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Tindley v. Salt Lake City School District5/17/2005
e open courts clause provides citizens of Utah the "right to a remedy for an injury." Judd ex rel. Montgomery v. Drezga, 2004 UT 91, 10, 103 P.3d 135. In Laney v. Fairview City, 2002 UT 79, 57 P.3d 1007, we declared that "the plain meaning of the [open courts clause] 'imposes some substantive limitation on the legislature['s ability] to abolish judicial remedies in a capricious fashion.'" Id. at 30 (quoting Craftsman Builder's Supply, Inc. v. Butler Mfg. Co., 1999 UT 18, 33, 974 P.2d 1194 (Stewart, J., concurring)). In Berry ex rel. Berry v. Beech Aircraft Corp., 717 P.2d 670 (Utah 1985), we stated that the basic purpose of Article I, section 11 is to impose some limitation on [the legislature's] power for the benefit of those persons who are injured in their persons, property, or reputations since they are generally isolated in society, belong to no identifiable group, and rarely are able to rally the political process to their aid.
Id. at 676. In other words, the open courts clause provides more than procedural protections; it also secures substantive rights, thereby restricting the legislature's ability to abrogate remedies provided by law.
The District asks us to overrule this interpretation of the open courts clause, first announced in the Berry decision. Under the doctrine of stare decisis, the District assumes the "substantial burden" of convincing us that "the rule was originally erroneous or is no longer sound because of changing conditions and that more good than harm will come by departing from precedent." Laney, 2002 UT 79 at 45 (internal quotations omitted).
We recently have declined similar invitations to overrule the Berry interpretation. For instance, in Laney, we held that Berry was not erroneously decided; rather, its "analytical model . . . was established only after a thorough analysis of Utah's case law regarding the open courts provision and the case law and history of other states with similar provisions." Id. at 46. Additionally, we opined that overruling Berry's interpretation of the open courts clause "can only do harm to our constitution and to the delicate balance of process it creates." Id. at 47; see also Judd, 2004 UT 91 at 11 ("The Attorney General invites us to disavow our Berry line of cases . . . . This we decline to do.").
The District nevertheless suggests that we should abandon Berry's interpretation of the open courts clause because several states have adopted a definition contrary to ours when interpreting similar provisions. Although the District has taken great care in detailing the states that have adopted this differing view, we previously have stated, and now reaffirm, that the meaning of our open courts clause is not dependent upon another state's interpretation of a similar provision. Rather, "we should rely on our own state history and precedent to determine the purpose and meaning of article I, section 11's protection." Laney, 2002 UT 79 at 32. Because the District has failed to meet its burden of demonstrating either that Berry was erroneously decided or that a change in conditions now makes its holding unsound, we decline its invitation to overrule Berry.
Although the open courts clause protects both substantive and procedural rights, the clause is not an absolute guarantee of all substantive rights. Rather, it applies only to legislation which "abrogates a cause of action existing at the time of its enactment." Id. at 50. The legislature thus remains free to abrogate or limit claims that could not have been brought under then-existing law. Claims barred by the doctrine of governmental immunity are an example of this principle. In DeBry v. Noble, 889 P.2d 428 (Utah 1995), we noted
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