitutional text, history, and theory that this court outlined in Smothers, the majority defends its conclusion by referring to a few scattered examples of nineteenth-century laws regarding Sunday travel and livestock fencing enacted in other states.
The majoritys examples — put forward to show that the original understanding of the remedies clause permitted the legislature to enact barriers to recovery in tort — are not compelling, given that they must overcome the primary purpose of the remedies clause, which was designed to protect individual rights. First, the fact that a legislature in some state enacted a certain kind of legislation during the nineteenth century proves little assistance to the analysis, because the legislation advanced as an example itself may *273have been contrary to the constitutional principle. In fact, Smothers points out that remedies clauses were enshrined in state constitutions out of distrust for legislative power because such power could be used to enact laws in derogation of the peoples’ rights to complete remedy. Id. at 106-07.
Second, the fact that the majority has located a few judicial decisions that did not strike down laws enacted in violation of a constitutional provision, such as a remedies clause, does not establish conclusively that the law did not violate the remedies clause. None of the cases that the majority cites as support of its narrowed view of the remedies clause includes a discussion of the remedies clause in that state’s constitution.
The cases on which the majority relies prove only that some legislatures were willing to enact legislation qualifying a plaintiffs right to recover for injuries in some circumstances. Reliance on the legislation revealed in those cases, however, is not a legal construction of the Oregon remedies clause that this court should accept in deciding to narrow the protection heretofore afforded by the remedies clause under Smothers.
Contrary to the impression that the majoritys case discussion creates, other cases from the mid-nineteenth century demonstrate that state remedies clauses were understood to protect plaintiffs from legislative deprivation of a right of recovery of the kind at stake here. See Eastman v. County of Clackamas, 32 Fed 24, 32 (D Or 1887) (Deady, J.) (“Can the legislature, in some spasm of novel opinion, take away every man’s remedy for slander, assault and battery, or the recovery of a debt? and, if it cannot do so in such cases, why can it in this?”); Passenger Railway Co. v. Boudrou, 92 Pa 475 (1880) (court declared statute limiting damages to $3,000 to be unconstitutional; “limitation of recovery to a sum less than the actual damage, is palpably in conflict with the right to remedy by the due course of law”); Davis v. Pierse, 7 Minn 1 (1862) (court declared statute barring “all persons aiding the rebellion” from prosecuting judicial proceedings to be unconstitutional under state’s remedy clause).
The legislature has the power to criminally punish or administratively sanction drivers who operate a motor *274vehicle without liability insurance. However, the remedies clause prohibits the legislature from interfering with recovery for injury to absolute common-law rights respecting person, property, or reputation. Smothers, 332 Or at 124. Smothers makes it clear that plaintiffs cause of action against another driver who negligently caused plaintiffs injury is the kind of absolute common-law right that was intended to be protected by the remedies clause at the time the Oregon Constitution was drafted. I would hold that ORS 31.715, by precluding plaintiff from recovering “noneconomic damages” for the injuries she that sustained, violates the remedies clause of Article I, section 10.
For the foregoing reasons, I dissent.
Durham and Riggs, JJ., join in this dissent.

 ORS 31.715 provides:
“(1) Except as provided in this section, a plaintiff may not recover noneconomic damages, as defined in ORS 31.710, in any action for injury or death arising out of the operation of a motor vehicle if the plaintiff was in violation of ORS 806.010 or 813.010 at the time the act or omission causing the death or injury occurred. A claim for noneconomic damages shall not be considered by the jury if the jury determines that the limitation on liability established by this section applies to the claim for noneconomic damages.
“(2) For the purpose of the limitation on liability established by this section, a person is conclusively presumed to have been in violation of ORS 806.010 or 813.010 if the person is convicted in a criminal proceeding of one or both of those offenses. If the person has not been convicted of violating ORS 806.010 or 813.010, the defendant in the civil action may establish in the civil action, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the plaintiff was in violation of ORS 806.010 or 813.010 at the time the act or omission causing the death or injury occurred.
“(3) The court shall abate a civil action upon the motion of any defendant in the civil action against whom a plaintiff has asserted a claim for noneconomic damages if the defendant alleges that the claim of the plaintiff is subject to the limitation on liability established by this section and:
*272“(a) A criminal proceeding for a violation of ORS 813.010 has been commenced against the plaintiff in the civil action at the time the motion is made; or
“(b) The district attorney for the county in which the conduct occurred informs the court at the time the motion is made that criminal proceedings for a violation of ORS 813.010 will be commenced against the plaintiff in the civil action.
“(4) The court may order that only the claim that is subject to the limitation on liability established by this section be abated under subsection (3) of this section. An abatement under subsection (3) of this section shall remain in effect until the conclusion of the criminal proceedings.
“(5) The limitation on liability established by this section does not apply if:
“(a) The defendant in the civil action was also in violation of ORS 806.010 or 813.010 at the time the act or omission causing the death or injury occurred;
“(b) The death or injury resulted from acts or omissions of the defendant that constituted an intentional tort;
“(c) The defendant was engaged in conduct that would constitute a violation of ORS 811.140 at the time the act or omission causing the death or injury occurred;or
“(d) The defendant was engaged in conduct that would constitute a felony at the time the act or omission causing the death or injury occurred.
“(6) The limitation on liability established by this section based on a violation of ORS 806.010 does not apply if the plaintiff in the civil action was insured under a motor vehicle liability insurance policy within 180 days before the act or omission occurred, and the plaintiff has not operated a motor vehicle in violation of ORS 806.010 within the one-year period immediately preceding the date on which coverage under the motor vehicle liability insurance policy lapsed.”