Court Opinion

ID: 9572095
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:38:22.763385+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:31:32.111996
License: Public Domain

Foth, C.J.,
dissenting.
Where my colleagues and I part company in this case is in our interpretation of K.S.A. (now 1977 Supp.) 40-3117, the threshold provision of our so-called “no-fault” insurance law. The majority finds no requirement in our statute that a permanent disfigurement be “significant” or “serious”; I believe those terms are implied by the statute read as a whole. The majority thinks that to read such qualifying adjectives into the statute would be to rewrite the statute; I believe such a reading is required by the manifest legislative intent.
The nature of the claimed disfigurement1 is not seriously in dispute. Plaintiff’s treating chiropractor, when asked to point out the injury to the court below, responded:
*217“A. That is a scar right here. If you hold it just right you can pull it and see a scar.”
The trial judge made a personal inspection of plaintiff’s leg and described his observations for the record:
“. . . The record should show that the Court did observe the right leg of Mr. Smith. The parties should also note the Court’s observations, the Court did run his finger on the leg in the area that Dr. Counselman described. And the Court’s observation, from just a visual and from a touch indication, was that there was no scarring as we would understand broken skin with a lesion over the scarring. In other words, it was a smooth feeling. That the area that the Court did observe was ascertainable, discernible, it being more of a, at least to the visual view of the Court, it was more of a discoloration of Mr. Smith’s leg. The record should show that Mr. Smith is black. The area in question was darker. It was more of a dark brown area. It was about an inch and a quarter in length and in the middle point running North and South on the leg toward the center, as Dr. Counselman indicated, and toward the center of the area. It extended to, perhaps, about a half an inch. But I would say it would be East and West across the leg and about an inch and a quarter long. Now that is what the visual observation indicates. . . .”
In granting summary judgment for defendant the court wrote:
“It is true that the extent of injury or whether scarring is permanent or not is usually a jury question. But here, it is a matter of law that plaintiff must qualify as to one or more of the threshold criterion to be able to maintain this action under the no-fault doctrine.
“The Court finds that the area of injury to plaintiff is neither unsightly, misshapen or in any manner a deformity nor does it in any way impair the beauty, symmetry or appearance of plaintiff’s leg. It is merely an innocuous discoloration of the right leg extending approximately one and one-fourth inches long and approximately one-half inch in width at its widest point. The Court finds as a matter of law plaintiff does not suffer from permanent disfigurement.”
To me the trial court’s findings are persuasive. While courts should not rewrite a statute where its language and meaning are clear, I find other principles of statutory construction applicable here. First, remedial legislation should be “liberally construed to effectuate the purpose for which it was enacted.” State, ex rel., v. Anderson, 195 Kan. 649, Syl. 3, 408 P.2d 864 (1965). See also, Young v. Barker, 185 Kan. 246, 342 P.2d 150 (1959); Wheeler v. Wheeler, 196 Kan. 697, 414 P.2d 1 (1966). Second, where a literal construction would defeat the legislative purpose, a statute should be construed according to its reason and spirit. State v. Dumler, 221 Kan. 386, Syl. 2, 559 P.2d 798 (1977); Kansas Commission on Civil Rights v. Howard, 218 Kan. 248, Syl. 2, 544 P.2d 791 (1975). Such a construction may include the supplying *218of omitted terms when necessary. Parker v. Continental Casualty Co., 191 Kan. 674, Syl. 4, 383 P.2d 937 (1963); Wolf v. Mutual Benefit Health & Accident Association, 188 Kan. 694, 702, 366 P.2d 219 (1961).
Applying those principles to K.S.A. 40-3117, we find that the legislature has prohibited tort actions for pain, suffering and other nonpecuniary damages arising out of an automobile accident unless the plaintiff’s injury meets one of eight criteria: it must (1) require at least $500 in medical expenses; (2) result in permanent disfigurement; (3) be a fracture of a weight-bearing bone; (4) be a fracture which is compound, comminuted, displaced or compressed; (5) involve loss of a body member; (6) be permanent; (7) result in permanent loss of a bodily function; or (8) result in death.
While some of these characteristics (death, in particular) obviously have more grave connotations than others, to my mind they all require an injury of some severity. To say that no matter how trivial the “disfigurement” it deserves to be ranked with the other seven threshold criteria seems to me to run contrary to the implicit but clear intent of the drafters of this legislation. Under the maxim noscitur a sociis (it is known from its associates), the term “permanent disfigurement” should be read as having the same general qualities and characteristics as its fellow terms. (Cf., Farm Bureau Mutual Ins. Co. v. Carr, 215 Kan. 591, 596, 528 P.2d 134 [1974].) In each of the other terms those qualities include an injury of substance; a disfigurement, to rank with them, should also be of substance.
In determining the legislature’s purpose in enacting this statute we are not without guidance. In Manzanares v. Bell, 214 Kan. 589, 522 P.2d 1291 (1974), our Supreme Court spoke to the issue directly and forcefully:
“. . . One of the obvious purposes of the Legislature in limiting recovery under the threshold provision was clearly to eliminate minor claims for pain and suffering. The Legislature could reasonably have thought that the number of such cases (see DOT study) was largely connected with exaggerated claims for pain and suffering in instances of relatively minor injury. Our prior decisions are to the effect that subjective complaints of pain and suffering defy accurate monetary appraisal. (Domann v. Pence, 183 Kan. 135, 325 P.2d 321; Henderson v. Kansas Power & Light Co., 188 Kan. 283, 362 P.2d 60.) In addition, minor ‘nuisance' claims were often overpaid, and as stated in Pinnick v. Cleary, [360 Mass. 1, 271 N.E.2d 592, 610], ‘ . . . It was clearly proper for the Legislature to conclude that the benefits of compensating an injured person for relatively minor pain and *219suffering, which as such entails no monetary loss did not warrant continuation of the practice when balanced against the evils it had spawned.’” (pp. 610-11. Emphasis added.)
In this case we have the residual effect of a bruised shin, consisting of an “innocuous discoloration” an inch-and-one-quarter long by one-half inch at its widest. Assuming it to be permanent, I cannot believe it is the type of “disfigurement” intended by the legislature to support this plaintiff’s claim for $100,000.00 in damages.2 It seems to me this is a prime example of those “exaggerated claims for pain and suffering in instances of relatively minor injury” the Court recognized in Manzanares, and just the type of “minor nuisance” claim the legislature intended to eliminate.
I would affirm.

 To meet the threshold requirement plaintiff claims a “permanent injury” as well as permanent disfigurement. However, it appears that plaintiff’s injury stopped bothering him within two weeks of the accident and hadn’t bothered him since, up to the time of the hearing below almost two years later. The “injury” alleged to be permanent is the discoloration on plaintiff’s leg, and I understand the majority to deal with it solely m terms of a “permanent disfigurement.”

. The petition was filed before the effective date of Rule No. 118, under which this claim for $100,000.00 would still be “in excess of ten thousand dollars ”