Court Opinion

ID: 9545416
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:12:07.626136+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:14:45.344748
License: Public Domain

LINDE, J.,
concurring.
Much of the difficulty in this case has been created because the parties litigated it as though the Restatement of Torts were an authoritative statement of Oregon law, like a statute, and the trial court similarly responded to the parties’ arguments on that assumption. Now Justice Lent’s opinion for the court performs Herculean labors to determine just what Restatement (Second) of Torts § 551 means to say about the elements of the tort it describes and whether plaintiffs pleaded and proved a tort known to Oregon law.
The Restatements are products of a private, unofficial organization, the American Law Institute. They are famous as an effort to bring analytical coherence into non-statutory fields of law otherwise marked by a flood of discrete instances and judicial rationalizations of divergent results. This court has recognized their value by frequent citations. But they are not statutes.1 To repeat what was said in Brewer v. Erwin, 287 Or 435, 455, n. 12, 600 P2d 398 (1979):
*227“Although this court frequently quotes sections of the Restatements of the American Law Institute, it does not literally ‘adopt’ them in the manner of a legislature enacting, for instance, a draft prepared by the, Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, such as the Residential Landlord and Tenant Act. In the nature of common law, such quotations in opinions are no more than shorthand expressions of the court’s view that the analysis summarized in the Restatement corresponds to Oregon law applicable to the facts of the case before the court. They do not enact the exact phrasing of the Restatement rule, complete with comments, illustrations, and caveats. Such quotations should not be relied on in briefs as if they committed this court or lower courts to track every detail of the Restatement analysis in other cases. The Restatements themselves purport to be just that, ‘restatements’ of law found in other sources, although at times they candidly report that the law is in flux and offer a formula preferred on policy grounds.”
Because Restatement (Second) of Torts § 551 is not a statute, it is misleading to speak of pleading or proving a cause of action “under” this or any other section, at least until this court has firmly said that the cited section corresponds to the law in Oregon. Cf. Top Service Body Shop v. Allstate Ins. Co., 283 Or 201, 208-210, 582 P2d 1365 (1978). At best, such a way of speaking is dangerous
“shorthand,” as this case demonstrates. It cannot substitute for an independent analysis and presentation of the elements that make, or should make, defendants liable to plaintiff in Oregon law, when the relevance of some of the elements to a theory of liability is an open question in this state. This is true, for instance, of the elements of intent, or knowledge, or negligence, or “privity,” or perhaps of prescribed standards of professional responsibility, in the liability of the accountants in this case.
No such independent analysis has been presented here, and the questions remain open. As for the disposition of this case, I concur in the court’s opinion.

 At least not until enacted as such. See ORS 30.920, enacting Restatement (Second) of Torts § 402; Vetri, “Legislative Codification of Strict Products Liability Law in Oregon," 59 Or L Rev 363, 365 (1981).