Court Opinion

ID: 9595471
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:40:48.563425+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:01:27.973189
License: Public Domain

MAUGHAN, Justice
(concurring and dissenting).
With that part of the main opinion, which permits the action to proceed, I concur. I dissent from that part of the opinion, which fails to strike down the guest statute.
The guest statute was unconstitutional the day it was enacted, it has been since, it is now, and it will continue to be so long as Article 1, Section 11, Constitution of Utah, reads as it does, to wit:
All courts shall be open, and every person, for an injury done to him in his *625person, property or reputation, shall have remedy by due course of law, which shall be administered without denial or unnecessary delay; and no person shall be barred from prosecuting or defending before any tribunal in this State, by himself or counsel, any civil cause to which he is a party.
The guest statute is blatantly contrary to this provision so much so it is a monstrous impudence.
In 1935,1 the legislature attempted to take away an existing remedy for injury, leaving nothing in its place. Such, it had no power to do. All prior Utah cases upholding the guest statute should be overruled; and an announcement of the statute’s nullity made; before any more damage is done to the hapless citizens of Utah, because of the invidious discrimination visited on unsuspecting citizens by this pretended law.

. Laws of Utah 1935, Chapter 52, Section 1.