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Duarte v. State of Arizona11/25/1998
Appellants Raymond Sidoma and Felix Duarte were assigned to a work detail at an Arizona state prison and were injured when they fell from a scaffolding that prison officials had directed them to climb as part of their work. They sued the state for their injuries, and a jury returned verdicts of $100,000 for Duarte and $10,000 for Sidoma, apportioning eighty-five percent of the fault to appellants and fifteen percent to the state. The trial court entered a judgment finding "that the Defendant State of Arizona is entitled to a setoff against each Plaintiff pursuant to A.R.S. § 31-238, in a sum equal to eighty percent of the amount due under the verdict." After reducing the verdicts by the amount of comparative fault the jury had apportioned, the court further reduced appellants' damages by the amount of the setoffs to which the state was entitled under the statute. After making these calculations, the court entered a judgment of $3,000 for Duarte and $300 for Sidoma.
Appellants appeal only from that part of the court's calculations applying § 31-238 and setting off the state's costs of their incarceration against the amounts they had been awarded from the state. Appellants challenge the statute on two constitutional grounds. They do not challenge the trial court's method of calculating the setoff amounts for both past and future incarceration. We affirm.
Equal Protection
Appellants first argue that § 31-238 denies them equal protection of the law. The statute requires the director of the department of corrections to establish a per annum cost of incarcerating criminals and grants the state
"the right to set off the cost of incarceration calculated under subsection A at any time and without prior notice against any claim made by or monetary obligation owed to a person for whom a cost of incarceration can be calculated, except that twenty per cent of any claim or monetary obligation shall be exempt from the provisions of this section." § 31-238(D).
We assume that appellants' challenge to the statute is based on the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution although they have nowhere cited this provision in their brief.
"When reviewing the constitutionality of a statute, we must presume it is constitutional. [A party challenging the constitutionality of a statute] must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that is unconstitutional." Samaritan Health Sys. v. Superior Court, 278 Ariz. Adv. Rep. (Ct. App. September 24, 1998) (citations omitted); see also United States v. Doyan, 909 F.2d 412 (10th Cir. 1990). We review de novo constitutional challenges because they involve questions of law. Little v. All Phoenix S. Community Mental Health Ctr., 186 Ariz. 97, 919 P.2d 1368 (App. 1996).
Fourteenth Amendment equal protection analysis applies one of three tests--the rational relationship test, the strict scrutiny test, and the intermediate or "means scrutiny" test. See, e.g., Kenyon v. Hammer, 142 Ariz. 69, 688 P.2d 961 (1984); Lerma v. Keck, 186 Ariz. 228, 921 P.2d 28 (App. 1996); see also 3 Ronald D. Rotunda and John E. Nowak, Treatise on Constitutional Law § 18.3, n.5 (2d ed. 1992). The parties agree that, because the statute does not apply to any suspect classification and because it burdens no fundamental right, the rational basis or rational relationship test applies. Doyan; see also Beck v. Symington, 972 F. Supp. 532 (D. Ariz. 1997) (equal protection challenge to statute requiring inmates to pay court filing fees subject to rational basis analysis); Gardner v. Wilson, 959 F. Supp. 1224 (C.D. Cal. 1997) (equal protection challenge to statute authorizing inmate to be char
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