Court Opinion

ID: 9456345
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:50:01.330329+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:56.656985
License: Public Domain

FRIENDLY, Circuit Judge
(dissenting) :
The issue here is not whether Connecticut’s Motor Vehicle Financial Responsibility Act is unconstitutional but whether plaintiffs’ claim of unconstitutionality was unsubstantial “either because it is obviously without merit or because its unsoundness so clearly results from the previous decisions of this court [the Supreme Court] as to foreclose the subject.” California Water Service Co. v. City of Redding, 304 U.S. 252, 255, 58 S.Ct. 865, 867, 82 -L.Ed. 1323 (1938). While I hope Congress will soon dispense with the necessity of making this preliminary determination and allow a single district judge to proceed directly to the merits, we must respect 28 U.S.C. § 2281 so long as it remains with us.
If Connecticut had required all automobile owners to carry liability insurance or post security, the claim of constitutional invalidity would indeed be unsubstantial as a result of Ex parte Poresky, 290 U.S. 30, 54 S.Ct. 3, 78 L.Ed. 152 (1933). It is argued that if Connecticut could thus have barred its roads altogether to persons not assuring in advance that at least some payment would be made for injuries inflicted by automobiles owned or operated by them, it can take the seemingly less onerous step of allowing motor vehicles to be operated without any such protection until an accident occurs and then suspend the license of the operator and all registrations of the owner unless security is filed.
While I believe I would ultimately be persuaded to that view, the arguments to the contrary are sufficiently substantial to require consideration by a court of three judges, as has occurred in actions attacking similar statutes of other states —sometimes with less than a unanimous result. However valid the axiom “the greater includes the lesser” may be in mathematics, Frost v. Railroad Comm’n of California, 271 U.S. 583, 46 S.Ct. 605, 70 L.Ed. 1101 (1926), and its numerous progeny, including Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U.S. 618, 89 S.Ct. 1322, 22 L.Ed.2d 600 (1969), have demonstrated it to be an exceedingly unsure guide in constitutional law. Connecticut’s Motor Vehicle Financial Responsibility Act raises questions under both the equal protection and the due process clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment that a compulsory liability insurance statute does not.
The Connecticut statute requires security to be posted by an uninsured careful driver who has been the unfortunate victim of another’s fault or of unavoidable accident, whereas the uninsured careless driver is placed under no such burden so long as his luck holds. The discrimination can hardly be justified in terms of keeping uninsured careless drivers off the roads, since by hypothesis .the second driver is more likely to cause *1253a liability-producing accident than the first. The prime justification must therefore lie in prodding the first driver to provide a fund that may or may not be needed to compensate for the accident that has occurred, whereas the second driver is a step further removed. This may indeed be a sufficient justification but I cannot regard the argument against it as insubstantial in these days of more intensive judicial inquiry with respect to equal protection claims. Cf. Morey v. Doud, 354 U.S. 457, 77 S.Ct. 1344,1 L.Ed.2d 1485 (1957).
Similar considerations apply to the due process attack. Whereas compulsory liability insurance gives an injured plaintiff no particular leverage to obtain satisfaction of an unmeritorious claim from a guiltless defendant, § 14-117(a) of the Connecticut Act provides that security shall not be required if within twenty days the person who would otherwise be required to file security has been released from liability or “has executed a duly acknowledged written agreement providing for the payment of an agreed amount in instalments with respect to all claims for injuries or damages resulting from the accident.” The power thus conferred on the prospective plaintiff to force an unjust settlement upon an owner or operator who is obliged by economic necessity to keep his car on the road in order to retain his job, as is true of many workers whose homes or places of employment are without accessible public transportation, is quite reminiscent of what the Supreme Court found constitutionally offensive in Sniadach v. Family Finance Corp., 395 U.S. 337, 341-342, 89 S.Ct. 1820, 23 L.Ed.2d 349 (1969).
I do not understand so much of the distinction of Sniadach in fn. 3 of the majority opinion as rests upon the supposed superiority of § 14-114(b) of the Connecticut Act, providing limited review of a direction of the Commissioner of Motor Vehicles to post security or suffer license suspension, over the Wisconsin procedure for pre-judgment attack on garnishment that Sniadach held insufficient. Wisconsin case law recognized the right of a defendant to move immediately to quash a garnishment “so as to correct or prevent any abuse or misuse of such process,” including the right to show that no good faith controversy existed. See the dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Black, 395 U.S. at 346, 89 S.Ct. at 1825, 23 L.Ed.2d 349, and Family Finance Corp. v. Sniadach, 37 Wis.2d 163, 173-174, 154 N.W.2d 259, 265 (1967), quoting'Orton v. Noonan, 27 Wis. 572 (1871). In contrast, the Connecticut Commissioner is expressly precluded from considering liability or degree of liability, § 14-114(a). Thus, so far as uninsured motorists are concerned, review of the Commissioner’s order under § 14-114(b) would on the whole be limited to questions whether they came within § 14-119’s exceptions for the operator or owner of a vehicle that was legally parked, the owner of a vehicle being used without his permission, or the operator or owner of a vehicle that was legally stopped at a stop sign or at the direction of a police officer or “was in a line of * * * at least three motor vehicles” — the last itself a rather capricious distinction. In addition, § 14-114 (b) might allow a court to review the Commissioner’s determination of the appropriate sum for security, though the scope of review here is likely to be quite limited. The important point is that § 14-114 (b) gives the court no power to examine the issue of liability even when the claim is frivolous. A holding that the analogical force Sniadach would otherwise possess does not require a determination of lack of due process thus must rest upon a view that the interests protected by the Connecticut Financial Responsibility Act are much stronger or the interests adversely affected much weaker than those in Sniadach, or upon the possibility of avoiding the problem by taking out insurance. There may, indeed, be sound basis for such a holding, but, before deciding that issue, I would want some evidence as to how much hardship the Connecticut statute has caused and how much good it has done.
*1254While I thus cannot conscientiously join in affirming the refusal to ask for the convening of a three-judge court, my concern is greatly lessened by the fact that a decision of such a court sustaining a similar law of another state may shortly receive consideration by the Supreme Court, Gaytan v. Cassidy, 317 F.Supp. 46 (W.D.Tex.1970), appeal docketed as No. 495 for the September Term 1970, 39 U.S.L.W. 3067 (Aug. 11, 1970).