Court Opinion

ID: 9648019
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 13:59:10.15285+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:22:04.899349
License: Public Domain

Geoeue Rose Smith, J., dissenting. For the most part the guaranties contained in the bill of rights are expressed in language deliberately general in scope. Typically broad is the wording of the clause involved in this ¡ case: ‘ ‘ Every person is entitled to a certain remedy in the: laws for all injuries or wrongs he may receive in his person, property or character. . . . ” Const., Art. 2, § 13.' Language as sweeping as this linavoidably gives rise to difficult problems of construction when it must be applied in testing the validity of a statute. In construing similar language the Supreme Court of Oregon went, I think, too far in the case of Stewart v. Houk, cited by the majority. There the court said in substance that such a constitutional provision is intended to preserve all causes of action recognized at common law. Iu holding the Oregon guest statute invalid the court declared that ‘1 if prior to the enactment of the Constitution a host, who transported without charge a guest, owed to the latter a duty to exercise care, and if the law recognized that a breach of that duty, with a resultant injury, afforded the guest a cause of action, this jural right the Constitution preserved against legislative abolishment.” This ultra-litoral reading of the bill of rights crystallizes all common law rights of action, putting them beyond the reach of legislative change to meet new conditions. We have not in the past followed this extreme view, nor does the present majority opinion indorse it. In the Roberson case, for instance, we held that by the guest statute the legislature might abolish a guest’s cause of action for injuries resulting from ordinary negligence on the part of his host. Since that canse of action existed at common law it is clear that we have not construed the constitution as denying to the legislature all power to abolish established rights of action. The question is how far the constitution permits the legislature to go in this direction. The majority say that the guest’s remedy against his host may be restricted, as it was by the statute upheld in the Roberson case, but the constitution prevents the legislature from depriving the guest of all remedy against the owner or operator. Upon that premise Act 179 is declared to be unconstitutional. To begin with, I think clarity of thought requires the issue to be stated in terms of causes of action and not in terms of remedies as between the guest and the host. When, for example, a guest is injured by the operator’s ordinary negligence, the only cause of action that he ever had is abolished by Act 61 of 1935. It is misleading to say that his remedy against the host has merely been restricted; for he had only one remedy, and it has been done away with altogether. That some other guest injured by willful negligence may still have a cause of action does not alter the fact that the first guest, injured by ordinary negligence, has been completely deprived of his remedy. Thus it will not do to say that the legislature can restrict the remedy but cannot withdraw it entirely; we are talking about two different remedies instead of just one. It seems plain that the guest statute sustained in the Roberson case abolished the cause of action for injuries resulting from simple negligence. The question now before us is whether the legislature can abolish the guest’s cause of action altogether when he is related to the host within the third degree of consanguinity or affinity. I am unable to say that this step is forbidden by the constitution. It is probable that every session of the legislature adopts one or more statutes doing away with some cause of action, however minor, that previously existed. Even fairly drastic measures have been upheld in the face of constitutional provisions similar to ours. In New York the court upheld an act abolishing civil actions for alienation of affections, criminal conversation, seduction, and breach of promise to marry. Fearon v. Treanor, 272 N. Y. 268, 5 N. E. 2d 815, 109 A. L. R. 1229. In Texas tlie common law permits suits against municipal corporations for negligence, but a statute abrogating such causes of action j was sustained. Lebohm v. City of Galveston, 154 Tex. 192, 275 S. W. 2d 951. In the latter case the court announced^, what seems to me to be the correct rule: ‘ ‘ Thus it may be ■ seen that legislative action withdrawing common-law remedies for well established common-law causes of action . . . is sustained only when it is reasonable in substituting other remedies, or when it is a reasonable exercise of the police power in the interest of the general welfare. Legislative action of this type is not sustained when it is arbitrary or unreasonable.” > I think the only question here is whether the legislature acted arbitrarily in abolishing the guest’s cause of action for willful and wanton negligence (which is all the present complaint alleges) when there is the required degree of kinship between the parties. I cannot say that! the statute is so unreasonable that fair-minded men might) not consider it a proper exercise of the state’s police power.. The original guest statute was upheld as being designed to prevent collusive suits. The danger of collusion is evidently much greater when the plaintiff and defendant are j closely related. It is true, as the court observed in the j Fear on case, supra, that the act may also prevent the/ maintenance of specific cases that are justified. The same criticism can equally well be made of the act denying the guest a cause of action for ordinary negligence. Whether the act will in the long run accomplish more good than harm is a matter of judgment, on which I think we should defer to the legislature in the absence of a clear showing that the statute is arbitrary. Holt and McFaddiN, JJ., join in this dissent.