Court Opinion

ID: 9662814
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 23:18:48.841031+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:42.752884
License: Public Domain

DOGGETT, Justice,
dissenting.
Once again eagerness to implement a desired social policy has produced a result both inconsistent with established jurisprudence and incongruent with the appropriate role of the judiciary. Masquerading as a defender of judicial restraint, the court trespasses upon the function of the redrafting of legislation, a power reserved to another branch of government. The court’s surgical dissection of provisions of the Medical Liability and Insurance Improvement Act, Tex.Rev.Civ.Stat.Ann. art. 4590i (Vernon Supp.1990), in an effort to preserve damage limitations in wrongful death actions contravenes both the clear language of the statute and over a century of compelling Texas precedent.
The court’s strategy in this endeavor is to ask and answer questions not relevant to our inquiry. The fundamental question presented by this appeal is not, as the court suggests, the applicability of the “open courts” provision, article 1, section 13 of the Texas Constitution, as considered in Lucas v. United States, 757 S.W.2d 687 (Tex.1988), or the appropriateness of a statutory distinction between personal injury and death, before us in Moreno v. Sterling Drug, Inc., 787 S.W.2d 348 (Tex.1990). Nor need we consider whether the legislature should or could, consistent with our constitution, limit damages recoverable in actions for wrongful death based upon medical malpractice. Rather, the only question presented is one of constitutional law and statutory construction: whether the partial unconstitutionality of a statute *853invalidates the remainder. Today’s decision, in answering this question, misapplies over a century of precedent written by this court.
We first addressed the issue of the effect of the invalidity of a statutory provision in Western Union Telegraph Co. v. State, 62 Tex. 630 (1884). There we considered whether a statute purporting to tax telegraph messages, which was held unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court to the extent imposed on interstate messages, could be constitutionally applied to intrastate messages only. We held that it could not, stating that the partial invalidity of a statute voids the remainder when the provisions are so interdependent and connected in subject-matter as to be inseparable:
The point is ... whether they are essentially and inseparably connected in substance. If, when the unconstitutional portion is stricken out, that which remains is complete in itself, and capable of being executed in accordance with the apparent legislative intent, wholly independent of that which was rejected, it must stand.
62 Tex. at 634 (quoting from Cooley’s Const. Lim., 215). Unlike today’s opinion, in Western Union the proper standard was not only enunciated but also applied. We held that, because the statutory provisions could not be separated between interstate and intrastate messages, “the different parts of the act are so intimately connected that the invalidity of a part of the law renders the entire law invalid.” Id. at 636.
Similarly, in Sharber v. Florence, 131 Tex. 341, 115 S.W.2d 604 (1938), also cited by the court today, we considered the effect of partial unconstitutionality of a moratorium statute and held the entire statute invalid. The act postponed sales of property under executions or orders of sale, or under deeds of trust, mortgages or other contracts giving any power of sale of real property, and annulled other similar sales. The statute had been repeatedly held unconstitutional to the extent it purported to change the method or time of sale with respect to purely private contracts prescribing the mode of enforcement. The issue before the court was whether the statute was constitutional as to those contracts not prescribing a method of enforcement, i.e., those in which no valuable rights were affected. Echoing the test set forth in Western Union, we stated:
This Court has repeatedly held that if part of an act is declared invalid it does not destroy the entire act, unless the invalid part is so intermingled with all parts of the act as to make it impossible to separate them, and so preclude the presumption that the Legislature would have passed the act anyhow.... It is also clear that, where a statute contains provisions which are legal, and others which are not, effect may be given to the legal provisions by separating them from the illegal. But this rule applies only to a statute where the provisions are separable and not dependent one upon the other; and does not support the contention that that which is inseparable may be separated.
131 Tex. at 345-46, 115 S.W.2d at 606 (emphasis supplied).1 Examining the statute and applying the formulated rule of partial invalidity, we concluded that:
its parts are so intermingled that, if any of the parts are valid, they cannot be separated from the invalid. In the form that this law was enacted, when its purposes are analyzed there is no possibility of separating them so that each part remains as complete in itself and capable of being executed in accordance with the legislative intent, wholly independent of those parts which are rejected as being unconstitutional.
Id., 131 Tex. at 346, 115 S.W.2d at 607.
This same analysis has been applied to strike an entire notice provision held to be *854unconstitutional when applied in certain situations. In Hanks v. City of Port Arthur, 48 S.W.2d 944 (Tex. 1932), we determined that Port Arthur’s attempt to preclude liability through its municipal charter by requiring that it be notified of a defective condition prior to the occurrence of an injury was unconstitutional under the “open courts” provision to the extent notice of defects was required from those who had no knowledge of them. The enactment did not remain valid under the more limited circumstances when the injured party had actual knowledge of a defective condition, but rather this court was compelled to void the notice provision in toto. Because no distinction was made in the charter language between valid and invalid applications, we refused to rewrite it, concluding that “the plain terms, however, of the notice section do not permit us to make these eliminations ” of situations in which applying the notice provision would be unconstitutional. 48 S.W.2d at 950 (emphasis supplied).
These cases establish a well-recognized set of statutory and constitutional rules that have been consistently followed in our jurisprudence. In fact, not but a few months ago this court, in a unanimous decision, applied them to strike an entire legislative act when one provision was found invalid. Association of Texas Professional Educators v. State Commissioner of Education, 788 S.W.2d 827 (Tex.1990). Intermediate appellate Texas courts have relied upon and consistently applied these well-established rules by looking to the language of the particular statute to determine sev-erability. See, e.g., City of Taylor v. Taylor Bedding Manufacturing Co., 215 S.W.2d 215 (Tex.Civ.App.—Austin 1948, writ ref’d); San Antonio Independent School District v. State, 173 S.W. 525 (Tex. Civ.App.—San Antonio 1915, writ ref’d); City of Forney v. Estate of Pinson, 575 S.W.2d 58, 61 (Tex.Civ.App.—Texarkana 1978, writ ref’d n.r.e.) (“after the invalid parts have been severed, there must remain an intelligible and valid ordinance capable of being placed in execution and conforming to the general purpose and intent of the enacting body.”). Today’s opinion stands in stark contrast to this venerable body of law, as it superficially recognizes controlling principles but completely fails to apply them in any meaningful or logical manner.
In evaluating whether any portions of sections 11.02 and 11.03 of the Act, held unconstitutional in Lucas, remain valid, our focus is not what the legislature could or might have done in drafting the statute, but what it has done and the extent to which the invalid and valid portions of the statute are severable. If the unconstitutional and constitutional provisions are inseparably connected, we cannot engage in judicial legislation by rewriting the statute as the legislature could or might, but must strike the statutory provisions in their entirety. Ex parte Levinson, 160 Tex.Crim. 606, 274 S.W.2d 76, 78 (1955) (court may strike portions of the statute but may not rewrite, change or add to the law).
Sections 11.02 and 11.03 purport to limit damages in “an action on a health care liability claim.” The term “health care liability claim” is used throughout the statute, appearing some twenty-three times, and encompasses both statutory and common-law causes of action.2 Based on the Act’s common treatment of actions for injury and those for death, the court of appeals concluded, in effect, that the two were inseparable for the purpose of determining unconstitutionality. 735 S.W.2d at 247. Nothing has been brought to our attention in the legislative history of the Act to suggest that any consideration was ever given to separating actions for death and those for injury. Because the term “health care liability claim” inseparably includes both *855actions for injury and those for death, sections 11.02 and 11.03 are not partially invalid, but invalid in their entirety.
To uphold the damage limitations in this cause, the court strikes no word or words, but must rewrite the statute to redefine the term “health care liability claim” in sections 11.02 and 11.03 of the Act to mean only actions for wrongful death. As in Hanks, “the plain terms” of the statute do not permit this judicial intrusion into the legislative arena. The court’s contrary interpretation blatantly conflicts with the legislature’s intent that the term encompass both actions for injury and death throughout the Act’s many sections, not just those limiting damages, but those relating to notice of the claim to the health care provider or physician, informed consent and disclosure, the applicability of the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur, and expert witnesses. These provisions, important to the Act’s passage, were designed to benefit health care providers by reducing the number of frivolous suits against them and by placing controls on the type of testimony and witnesses offered at trial. If the court’s decision today is to be applied with some measure of consistency, and is not just result oriented, the term “health care liability claim” throughout the statute now means only actions for death. This rash legislative choice by the court substantially weakens these provisions benefitting our state medical community.
The court’s discussion confuses the terms “health care liability claim" and “medical malpractice claim” to draw the distinction between wrongful death and personal injury actions.3 Sections 11.02 and 11.03 refer to only a single class of damages — those awarded in a health care liability action, whether for personal injury or death. The focus of the statute is not on the type of harm inflicted but on the nature of the defendant — a provider of health care services. The term “medical malpractice” similarly has never been employed previously in either case or statute to describe the extent of the injury inflicted; rather, it is a term synonymous with “health care liability.”
A review of the statute confirms this conclusion. The term “medical malpractice” is used only once, in the findings and purposes section of the statute. There the legislature states that “the number of health care liability claims” — inclusive of actions whether for personal injury and death — “has increased since 1972 inordinately; [that] the filing of legitimate health care liability claims” — inclusive of actions whether for personal injury and death— “is a contributing factor affecting medical professional liability rates_” Tex.Rev. Civ.Stat.Ann. art 4590i § 1.02(a)(1), (2) (Vernon Supp.1990). The legislature found that this “situation” — of increased claims whether for personal injury or death— “has created a medical malpractice insurance crisis in the State of Texas.... ” Id. § 1.02(a)(5) (emphasis supplied). Surely the insurance referred to was not limited to coverage for personal injury inflicted by medical professionals, but also extended to death as well. Simply put the statute employed the term “medical malpractice” interchangeably with the term “health care liability.” Neither of these terms differentiates between personal injury and death.4
The court further places great emphasis on the fact that the Act, when passed, *856included a “savings clause” common to legislative enactments.5 But such a clause is not a cure-all: “A separability clause does not clothe the valid parts with immunity from the invalidating effect the law gives to the inseparable blending of the bad with the good.” E. Crawford, The Construction of Statutes § 145 (1940); see also Sutherland Statutory Construction, supra, at § 44.08.
The legislature recognized the limitation on damages contained in section 11.02 might very well be found unconstitutional by this court, and made provision for that contingency in section 11.03 which commences:
In the event that Section 11.02(a) of this subchapter is stricken from this subchap-ter or is otherwise invalidated by a method other than through legislative means, the following shall become effective....
Rather than contemplating a partial striking of Section 11.02, the legislature enacted a special and unique mechanism to replace the provision in its entirety if held invalid in any respect.
Moreover, given this concern as to unconstitutionality, it is particularly appropriate to assume that the legislature purposely chose the specific wording included in the severability clause as well as the other provisions of this Act. The language of the severability clause at issue here instructs the court to limit the effect of partial invalidity to the “clause, sentence, subsection, section, article or provision ” held unconstitutional. In its rush to a result, the court has ignored this clear legislative directive. There is no one clause, sentence, section, article or provision that can be excised from sections 11.02 and 11.03 and still leave a workable remainder. Rather, the court has viewed the “savings clause” as a legislative delegation to the judiciary of the power to write statutes. If the legislature had chosen different language for these sections, a different question would be presented. But it did not and the court must take the provisions of the Act as written, not as it might prefer to see the statute drafted.
The court’s decision injects an unworkable uncertainty into Texas jurisprudence. Imagine portions of statutes long ago declared unconstitutional arising one by one from the grave. For having resuscitated an unconstitutional statute in this cause, what limit is there to revivification of others? What would prevent the City of Port Arthur from invoking the notice provision, held unconstitutional in Hanks, to actions for wrongful death? Or, similarly, why would the filing fees held unconstitutional in LeCroy v. Hanlon, 713 S.W.2d 335 (Tex.1986), not now be argued as applying to death cases? These and other numerous possible examples highlight the error of carving out an exception to a long-standing rule of constitutional law and statutory construction in an attempt to validate sections 11.02 and 11.03 in this cause.
The court further distinguishes our holding in Lucas on the basis that it arose in answer to a certified question from a feder*857al appellate court. In so doing, the court seriously erodes our authority to answer certified questions. Under article V, section 3-c of the Texas Constitution, we are empowered to “answer questions of state law certified from a federal appellate court.” The only limitation imposed by Rule 114(a), Texas Rules of Appellate Procedure, is that state law be determinative of the cause then pending. Nowhere is there the remotest suggestion that a decision of this court on certified question is any less a controlling state precedent than a decision made on appeal from a state appellate court. This is simply not the law:
Certification would be a pointless exercise unless the state court’s answers are regarded as an authoritative and binding statement of state law. Thus the Fifth Circuit’s early suggestion that answers to certified questions are “merely advisory and entitled, like dicta, to be given persuasive but not binding effect as a precedent,” has long since been forgotten and it is now accepted that the state answers are binding.
C. Wright, A. Miller and E. Cooper, 17A Federal Practice and Procedure § 4248 at 179 (2d ed. 1988).6 To hold otherwise would undermine the very purpose of the certification process — to ensure that the same state law is applied to litigants, whether in state or federal court. The federal courts are clearly bound by our decision in Lucas, see Wright, supra, and, in fact, have so held. Wheat v. United States, 860 F.2d 1256, 1259 (5th Cir.1988).7
Nor can I concur in the court’s equal protection analysis. Unlike the rather unauthoritative opinion relied upon by the court today concerning the constitutionality of a statutorily limited class of beneficiaries in an action for wrongful death, Castillo v. Hidalgo County Water District No. 1, 771 S.W.2d 633 (Tex.App.—Corpus Christi 1989, no writ), the issue here is the distinction created between tort victims who are injured by a certain class of defendant — i.e., health care providers — and those injured by others. Put another way, is it constitutional to create a favored class of tortfeasors — only health care providers — who are not required to pay full damages for the injuries they inflict? The court appears to find a basis for this distinction in the recited purposes of the Medical Liability and Insurance Improvement Act to reduce excessive claims, decrease insurance costs and making health care more affordable. That Act, however, was based upon the recommendations of the Texas Medical Professional Liability Study Commission, frequently referred to as the “Keeton Report,” which could not conclude that there was any correlation between an arbitrary damage limitation and the Act’s stated purposes.8 Moreover, this court has previously recognized the absence of such a rational relationship.9 By both disregarding this and providing only an extraordinarily superficial equal protection analysis, the court works a serious injustice both to those who are killed and to the meaning of a vital constitutional guarantee.
*858Today’s decision will no doubt come as a great shock to the many parties, lawyers and judges who have operated on the well-founded belief that the effect of Lucas was to render liability limitations unconstitutional in all cases. See, e.g., Mercy Hospital v. Rios, 776 S.W.2d 626, 637 (Tex.App. —San Antonio 1989, writ denied) (upholding, in a wrongful death action, trial court’s refusal to order remittitur of damages awarded by jury in excess of statutory limit because “[t]he Texas Supreme Court in Lucas v. United States ... has held that the limitation on medical malpractice damages as set out in the above statute is unconstitutional.”); Wheat v. United States, 860 F.2d at 1259 (“[a]s the parties agree, the Lucas decision moots the constitutional question in this [wrongful death] appeal.”). Because I do not approve of the court’s rejection of controlling precedent to become self-appointed legislative drafters, I dissent.
RAY and MAUZY, JJ., join in this dissent.

. Accord. N. Sanger, Sutherland Statutory Construction § 44.03 (Sands 4th ed. 1986 rev.) (test whether the legislature intended the act to be separable and whether the act is separable in fact). The second prong of this test is disposi-tive in this cause.

. See Tex.Rev.Civ.Stat.Ann. art. 4590i § 1.03(a)(4) (defining “health care liability claim" as a "cause of action against a health care provider or physician for treatment, lack of treatment, or other claimed departure from accepted standards of medical care or health care or safety which proximately results in injury to or death of the patient”) (emphasis supplied).

. Contrary to the analysis in today’s opinion, the holding in Lucas drew no distinction between personal injury and wrongful death. The court noted that writ had been granted in this cause yet failed to differentiate it in any respect. 757 S.W.2d at 690. Nor can the use of the term "medical malpractice damages” in Lucas be interpreted as a reference solely to personal injury damages, as the court’s opinion concludes. The question certified in Lucas, in pertinent part, asked:
Whether the limitation on medical malpractice damages in Tex.Rev.Civ.Stat.Ann. art. 4590i §§ 11.02 and 11.03 (Vernon Supp.1986) is consistent with the Texas Constitution....
757 S.W.2d at 687. We held that it was not. Neither the Fifth Circuit’s use of the term "medical malpractice damages” nor our answer was limited to damages recoverable for personal injury.

. The four opinions handed down in Lucas employ the terms interchangeably as well. See, e.g., Lucas, 757 S.W.2d at 689 (discussing damage limitations in "medical malpractice” statutes of other states); 695 (Gonzalez, J., dissenting) *856(statute distinguishes “medical malpractice claimants” from “other tort claimants”); 698, 699, 700 (Gonzalez, J., dissenting) (referring to the "medical malpractice” claimant, the "medical malpractice" plaintiff, "medical malpractice” actions and the "medical malpractice" insurance crisis); 701 (Culver, J., concurring) (discussing “medical malpractice” awards); 702 (Phillips, C.J., dissenting) (statute differentiates between persons suing for "medical malpractice" and those who sue for other torts); 709 n. 7 (Phillips, C.J., dissenting) (referencing "medical malpractice" damage limitations statutorily imposed in other states).

. That clause provides:
If any provision of this statute or its application to any person or circumstance is held invalid or unconstitutional, such invalidity does not affect other provisions or applications of this statute which can be given effect without the invalid clause, sentence, subsection, section, article or provision or application, and shall not affect, impair, invalidate, or nullify the remainder of this Act, but the effect thereof shall be confined to the clause, sentence, subsection, section, article, or provision of the Act so adjudged to be invalid or unconstitutional and to this end the above are declared to be severable.
Act of Aug. 29, 1977, ch. 817, § 41.04.

. Accord Penn Mutual Life Insurance Co. v. Abramson, 530 A.2d 1202, 1207 (D.C.App.1987) (opinion on certified question "is stare decisis of this court, as well as res judicata as to the same parties in local courts”); In re Elliott, 74 Wash.2d 600, 610-11, 446 P.2d 347, 354 (1968) (decision on certified question "legal precedent applicable in all future controversies involving the same legal question until and unless the court overrules its opinion”); In re Richards, 223 A.2d 827, 832 (Me. 1966) (judgment in certified proceedings treated "as having the force of decided case law within the courts of this state”).

. Today’s decision may create a bifurcated standard of unconstitutionality of sections 11.02 and 11.03 dependent upon the nature of the forum, state or federal. If, however, there had been no certification process available to the federal appellate court in Lucas, abstention would have been required, placing the parties before our state courts and resulting in the same answer to the same question. See Lillich and Mundy, Federal Court Certification of Doubtful State Law Questions, 18 U.C.L.A.L.Rev. 888, 907 (1971). The fact that certification avoids the abstention process should not alter the binding nature of the result.

. Lucas, 757 S.W.2d at 691, citing Keeton Report at 7, 38.

. Id.