Court Opinion

ID: 9960958
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-04-17 16:11:21.164899+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:20:05.513716
License: Public Domain

No. 215               April 10, 2024                  753

          IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF THE
                  STATE OF OREGON

                    Erika L. PIERCE,
               Personal Representative of
       the Estate of Patricia Ann Stout, Deceased,
                   Plaintiff-Appellant,
                             v.
      BEST WESTERN INTERNATIONAL, INC.,
                  a foreign corporation,
               and BWI Licensing, INC.,
                  a foreign corporation,
                       Defendants,
                            and
            CONNOR ENTERPRISES, INC.,
      dba New Oregon, Inc., an Oregon corporation,
                 Defendant-Respondent.
            Multnomah County Circuit Court
                  21CV14212; A177997

  Kathleen M. Dailey, Judge.
  Argued September 20, 2023.
  Travis Eiva argued the cause and filed the briefs for
appellant.
   Rebecca A. Watkins argued the cause for respondent.
Also on the brief were Christine R. Olson and SBH Legal.
  Before Shorr, Presiding Judge, Mooney, Judge, and Pagán,
Judge.
  MOONEY, J.
  Affirmed.
754   Pierce v. Best Western Int.
Cite as 331 Or App 753 (2024)                                                755

           MOONEY, J.
         Plaintiff appeals from a limited judgment dismiss-
ing defendant Connor Enterprises, Inc., from this matter,
following an opinion and order granting defendant’s motion
to dismiss pursuant to ORCP 21 A.1 Plaintiff asserts that
the trial court erred in concluding that the action against
defendant was barred by the workers’ compensation stat-
utes, because such an application of the law leaves plain-
tiff without a remedy and thus violates Article I, section 10,
of the Oregon Constitution. We conclude that this issue is
resolved by controlling Oregon Supreme Court case law, and
we therefore affirm.
         The relevant facts are procedural and undisputed.
Plaintiff is the personal representative of her deceased
mother’s estate. The deceased, Stout, was employed by
defendant, and suffered a fatal on-the-job accident in 2019.
Plaintiff brought an action against defendant for negli-
gence, Employer’s Liability Law claims, and premise lia-
bility, asserting that Stout’s three adult children suffered
profound injuries from the loss of their mother’s society and
companionship upon her death.2
         Defendant filed a motion to dismiss for lack of juris-
diction, arguing that the action was barred by statutes
making workers’ compensation the exclusive remedy for
such claims, and which do not name adult, nondependent
children as beneficiaries. Plaintiff opposed the motion to
dismiss, arguing that the workers’ compensation exclusiv-
ity statute is unconstitutional as applied to this situation,
because it deprived Stout’s children of a remedy for their
loss. The trial court granted defendant’s motion and issued
a limited judgment dismissing defendant from the action.
On appeal, the parties renew the same arguments they
raised below.
    1
      Connor Enterprises, Inc., doing business as New Oregon, Inc., is the only
defendant in this appeal. Other defendants were named in the initial complaint
who were not dismissed from the action in the same order and limited judgment.
Therefore our use of “defendant” in this opinion refers only to Connor Enterprises.
    2
      The complaint alleged additional damages, including for Stout’s pain and
suffering for the time between the accident and her death; necessary medical
expenses for the same period; lost earnings; and funeral expenses. The appeal
before us is limited to arguments concerning the adult children’s claims.
756                               Pierce v. Best Western Int.

          We review a trial court’s ruling on a motion to dis-
miss under ORCP 21 for errors of law. Strizver v. Wilsey, 210
Or App 33, 35, 150 P3d 10 (2006), rev den, 342 Or 474 (2007)
(citing Granewich v. Harding, 329 Or 47, 51, 985 P2d 788
(1999)). “We assume the truth of all allegations in the plead-
ing and view the allegations, as well as all reasonable infer-
ences, in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party.”
Id. We review the constitutionality of a statute as a matter
of law. See generally, Kilminster v. Day Management Corp.,
323 Or 618, 623-28, 919 P2d 474 (1996) (assessing the consti-
tutionality of a provision of the Workers’ Compensation Act).
         ORS 656.018 provides that the Workers’ Compensation
Act is “exclusive and in place of all other liability” arising
out of workplace injuries or similar conditions sustained by
subject workers in the course of employment, and that the
rights given under the Act are “in lieu of any remedies [the
worker and beneficiaries] might otherwise have” for such
injuries. ORS 656.018(1)(a), (2). That “exclusive remedy” stat-
ute has been summarized to mean that “[a] worker who is
injured in the course and scope of employment is entitled to
receive, from the worker’s employer, only the remedies pro-
vided for in the Act.” Kilminster, 323 Or at 624. The Workers’
Compensation Act further provides that, in the event of a
worker’s death, an employer is responsible for disposition of
the body and funeral expenses, and that monthly benefits
are only available to specific beneficiaries, including a sur-
viving spouse, minor children until they reach the age of 19,
and some other limited dependents. ORS 656.204.
         The parties agree that Stout’s children in this mat-
ter were not eligible beneficiaries under ORS 656.204, and
that ORS 656.018 applies to the circumstances, as defendant
was an employer covered by the Workers’ Compensation Act
and Stout was injured in the course of her employment.
Plaintiff argues, however, that ORS 656.018 is unconsti-
tutional as applied to this situation because it operates to
deprive Stout’s children of a remedy, contrary to Article I,
section 10, of the Oregon Constitution, which guarantees
that “every man shall have remedy by due course of law for
injury done him in his person, property, or reputation.” Or
Const, Art I, § 10.
Cite as 331 Or App 753 (2024)                               757

         The Supreme Court has addressed precisely this
issue in two previous cases, Kilmister and Juarez v. Windsor
Rock Products, Inc., 341 Or 160, 144 P3d 211 (2006). In
Kilmister, the court emphasized that “[t]he Article I, sec-
tion 10, remedy guarantee is implicated only if a person
suffers injury to person, property, or reputation.” 323 Or
at 626. The court concluded that the parents of a deceased
worker had not suffered a “legally cognizable injury to their
person, property, or reputation” and therefore, application
of ORS 656.018 to bar their wrongful death action did not
violate Article I, section 10. Id. at 627. Similarly, in Juarez,
the court focused on the question of whether “the remedy
clause protect[s] a claim for ‘loss of society, companionship,
guidance, emotional support, services and financial assis-
tance,’ brought by a parent and adult children” of a deceased
worker; the court concluded that it did not. 341 Or at 165.
The court explained that the claimants in that case, the
mother and adult children of the worker, had not alleged an
injury to their persons or reputations, and had not alleged
that they possessed any property rights in the decedent that
the defendant’s conduct had infringed. Id. at 169-73.
         Plaintiff asserts that Kilminster and Juarez should
be viewed with a “grain of salt” in light of the Supreme
Court’s later cases that changed and expanded the method
for assessing Article I, section 10, challenges, most signifi-
cantly Horton v. OHSU, 359 Or 168, 376 P3d 998 (2016).
In Horton, the court considered the constitutionality of the
damages limit in the Tort Claims Act and whether those
limits violated the remedy clause. 359 Or at 171. The court
clarified that Article I, section 10, does not protect only those
causes of action that preexisted the constitution’s adoption,
and it established a new test for assessing the validity of
legislative limitations on available remedies. Id. at 219-20.
In doing so, the court explicitly overturned a previous case,
Smothers v. Gresham Transfer, Inc., 332 Or 83, 23 P3d 333
(2001). Horton, 359 at 187-88. Plaintiff asserts that Horton
thus calls into question all pre-Horton remedy clause cases,
which requires us to “consider whether the newly articu-
lated test causes older cases to be overruled sub silentio.”
758                                 Pierce v. Best Western Int.

        However, the court in Horton explicitly limited its
holding to overruling Smothers and reaffirmed the body of
its remedy clause cases:
       “Given the cases that preceded and were contempora-
   neous with the adoption of Oregon’s remedy clause cases,
   we cannot say that our decisions, with the exception of
   Smothers, find no support in the text and history of that
   provision and should be overruled. In reaching that conclu-
   sion, we need not decide how we would interpret Oregon’s
   remedy clause if we were considering it for the first time.
   Rather, for over 100 years, this court has debated the
   meaning of the clause, the latitude it gives the legislature,
   and the rights it protects. Distilled from that debate are
   a series of decisions that evolved as the legislation they
   considered evolved. We may not toss that considered body
   of decisions aside, as defendant urges[.] * * * Although we
   overrule Smothers, we reaffirm our remedy clause decisions
   that preceded Smothers, including the cases that Smothers
   disavowed.”
Id. at 218. Kilminster preceded Smothers. Additionally, in
its extensive discussion of the remedy clause case law in
Horton, the court noted the holding from Juarez on two occa-
sions, neither of which appeared to question the conclusions
found within. Id. at 180, 203.
         Therefore, we conclude that we are bound by
Kilminster and Juarez. Similar to those cases, plaintiff
has alleged that defendant’s action deprived Stout’s adult
children of the “society and companionship” of Stout. As
the Supreme Court stated in Juarez, “[w]e do not doubt the
importance of that loss to [the children], but it is not a loss of
any * * * interest for which Article I, section 10, guarantees
a remedy.” 341 Or at 173. Because the court has conclusively
held that this sort of action does not implicate Article I, sec-
tion 10, we conclude that the trial court did not err in grant-
ing defendant’s motion to dismiss.
         Affirmed.