Court Opinion

ID: 9550037
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:28:14.998434+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:21:13.909371
License: Public Domain

CARDINE, Justice,
specially concurring, with whom URBIGKIT, Justice, joins.
I have reviewed in depth our prior decision, the history of law preceding that decision, the briefs, and arguments and conclude that I was wrong in my vote then to affirm. Whether being wrong and admitting a mistake is a virtue or a detriment, I leave to debate. For me, it is enough that I do what the law and history tell me is the right thing to do.
I concur in the result reached by the majority only because the opinion of the court departs so far from the holdings of our prior cases as to be unacceptable. I continue to accept and adhere to the rationale and holding of Meyer v. Kendig, 641 P.2d 1235 (Wyo.1982). For example, in Meyer we held that the right of an employee to sue his coemployee who caused personal injury or death was not a fundamental right but “an ordinary interest” only; that when an ordinary interest is involved, we said we merely examine to determine whether there is a rational relationship between the classification made by the statute and a legitimate state objective. The court now, in this opinion considering precisely the same question, holds that the same right of an employee to sue a coem-ployee is “a fundamental right” and that we must apply a “strict scrutiny analysis” which requires demonstration of “a compelling interest * * * which is served by the challenged legislation and which cannot be satisfied by any other convenient legal structure.” Maj. op. at 54. The court in each case was applying the same Art. 10, § 4 of the Wyoming Constitution to enacted legislation which concerned litigation between employees and coemployees of the same employer. In Meyer we said the right of an employee to sue a coemployee was an ordinary interest only. Now the court is prepared to say that the same right is a fundamental right. I cannot brush aside our large body of accumulated law on this subject in such a cavalier fashion. Therefore, I would hold only that W.S. 27-14-104(a) is unconstitutional because it abolishes a coworker’s claim for injury or death damages contrary to Art. 10, § 4 of the Wyoming Constitution which, as originally written and still in existence today in its first two sentences, provides as follows:
No law shall be enacted limiting the amount of damages to be recovered for causing the injury or death of any person. Any contract or agreement with any employee waiving any right to recover damages for causing the death or injury of any employee shall be void.
Appellants, contending that W.S. 27-14-104(a) is unconstitutional, reason that damages are an element of the tort cause of action to recover for injury or wrongful death; that the statute at issue here eliminates the tort cause of action and therefore eliminates damages; that by eliminating the right to recover damages, the legislation “limits the amount of damages recoverable for injury or wrongful death”; and that such a limit upon these damages is prohibited by Art. 10, § 4 of the constitution.
Appellees contend that Art. 10, § 4 of the Wyoming Constitution only prohibits a law limiting the damages recoverable and does not deal with the cause of action at all; that the prohibition in the constitution limiting the amount of recoverable damages does not prohibit the elimination of the cause of action to recover these damages “for causing the injury or death of any person.”
We are not helped in resolving the question presented by the fact that holding the statute constitutional will eliminate the right of an employee to sue a coemployee *57who intentionally injures or kills the employee. The constitution and legislation as presently written allow for precisely that result for the employer. Thus, if the employer is an individual and intentionally injures his coemployee, the employer is immune from suit. The only recovery available to the employee is that provided by worker’s compensation.
Having reviewed the issues presented by the parties, the history of our worker’s compensation legislation, the extensive scholarly briefs, and earnest arguments of counsel, we arrive back at the beginning, still seeking to determine a simple question: What did the framers of our constitution intend when they originally wrote into our constitution Art. 10, § 4?
We begin with a look at life as it was during the summer and fall of 1889 when the delegates to our constitutional convention met in Cheyenne to write a constitution for what was to become the state of Wyoming. The economy of the territory of Wyoming consisted primarily of ranching and agriculture. Transportation was by saddle horse or horse and buggy. The railroad had arrived a short time before. There was some mining. Delegates to the convention were predicting a population of ten million for the state of Wyoming. The few business entities in the territory of Wyoming were well-financed, powerful entities. The framers of our constitution were intent upon protecting the right of the individual to recover compensation for injury or death caused by others.
In Meyer v. Kendig, 641 P.2d 1235, we said that Art. 10, § 4 of the Wyoming Constitution prohibits limits upon the amount of damage recoverable for causing injury or death of a person, and that the statute being considered in Meyer was constitutional since it did not limit the amount of recoverable damage. We said the prohibition upon limitation of damage and right to recover were dealt with separately, reasoning that the framers of the constitution in the first sentence of Art. 10, § 4 intended only to prohibit a limit upon the amount of recoverable damage and in the second sentence discussed the right to recover. It is suggested that, because damages and the right to recover are separately discussed in the constitution, that the limiting bar applies only to damage, ergo the right to recover may be abolished. That construction of Art. 10, § 4 is incorrect.
Both the first and second sentences of Art. 10, § 4 concern damages. The first sentence prohibits a limitation on the amount of damages recoverable for causing death or injury of any person. The second sentence makes void any contract or agreement by any employee waiving any right to recover damages for causing injury of any employee and nothing more. The clear intent of the framers of our constitution, as appears from the debates at the constitutional convention, was to preserve the right to recover damages for injury or wrongful death by any person. Thus, in the debates one of the delegates said:
As I understand this, this is to reach what we originally call the old ironclad agreement. I can see the object of this because I have worked on all the railroads west of Chicago I might say, and they have all adopted a policy that this here touches upon. It was called the ironclad agreement, by which a man when he entered the employ of the company agreed to release the company from all liability for any accident that might occur to him, no matter whether the fault was directly traceable to the company or not. Now if I understand the sense of this File No. 70 it is to keep us from having any such an introduction in this state of any ironclad agreement between any railroad company and its employes, and I believe it should pass. It is to protect the poor man. And I wish to add, so far as the law is concerned, I don’t care what the law is, I have heard so much about law on the floor of this house that I am disgusted with it. It is justice we want, and mercy with justice. I think the case in this town today pending before the courts is enough. A man paralyzed, with a large family to support, his body and mind almost destroyed in the service of the company, and I would like to know what the law done for him. The case has been carried to the supreme *58court, but the poor man has got nothing as yet. That is law, I suppose. I am sorry to bring this matter up, but everybody in town knows it, and knows too that the cause of that man’s injury was due directly to the negligence of the overseer of the job he was working on. The man was poor, and he got but poor treatment, and everybody knows it.
Journal and Debates of the Constitutional Convention, State of Wyoming, Mr. Reed at 447-48 (1893).
Thus, the first sentence prohibits any enactment limiting the amount of recoverable damages and the second sentence makes void any contract or agreement by an employee waiving any right to recover “damages.” The clear intent of the delegates to the constitutional convention in writing our constitution was to preserve the right to recover damages for injury or wrongful death. The right to recover these damages is preserved by preserving the cause of action which is the vehicle for recovery, subject always to such reasonable procedural requirements, substantive restrictions, and limitation periods within which to bring the said action. Legislation providing for comparative negligence, eliminating joint and several liability, and prescribing limitation periods within which to bring the action passes constitutional muster as reasonable limitations upon the action.
The struggle between the variant interests involved in worker’s compensation has been exaggerated by the confusion in application of legal principles. We have said that worker’s compensation is industrial accident insurance. Actions between employer and employee sound in contract. Actions, however, between employees and coemployees and third parties are in tort. The resentment on the part of business results from bewilderment over what kind of industrial accident insurance they have purchased. The corporation is immune, but the people who act for the corporation are not. Corporations can act only through people. Ordinarily the corporation causes injury or death to its employee as a result of the acts of its employees, and its responsibility is vicarious only. As a result of worker’s compensation, the corporation is insulated from liability, i.e., is immune. Yet its employees who acted on behalf of the corporation in the scope of their employment causing injury or death to a coemployee are liable for the very thing for which the corporation purchased industrial accident insurance. The end result of the above is that the corporation purchased an industrial accident insurance for itself, known as worker’s compensation, and then must purchase another policy insuring the same activity to provide protection to its employees — thus the struggle by businesses and legislators to right what they see as an incorrect result. Perhaps the appropriate answer is there be a quid pro quo; that if the coemployee is to have immunity, additional premiums be paid worker’s compensation to provide industrial accident insurance for coemployees with a corresponding increase in benefits to injured employees awarded benefits under worker’s compensation. The above tells us the reason for continued efforts to amend the worker’s compensation laws to extend immunity to coemployees but does not dispose of the question here presented, i.e., the constitutionality of W.S. 27-14-104(a).
I would hold that W.S. 27-14-104(a) granting total immunity to coemployees causing injury or death of another eliminates the right to recover damage and therefore limits the amount of damage to be recovered. The statute therefore violates the prohibition against limiting the amount of damages to be recovered and is consequently unconstitutional and void. If the right to recover damages for injury or wrongful death caused by a coemployee is to be eliminated, it must be done by constitutional amendment. This was the procedure deemed necessary and followed when the right of recovery against an employer was totally eliminated. The constitutional amendment allowing total immunity for an employer contributing to the worker’s compensation fund was approved and adopted by vote of the citizens of the state of Wyoming. Additional total immunity, beyond that granted an employer contributing to the fund, may only follow an appropriate constitutional amendment authoriz*59ing such immunity. That is as it ought to be. The citizens of this state ought to decide whether society benefits and the public is served by such additional grant of immunity.