Court Opinion

ID: 9580021
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:00:59.105443+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:35:58.364562
License: Public Domain

LINDE, J.,
concurring.
The Court rightly confines itself to affirming that ORS 166.065(1)(e) is invalid, as the Court of Appeals held. But because that section itself was an effort to rewrite the telephone harassment statute that was held to violate Article I, section 8, of the Oregon Constitution in State v. Blair, 287 Or 519, 601 P2d 766 (1979), legislators may be led to conclude that no law at all can be passed to deal with abusive telephone calls. This is not necessarily so.
*602For instance, under some circumstances a person engaging in verbally abusive conduct can be held liable in tort if his or her identity is known, which of course is necessary for any sanction. See, e.g., Turman v. Central Billing Bureau, 279 Or 443, 568 P2d 1382 (1977) (abusive debt collection telephone calls found to be intentional infliction of emotional distress). There is no obvious reason why the state cannot assist persons so injured to a specified compensatory damages remedy rather than leaving them to pursue a tort remedy entirely on their own. Abuse of speech under Article I, section 8, that injures another’s person, property, or reputation, Article I, section 10, can be a tort even when it cannot be punished as a crime.1 Moreover, modern telephone technology gives rise to other problems of possible abuse besides offensive communications and may permit types of regulation whose validity is not prejudged in this case.
The almost invariable legislative impulse when seeking to make harmful behavior “unlawful” is to turn to the criminal law. I mean no more than to suggest that when the state’s object is to help victims of abusive behavior, criminal law is not the only choice.

 Article I, section 8, of the Oregon Constitution provides:
“No law shall be passed restraining the free expression of opinion, or restricting the right to speak, write, or print freely on any subject whatever; but every person shall be responsible for the abuse of this right.”
Article I, section 10, of the Oregon Constitution provides:
“No court shall be secret, but justice shall be administered, openly and without purchase, completely and without delay, and every man shall have remedy by due course of law for injury done him in his person, property, or reputation.”
See Hall v. The May Dept. Stores, 292 Or 131, 637 P2d 126 (1981); Wheeler v. Green, 286 Or 99, 593 P2d 777 (1979).