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Craftsman Builder's Supply Inc. v. Butler Manufacturing Co.3/5/1999
wer.
Furthermore, the Berry test is essentially the same test that the United States Supreme Court has used in determining whether "life, liberty, or property" has been denied under a substantive interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause. That test is not, as Justice Zimmerman would have it, a highly stringent restriction on legislative power. The Berry test is also similar to the due process and equal protection of the laws tests that this Court has historically applied. Using the Berry test, this Court has recently sustained the Legislature's power to enact statutes that change or abrogate the right to a remedy in a number of cases. See, e.g., Hirpa, 948 P.2d at 794; Cruz, 765 P.2d at 869; see also Ross, 920 P.2d at 1166; Masich, 191 P.2d at 624. Indeed, both this Court and the Legislature have abolished obsolete common law actions, irrespective of their status in 1896, notwithstanding section 11. See, e.g., Norton v. MacFarlane, 818 P.2d 8, 17 (Utah 1991) (tort of criminal conversation abolished); Stoker, 616 P.2d at 591 (intra-family tort immunity partially abolished); Sessions v. Thomas D. Dee Memorial Hosp. Ass'n, 94 Utah 460, 78 P.2d 645 (1938) (tort immunity for charities abolished).
The products liability statute of repose at issue in Berry totally abrogated all legal remedies for persons injured after the statutory repose period elapsed. Because the Legislature provided no alternative remedy, the Court's analysis moved to the second part of the Berry test to determine (a) whether there was a clear social or economic evil to be eliminated and (b) whether the abrogation of legal remedies was an arbitrary or unreasonable means for achieving that objective.
The Legislature asserted justification for the elimination of an injured person's legal remedies by the need to solve what it said was an "insurance premium crisis." Berry, 717 P.2d at 681. This Court held that the abrogation of a person's legal remedies was unconstitutional because the statute of repose was arbitrary and unreasonable in the sense that the statute could not possibly contribute to the solving of the presumed "insurance premium crisis." Id. at 681-82. The statute's abrogation of legal remedies for injuries produced by defective products would not reduce products liability insurance premiums in Utah for the simple reason that insurance premiums for Utah manufacturing companies were based on "nationwide data, not on a manufacturer's experience in Utah." Id. Thus, even a total abrogation of all products liability claims whenever they arose--even if before the running of the statute of repose--would have had no effect on insurance rates in Utah. In truth and fact, the assertion of an insurance crisis in Utah was a pure sham. The legislative finding that the number of claims for damages arising from defective products had increased greatly in recent years was simply factually not true in Utah. A survey of 500 members of the Utah Manufacturers' Association disclosed that only one manufacturer had reported a products liability claim made against it. See id. at 681.
Furthermore, even if, contrary to the fact, there were an "insurance crisis" in Utah, the statute of repose was an arbitrary means for accomplishing the legislative purpose. "The statute does not even purport to approximate an average expected life of the products covered, nor is it based on products that presented particular safety difficulties. It applies alike to toasters, automobiles, road graders, and prescription drugs." Id. The statutory six- and ten-year periods after which all remedies were barred were arbitrary and unreasonable because the statute presumed that the useful life of all products was the same,
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