Court Opinion

ID: 9540676
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:18:48.838637+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:00:10.125106
License: Public Domain

MARTONE, Justice,
dissenting.
For the first time in Arizona legal history the court constitutionalizes the law of torts. Because art. 18, § 6 of the constitution is no authority for such an exceptional proposition, I dissent.
This case presents issues of extraordinary conceptual complexity. This is not a case of whether the protection afforded by art. 18, § 6 is governed by evolving standards. Instead, this is a case about whether this court’s own post-constitution common law development of the law of torts is entitled to constitutional protection under art. 18, § 6. All agree that the law of torts must evolve to meet contemporary conditions. Thus it was that this court adopted strict products liability in tort. The ques*347tion is whether, once this court creates a new tort, unknown at common law, the constitution operates to immunize it from later legislative or judicial abrogation. The court concludes that it does.
The court decides this case as though it need only choose between Boswell and Bryant. But Boswell and Bryant are not irreconcilable. Boswell did not present the issue presented in this case. The tort in Boswell was defamation, one clearly recognized at common law at the time our constitution was adopted. The real issue in Boswell was whether art. 18, § 6 extended to causes of action other than negligence. Boswell held that it also protected “the right to recover damages for injury to reputation.” 152 Ariz. at 17, 730 P.2d at 194. The issue in Bryant was quite different. Unlike defamation, a cause of action for strict products liability in tort did not exist at common law but instead was created by this court 50 years later, after our constitution was adopted and after the American Law Institute developed § 402A of the Restatement (Second) of Torts (1965). A cause of action for a defective product under § 402A is quite different from the absolute liability imposed by the common law for ultrahazardous activities, Rylands v. Fletcher, or for causes of action based upon negligence or contract, all causes of action which existed at the time our constitution was adopted. But strict products liability is a new and separate cause of action. It is not negligence. It is not warranty. It is not contract. It is not absolute liability.
Bryant was correct when it concluded that art. 18, § 6 does not apply to this court’s post-constitution development of the law of torts. 156 Ariz. at 195, 751 P.2d at 511. This court reached that conclusion 50 years ago in Industrial Commission v. Frohmiller, 60 Ariz. 464, 468, 140 P.2d 219, 221 (1943). It was argued in that case that the Arizona Occupational Disease Disability Law abrogated the right of action under art. 18, § 6 of the constitution. We said:
If the right to recover damages or compensation under the common law for injury caused by occupational disease existed at the time these constitutional provisions were adopted, this contention of defendant would have some force. But it is our view that no right of action solely for occupational disease existed at common law, though perhaps it was incidental to some other acts of negligence, and that no constitutional or statutory provision allowed recovery for such a disability, and hence that the option given by section 60 merely preserves the right of action, provided one exists.
60 Ariz. at 468, 140 P.2d at 221.
Today the court reaches a contrary conclusion by relying upon that part of Boswell that related to emotional injury as a new element of damages, not a new cause of action. 152 Ariz. at 17, 730 P.2d at 194. By applying that language to a new cause of action, the court goes well beyond Boswell and ignores 50 years of Arizona constitutional law. In short, today the court prefers Boswell’s dicta to the holdings in Frohmiller and Bryant.
If it were just a matter of common law preference, it would not matter much. But today’s holding creates the most extraordinary constitutional puzzles. Suppose, for example, that the legislature rather than this court adopted strict products liability in tort in 1965. Certainly, the legislature could repeal such a statute and not run afoul of art. 18, § 6. Halenar v. Superior Court, 109 Ariz. 27, 29, 504 P.2d 928, 930 (1972). (“The right to recover damages for wrongful death being statutory is not placed beyond the power of the legislature to abrogate by § 6 of Article 18 of the Arizona Constitution.”) Why then should this court’s common law development of the law of torts be protected by art. 18, § 6 when legislative developments in the law of torts are not? Does the anti-abrogation clause restrict abrogation by the legislature, but not this court?
On the other hand, if the legislature could not repeal its own expansion of products liability law because of art. 18, § 6, could we? Evolving conditions require changes in the common law. Thus, this court must always reserve to itself the power to ensure that contemporary law is *348always consistent with contemporary fact. See Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law 201 (2d ed. 1985). How could we develop the common law of torts if we thought that every time we did something it became constitutional law? Under today’s decision, can we overrule our cases which first acknowledged strict liability in tort? The answer, of course, is that we can. Article 18, § 6 is no straitjacket. Article 18, § 6 prevents the legislature from abrogating a cause of action to recover damages for injuries that existed at common law. It is quite another thing to say, as the court says here, that the legislature is without power to tinker with our subsequent expansion of tort doctrine. Under today’s decision, art. 18, § 6 is transformed from a shield to a sword. Article 18, § 6 was designed to prevent the legislature from abrogating a cause of action at common law, not to elevate our evolving tort law to the status of state constitutional law.
The court says, and I agree, that the law must allow for evolution of common law actions to reflect today’s needs and knowledge. It says that any other rule would allow those “long dead” to dictate solutions to the problems of which they could not have been aware. Ante, at 344, 861 P.2d at 629. But I fear this is exactly what we have done today. Just as our court had to have the power to adopt strict products liability to meet the standards of 30 years ago, the legislature must have that same power to adapt our common law development to today’s standards. We each have a role in the development of the law. That art. 18, § 6 does not protect new developments in the law does not mean that there would be no need for new developments in the law. It just means that both this court and the legislature have flexibility beyond the threshold that existed at the time of the adoption of our constitution. By locking our newly developed tort law into the concrete of constitutional protection, we now lose.the very flexibility the court seeks to preserve.
The special concurrence does not address the issue that troubles me, and the only one presented by this case — causes of action created by the court after the constitution was adopted. Instead, it responds to an argument that I do not make about limiting the scope of art. 18, § 6 to employer-employee cases. This diverts attention from the fact that everyone agrees art. 18, § 6 protects rights of action for injury claims that existed at the time the constitution was adopted. But, until today, that protection did not also constitutionalize subsequent judicial developments in the law of torts. For example, the Contract Clause of the United States Constitution prohibits a state from passing a law “impairing the Obligation of Contracts.” U.S. Const, art. I, § 10. But the law of contracts has not been constitutionalized by this provision. The Contract Clause protects against the abrogation of a contract (a concept which existed at the time of the adoption of the Contract Clause), but it does not prevent a state from subsequently expanding contract rights, and then later abandoning that expansion.
Arizona is unique in a lot of ways. Today it is unique because we have constitu-tionalized the law of torts. There is nothing about the history or the language of art. 18, § 6 that would suggest such a remarkable proposition. See Roger C. Henderson, Tort Reform, Separation of Powers, and The Arizona Constitutional Convention of 1910, 35 Ariz.L.Rev. 535 (1993). Boswell and Bryant are not in conflict. In assuming that they are, we miss the chance to articulate more clearly the contours of the protection afforded by art. 18, § 6. We also needlessly advance the day when some will say that if this is what art. 18, § 6 means, its time has come and gone.