Court Opinion

ID: 9756164
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 21:10:37.258769+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:56:15.652377
License: Public Domain

Peck, J.,
concurring. I agree with the result affirming the lower court’s dismissal of plaintiff’s complaint and the grounds upon which the affirmance is based. However, there is much that is stated in the opinion with which I do not agree. Accordingly, I feel compelled to submit this concurring opinion to indicate those areas in which my objections lie.
I.
Without yet listing the specific items in the opinion with which I cannot agree, I have an overall objection that applies equally to all of them. They address hypothetical questions of law that do not fall within the scope of the facts that gave rise to this litigation. They are not in the case and, accordingly, are not properly before us for resolution. They contribute nothing to the result; *522they are extraneous to anything before us. They constitute an improper attempt to make law by dicta; they are advisory opinions at best. The opinion has overstepped the boundaries of this Court’s proper appellate functions.
The judicial power, as conferred by our State Constitution upon this Court, is “ ‘the right to determine actual controversies between adverse litigants, duly instituted in courts of proper jurisdiction . . . .’ It is ‘the power of a court to decide and pronounce a judgment and carry it into effect between persons and parties who bring a case before it for decision.’ ” In re House Bill 88, 115 Vt. 524, 529, 64 A.2d 169, 172 (1949) (emphasis added) (citation omitted).
This Court has held consistently, since In re House Bill 88, supra, that purely advisory opinions are not within the scope of the judicial powers and functions conferred by the Vermont Constitution. Accordingly, we have, also consistently, declined to render such opinions. State v. Nash, 144 Vt. 427, 435, 479 A.2d 757, 761 (1984)1; Chesshire v. New England Telephone & Telegraph Co., 139 Vt. 323, 325, 428 A.2d 1106, 1107 (1981); Wood v. Wood, 135 Vt. 119, 120-21, 370 A.2d 191, 192 (1977).
Courts have no legitimate standing to seek out and decide, sua sponte, purely hypothetical issues of their own invention merely because they are intriguing, or because a court is impatient that an issue has not yet been raised by litigants. Yet that is precisely what the majority opinion here has done. It is no less extra-judicial merely because it is contained in an otherwise proper opinion. A wax apple does not change, regardless of its natural appearance, simply because it is placed among real apples in a barrel.
In the case at hand there are only two legitimate issues: (1) whether plaintiff, as an intoxicated person, has a cause of action against defendant Walter Kurkul, Sr., his social host, under the Vermont Dram Shop Act, and (2) whether plaintiff has a cause of action against his host under the common law doctrine of negligence. When the opinion goes beyond these two issues to address questions which are not in the case, the Court, to adopt a phrase from corporate law, is acting “ultra vires”; all the more so because there is, literally, no power on earth which can prevent such an *523action by the judiciary. “[T]he only check upon our own exercise of power is our own sense of self-restraint.” United States v. Butler, 297 U.S. 1, 79 (1936) (Stone, J., dissenting).
One of the attendant wrongs against justice under the judicial system, inherent in the lack of restraint of which I complain here, lies in the fact that the court itself becomes an unopposed advocate for a stated position or theory of law. No opportunity to be heard is afforded those persons or interests who may have a contrary position. Those whose views might be to the contrary, and for all we know might be persuasive, are denied their day in court.2 In my view such action is a serious abuse of judicial power.
II.
Section I of this concurring opinion expresses my strong objection to the use of an appellate judicial opinion as a medium for deciding questions of law that are purely hypothetical. However, my disagreement with such a course of conduct does not exist in a vacuum; in the instant case, I disagree also with the resolution of these hypothetical issues.
A.
The opinion commences its digression into hypotheticals by holding that the Dram Shop Act (Act) does not “preempt a remedy under the common law in situations such as the one presented in this case.” The basis for this view appears to be that the Act does not address a common law action in negligence. Therefore, such an action is not precluded, and is part of the law of Vermont under 1 V.S.A. § 271, simply because negligence actions exist at common law.
In my view this conclusion is too limited and superficial. The question is not whether common law negligence actions exist in Vermont, but whether such actions are to be extended to situations such as the one presented here, as well as to cases involving minors and third persons, or whether existing statutes and constitutional law preempt or preclude such a remedy.
*524In a proper approach to the question of preemption, we must look, not only to the Act, but to all legislation dealing with the control of the sale and use of alcoholic beverages as well as any pertinent provisions of the Vermont Constitution. The Act is but one part of the legislative scheme relating to intoxication and to control of the sale or furnishing of liquor.
The opinion expresses the view, with which I agree, that if the legislature intended to include the drunk among those entitled to an action in strict liability under the Act, against one who furnishes liquor, it would have said so. Similarly, but on a broader scale, if the legislature intended that those who otherwise qualified could choose between two remedies, i.e., under the Act in strict liability, or under common law in negligence, it would also have said so. But there is no language in the Act comparable to that commonly found in instances where a special statutory remedy is provided, with alternative common law remedies expressly recognized. Thus, for example, 13 V.S.A. § 7043(g), relating to the restitution which a court may order paid to the victim of a crime, provides: “No restitution ordered under this section precludes a person granted such relief from pursuing an independent civil action.” Significantly, there is no comparable right to an alternative common law civil action, sounding in tort for negligence or otherwise, in the Act.
Looking further into the legislative scheme for control of the sale, furnishing, and consumption of alcoholic beverages, we find, not only a substantial body of statutory law on the subject extending far beyond the Act, but also a continuing attention to the subject: new bills, new laws and amendments appear at virtually every session of the General Assembly. It is relevant to this inquiry that there are bills presently pending before the legislature which, if enacted, will extend the Act to include the strict liability of social hosts to injured third persons (House Bill 207), and raise the minimum drinking age to 21.3 It is no answer to say that these bills may not pass; their fate is not material to the question of preemption. Thus, if H.207 is adopted, it becomes law, and even stronger than common law negligence since it would impose strict liability. If it is rejected, we can be satisfied that the legislature *525does not see fit to impose social host liability. Accordingly, I must regard a resolution of the question by this Court, especially in the form of an arbitrary advisory opinion, as simply a race with the legislature to “git thar fustest with the mostest,”4 and, by ignoring the constitutional limitations on its powers, impose a new law upon the people of this state by judicial legislation.
As the last statement above indicates, we may also approach this advisory holding through its constitutional aspect: the doctrine of separation of powers. The section of the Vermont Constitution which establishes this doctrine as law in this state is Chapter II, § 5, which reads: “The Legislative, Executive, and Judiciary departments, shall be separate and distinct, so that neither exercise the powers properly belonging to the others.”
It is axiomatic that the primary function of legislatures, indeed the very reason for their existence, is to make the laws, while it is the primary function of the courts to resolve actual disputes in matters within their jurisdiction between contending parties, that is, to interpret and apply the laws to particular cases:
Judges ought to remember that their office is jus dicere, and not jus dare; to interpret law, and not to make law or give law.
F. Bacon, Essays: Of Judicature (1597).
I think it is upon these truisms that the doctrine of judicial restraint (which I will address hereafter) is based. For my immediate purpose, however, the opinion argues that since applicable common law “not repugnant to the constitution or laws shall be laws in Vermont. . . . ,” 1 V.S.A. § 271, therefore, an action in negligence in matters such as the instant case is not foreclosed.
This rationale lacks analytical depth. Not only is the Constitution law, it is the most fundamental of all our state law. It is the law with which all other laws must conform or be struck down upon proper challenge. It follows, inescapably, that simply because common law actions in negligence generally are not contrary to the law, it does not mean that a specific action can never be. Particularly is this so if the proposed substantive law, for which a right of action is merely the procedural device, is contrary to a constitutional prohibition and, therefore, contrary to *526the law. Thus, the majority opinion fails to distinguish between mere procedure, that is, the right of action, and the substantive aspect, in this case, social host liability, of which the procedure is no more than a servant. Social host liability has never before been part of the common law of Vermont.
I recognize that Chapter II, § 5 of the Vermont Constitution does not require an absolute separation of functions. The line of demarcation is not always well defined or clear. Some “overlapping or blending” of the powers exercised by each of the three departments may be inescapable. Trybulski v. Bellows Falls Hydro-Electric Corp., 112 Vt. 1, 6-7, 20 A.2d 117, 120 (1941). Nevertheless, the border line does exist, State v. Jacobs, 144 Vt. 70, 75, 472 A.2d 1247, 1250 (1984); to breach that line when it is reasonably discernable “violate [s] the border lines drawn by the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers,” id., and “would constitute judicial legislation.” Id.
I will not quibble with the interpretation in the opinion of a holding in Harrington v. Gaye, 124 Vt. 164, 166, 200 A.2d 262, 263 (1964), that legislative intent cannot be ascribed to a mere act of omission. But in this case we have much more than a mere act of omission; we have a wide-ranging body of statutory law as evidence of legislative preemption. More to the point here is the statement by United States Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandéis. “A casus omissus does not justify judicial legislation.” Ebert v. Poston, 266 U.S. 548, 554 (1925).
That comment by Justice Brandéis is one that the judiciary will do well to bear in mind. It is particularly apropos here. Simply because the legislature has not yet enacted social host liability into law is not sufficient, standing alone, to justify the holding contained in the opinion. The laws relating to alcoholic beverages are so broad and comprehensive, so continuously evolving and increasing in scope, that legislative preemption of the field is clear to anyone who does not deliberately close his eyes to it. This being so, the few remaining omissions remain also within the scope of the exclusive powers of the legislative branch of government. They do not lie along the misty “overlapping or blending” borderline. Accordingly, the extension of common law negligence to a social host issue does violate the law; it is repugnant to Chapter II, § 5 of the Vermont Constitution. See State v. Jacobs, supra.
*527B.
The dissent expresses the view that the result reached by the majority opinion is based on the concern “that this Court would be ‘judicially legislating’ if it were to entertain this cause of action.” However, an examination of the majority opinion does not indicate any such concern as the basis for the result. The basis for the result stops at policy; it goes no further.
I have concurred in the majority result in this case, because it is right in itself. Nevertheless, I am disappointed that the rationale did not go further. I have become increasingly concerned with the tendency of too many courts and judges to look upon themselves as ministers, specially ordained to decide for the people what the people need or want, and what is or is not good for them. In putting this belief into practice, the courts all too often usurp the law-making powers of their legislatures; they deliberately ignore the limitations implicit in their basic function and purpose, which is, as noted earlier, to resolve disputes between litigants under existing law; jus dicere, not jus dare.
To the limited extent the courts do have the power to make law, it should be exercised with caution, even reluctance, and certainly with great restraint. “[J]udicial law-making should always be cautiously employed and should be severely restricted in scope.” New England Coal & Coke Co. v. Rutland R. Co., 143 F.2d 179, 189 (2d Cir. 1944). There has been only a brief passage of time since this Court recognized its duty of restraint: “State courts . . . have a duty of judicial restraint which encompasses . . . deference to legislative exercise of the sovereign power allocated to that body by the state constitution.” State v. Ludlow Supermarkets, Inc., 141 Vt. 261, 267, 448 A.2d 791, 794 (1982) (emphasis added).
Comparing this statement in Ludlow with today’s arbitrary resolution of hypothetical questions, it is painfully apparent that this Court will give lip service to judicial restraint when it serves a desired result to do so, and ignore it when it stands in the way of a result, or else the Court has little concern for either the legislature and its constitutional prerogatives, or for judicial restraint.
In the case of social host liability for injuries by drunks to third persons, and where liquor is furnished to minors, neither of which is in any way involved here, the majority opinion is addressing hypotheticals in their purest form by holding that a common law *528action of negligence will lie against the host who furnished the liquor in favor of a third party injured as a result of a “guest’s drunken driving” and, if I read the opinion correctly, in favor of a minor if he is injured as a result of his own intoxication. But in this matter we are not involved with either a “third party” or a minor.
Moreover, notwithstanding this prohibited legislating in its most egregious form, it escapes me entirely what it is that so eminently qualifies the five justices who make up this Court at any given time, whose training and experience, for many years, has been almost entirely in the “nice sharp quillets of the law,” Shakespeare, King Henry VI, Part I, II, Sc. 4, that they become suddenly and eminently qualified to recognize and winnow out, from the morass of human interests and concerns, exactly what it is the people need, and what the people demand. Apparently it is this wisdom and insight which enables us to mold, from the vague and formless clay of “needs” and “demands,” new laws which are as binding on the people as if they had been enacted by the legislature itself after the public hearings and due deliberation characteristic of the legislative process, as distinguished from the in camera secrecy and denial of popular access and input which shrouds judicial law-making.
United States Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandéis is quoted as having said: “There is no reason why five gentlemen of the [United States] Supreme Court [a majority] should know better what public policy demands than five gentlemen of Congress.” A. Mason, Brandéis: A Free Man’s Life, 427 (1946). I agree with this, but would go even further to add that the full bench of this Court is far less qualified, if they are qualified at all, to determine what the public needs and demands, than is the full legislature, with its procedures for receiving public input, and its large number of representatives and senators who have widely varied occupations and backgrounds. Even if the passage of an act by the legislature is no necessary guarantee of wise law, it is, nevertheless, the legislature, not the courts, which has both the right and duty under our State Constitution to make the laws. Except in a very limited sense this is not a concurrent “right and duty” which must be shared with the judiciary, at the whim of the latter.
Except for the narrow disagreement on the final result, the majority opinion and the dissent are similar. They express themselves in different words, but say very much the same things. Es*529sentially they both rely on language which has been used by courts for years to justify an expansion of their powers. In brief, the argument is that whenever the courts find something which they perceive to be a social need or demand, they have a duty to sally forth like knights errant and enact new laws to resolve these needs and demands. This statement, in whatever language it is expressed, has become such a cliche and so useful as an excuse for implementing almost any judicial whim, that it is accepted and relied on by succeeding generations of courts without a thought of questioning the universal validity it does not have. And yet, it is the very foundation for the increasing exercises in judicial legislation and violations of the separation of powers doctrine espoused by too many courts. Such language, however, is entirely court-created and self-serving; it is much abused. It gives credibility to a phrase having some currency among critics of the courts: “The Imperial Judiciary.” The phrase is, regrettably, all too appropriate.
However learned in the law appellate judges may be, I agree completely with Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, when he said: “Justices of the Court are not architects of policy . . . they are incapable of fashioning their own solutions for social problems.” F. Frankfurter, Mr. Justice Holmes and the Supreme Court, 25 (1938) (emphasis added). What all too many courts are doing is to equate legal knowledge with universal knowledge, without any basis in fact or logic. My own experience at this point is that judicial legislation often consists of little more than the personal philosophies and subjective reactions of individual justices to the specific case which engenders new law. Little legitimate research is directed to its sociological impact, or to the needs and demands of the people in fact. The Court simply drops its bomb and flies on; it strikes out blindly, having neither the resources, the time, or the qualifications to conduct or evaluate impartial research.
The majority opinion seems to imply, and the dissent claims, that courts have a duty to legislate when they believe they have unearthed a social need or demand, as if this duty was a command brought to them engraved in stone from an unidentified deity. Such a bland statement obscures the true source of this duty. It came into being and exists only because the courts themselves say it exists. It is not imposed by the legislature or the Vermont Constitution. In fact it is not a duty at all; it is a power. *530Even as such, however, it is limited by the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers. The frequent violations of that doctrine, and abuses of that power, do not convert it into a duty. The claim of duty cannot justify today’s judicial legislation based on hypotheticals; as a duty it does not exist at all; as an exercise of power in this case, it is an abuse.
The finding of a duty leads the dissent to quote from Hay v. Medical Center Hospital, 145 Vt. 533, 543-44, 496 A.2d 939, 945 (1985): “When confronted with these difficult and complex issues, this Court did not shirk its duty and retreat into the safe haven of deference to the legislature.” Aside from being a well-turned phrase designed to suggest that courts who respect the limitations of their powers, and refrain from abuses, are timorous judicial cowards, hiding behind the skirts of their sister branch of government, this doesn’t mean very much. I do not suggest for a moment that the courts may never, in any conceivable circumstance, extend the common law to the point of making new law. My claim here, aside from the nonissue decisions, goes only to this case. Beyond that I intend no more than to express my concern, without a litany of specifics, that courts are, increasingly, demonstrating a serious disrespect for legislative prerogatives, judicial restraint, and the separation of powers. It is not “shirking” a duty when the Court recognizes and respects its constitutional limitations. The legislature is not a “safe haven” for timid judges; it is the law-making branch of state government under the Constitution.
It serves no meaningful purpose either to cite, as does the dissent, cases from the past in which this Court made new law. I say this for two reasons. First, the Court may have been wrong and abused its power in one or more of those cases. If so, they do not make today’s action right; two or more wrongs never did that. Secondly, if the action was properly taken in any of the cases cited, or in any others on the books, they do not serve as a precedent for this case. Each one of them, including the instant case, lie in entirely different areas of social concern, and each has its own separate evidence of legislative preemption. Each case must stand on its own.
In the matter before us, the evidence of legislative preemption is overwhelming. A case for judicial restraint, the separation of powers and respect for our sister branch of government clearly *531appears.5 It would not have been a “retreat” to have done so; it would have demonstrated our courage and character as judges in resisting a heady temptation, which, I am grateful to acknowledge and join, appears at least in the result.
I cannot resist recording that my colleague, Justice Gibson, in good humor, called my attention to the fact that, in support of his dissent, he cites and quotes from a law review article by a writer with the same surname as my own. I can respond to this only with the equally good humored comment that, if the article does truly support the dissent, there are at least two “Pecks” who will never combine to make half a bushel.

 In Nash, supra, we expressly declined to address a “hypothetical factual situation,” holding that to do so would be advisory and not authorized under the Vermont Constitution.

 “That I suffer not myself to be prepossessed with my judgment at all, till the whole business and both parties be heard.” Sir Matthew Hale, History of the Common Law XV (4th ed.).
“He who decides a case with the other side unheard, though he decide justly, is himself unjust.” Seneca, Medea.

 I am informed by the Legislative Council office that, as of the date of this writing, there are six bills relating to DUI alone pending before the present session of the General Assembly.

 A comment attributed to confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, but probably apocryphal.

 In two decisions, Vesely v. Sager, 5 Cal. 3d 153, 486 P.2d 151, 95 Cal. Rptr. 623 (1971), and Coulter v. Superior Court, 21 Cal. 3d 144, 577 P.2d 669, 145 Cal. Rptr. 534 (1978), the California Supreme Court held that social hosts were liable for injuries caused by a guest to whom they had furnished alcoholic beverages. The legislature of that state responded by abrogating the Court’s holding in these cases, citing them expressly by name, through a statutory amendment. After expressing its “intent ... to abrogate the holdings in [the above cited cases],” the amended statute expressed the will of the legislature to restore traditional social host immunity. See California Civil Code Section 1714 (1978). The point is not the wisdom of either the court or the legislature; it is, rather, that the right and power to legislate lies with the representatives of the people, elected for that purpose, not with the courts.