Court Opinion

ID: 9583634
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:40:45.031835+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:58:26.767420
License: Public Domain

MAUGHAN, Justice
(dissenting).
The trial court, in my view correctly analyzed this matter. Its order should be upheld, as modified herein.
The statutory classification is without any reasonable basis and is therefore purely arbitrary.
Plaintiff alleged she sustained her injuries when she collided with a bridge, which allegedly was in a defective, unsafe, or dangerous condition.
Section 63-30-8, U.C.A.1953, as enacted 1965, provides:
Immunity from suit of all governmental entities is waived for any injury caused by a defective, unsafe, or dangerous condition of any . . . bridge . . . . [Emphasis added.]
Section 63-30-2(3) provides:
The words “governmental entity” shall mean ánd include the state and its political subdivisions as defined herein;
Section 63-30-2(2) provides:
The words “political subdivision” shall mean any county, city, town, school district, special improvement or taxing district, or any other political subdivision or public corporation; . . ..
Thus, the legislature in its enactment of Section 63-30-8, enacted a general law waiving immunity from suit of all governmental entities for any injuries caused by a defective, unsafe, or dangerous condition of the specified structures. Article I, Section 24, Constitution of Utah, commands: “All laws of a general nature shall have uniform operation.”
Under the notice provisions of Title 63, Chapter 30, the general law will not have uniform operation, viz., the law will operate differently, for the same class of persons, sustaining the same injuries, caused by the same conditions, of the same structures, depending on whether a county, city, or the state is responsible.
A legislative classification is never arbitrary or unreasonable so long as the basis for differentiation bears a reasonable relation to the purposes or objectives to be accomplished by the act. If some persons or transactions, excluded from the operation of law, were as to the subject matter of the law in no differentiable class from those included within its operation, the law is discriminatory in the sense of being arbitrary and unconstitutional. . . .1
In Gallegos v. Midvale City2 this court suggested possible purposes of the notice requirements of the Governmental Immunity Act. The governmental entity should have an opportunity to make a prompt investigation, and remedy any defect found to exist.
Conceding the various notice provisions have such a purpose; does the legislative classification bear a reasonable relationship to this purpose? Is there a rational basis to distinguish an individual sustaining injuries, for which the legislature has waived governmental immunity, from others similarly situated; solely on the ground the governmental entity was a city with a six-month notice requirement, a county with a ninety-day notice requirement, or the state with the one-year requirement? The effect of these differing notice requirements is to nullify the uniform operation of a general law. The people excluded by the shorter notice period are not within a dif*649ferentiable class from those who are granted a longer notice period; therefore, the classification must be deemed arbitrary, unreasonable, and unconstitutional.
Assuming the notice provisions fulfill a legitimate governmental interest, there is no reasonable basis to hold the interest of the county may only be protected by imposing a ninety-day limitation; while the interests of the cities, or the state, may only be protected with periods of six months or one year, respectively. If the tenuous purpose of the notice requirement be accepted, then plaintiff is entitled to the benefit of the one-year period. A reviewing court may correct a discriminatory classification by extending the statutory benefits to those whom the legislature has improperly excluded.3

. Leetham v. McGinn, 524 P.2d 323, 325 (Utah 1974).

. 27 Utah 2d 27, 492 P.2d 1335 (1972).

.In Re Kappermm, 11 Cal.3d 542, 114 Cal. Rptr. 97, 522 P.2d 657 (1974).