Gladstone v. BARTLESVILLE INDEPENDENT SCH. DISTRICT

• Citation: 66 P.3d 442,2003 OK 30
• Decision Date: 18 March 2003
• Docket Number: No. 97,544.,97,544.
• Parties: Elaine Desouza GLADSTONE, As Special Administratrix of the Estate of Martin John Gladstone, and As the Widow of Martin John Gladstone, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. BARTLESVILLE INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 30 (I-30), Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: Supreme Court of Oklahoma

66 P.3d 442

2003 OK 30

Elaine Desouza GLADSTONE, As Special Administratrix of the Estate of Martin John Gladstone, and As the Widow of Martin John Gladstone, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. BARTLESVILLE INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 30 (I-30), Defendant-Appellee.

No. 97,544.

Supreme Court of Oklahoma.

March 18, 2003.

Alan R. Carlson, William W. Busby, Garrison, Brown, Carlson, Buchanan & Busby, Bartlesville, OK, for Appellant.

Frederick J. Hegenbart, Rosenstein, Fist & Ringold, Tulsa, OK, for Appellee.¹

OPALA, V.C.J.

¶ 1 The dispositive issue on certiorari is whether the terms of § 155(14)² of the Governmental Tort Claims Act [GTCA]—which exclude from state tort liability claims for death (or bodily injury) from an on-the-job injury covered by workers' compensation but extend government's tort accountability to claims by persons with access to collateral sources of indemnity other than workers' compensation (and employer's liability)— violate (1) the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution and the equal treatment notions protected by the state constitution and (2) the Due Process Clauses in both the Oklahoma and the U.S. Constitutions? We answer in the negative.

I THE ANATOMY OF LITIGATION

¶ 2 Martin John Gladstone [decedent] was killed when struck by a school bus driven by an employee of the Bartlesville Independent School District No. 30 [District]. Decedent's widow, Elaine Desousa Gladstone [Gladstone or widow], received the statutory workers' compensation death benefits³ from the decedent's employer, Phillips Petroleum Company. Gladstone then brought a wrongful death action against District. The trial court gave summary judgment to District. The latter's quest for summary relief stood rested on § 155(14) of the GTCA [subdiv. 14],⁴ whose terms shield the state or political subdivision from liability for "any loss to any person covered by any workers' compensation act."⁵ Finding the facts to be undisputed (and inferentially not supportive of opposite inferences), the trial court concluded (a) the case is governed by Childs v. State of Oklahoma⁶ and Smith v. State Dept. of Transportation⁷ as well as by Art. 23 § 7, Okl. Const.,⁸ (b) there is a rational basis for the governing legislation, (c) no fundamental right of the plaintiff is violated and (d) the GTCA immunizes District from liability because the plaintiff's loss is protected by workers' compensation coverage.

¶ 3 The Court of Civil Appeals [COCA] affirmed, noting that Gladstone's equal protection challenge stands rejected by extant jurisprudence.⁹ While it viewed Gladstone's arguments as both rational and persuasive, the appellate court declined her invitation to follow Minnesota¹⁰ authority and to strike down subdiv. 14 as constitutionally infirm.

¶ 4 Although we reach today the same conclusion as COCA, we vacate that court's opinion to settle the point of law by a precedential pronouncement.

II STANDARD OF REVIEW

¶ 5 The material facts in this cause are undisputed and support but a single inference in favor of the movant.¹¹ The issues tendered on certiorari call solely for this court's resolution of legal questions. Review of contested issues of law is governed by a de novo standard.¹² In its re-examination of a trial court's legal rulings an appellate court exercises plenary, independent and nondeferential authority.¹³

III CONSTITUTIONALITY OF THE SUBDIV. 14 EXEMPTION

¶ 6 Gladstone asserts that the subdiv. 14 contravenes the (a) Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amend., U.S. Const.,¹⁴ as well as the equal treatment notions protected by the state constitution¹⁵ and (b) the Due Process Clauses of both the Oklahoma and the U.S. Constitutions.¹⁶

A. Equal Protection Challenge

¶ 7 Gladstone argues that subdiv. 14 violates the equal protection guarantee because there is no rational basis for a classification that impermissibly excludes from state tort liability all claims for on-the-job bodily injuries (or death) which are covered by compensation but not the claims in which the plaintiff may have access to a collateral indemnity source much more generous than that afforded by the workers' compensation regime. She urges that subdiv. 14 has not been tested by extant jurisprudence for constitutional conformity on the ground she presses. According to Gladstone, Childs¹⁷ is factually distinguishable. There subdiv. 14 was attacked as offensive to equal treatment either for (a) Texas and Oklahoma citizens or for (c) governmental and nongovernmental employees. She claims Smith¹⁸ provides no support for District's position because there the court relied solely on Childs without providing an independent equal protection analysis. She directs us to Bernthal v. City of St. Paul¹⁹ where a similar exemption was condemned as constitutionally infirm. Gladstone urges the court to adopt the Minnesota solution.

¶ 8 District asserts that Gladstone has identified no reason for this court to depart from precedent established in Childs and Smith.²⁰ According to District, West Virginia jurisprudence upheld an exemption similar to subdiv. 14²¹ and expressly rejected the argument Gladstone presses here. We are urged to adopt the rationale of West Virginia and uphold the validity of the legislation in contest.

¶ 9 The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment mandates that no state "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."²² An "equal protection analysis requires strict scrutiny of a legislative classification only when the classification impermissibly interferes with the exercise of a fundamental right [such as the right to vote, the right of interstate travel, rights guaranteed by the First Amendment, or the right to procreate] or operates to the peculiar disadvantage of a suspect class [such as a class based on race, alienage or ancestry]."²³ Although not an absolute guarantee of equality of operation or application of state legislation, the Equal Protection Clause is intended to safeguard the quality of governmental treatment against arbitrary discrimination. Economic legislation—like that tendered for testing here—which is not drawn upon inherently suspect classifications or impinges upon anyone's fundamental rights must generally be upheld against an equal protection attack²⁴ when the legislative means are rationally related to a legitimate governmental purpose.²⁵

¶ 10 It is not urged here that the challenged scheme is drawn upon some inherently suspect classification. Nor does our research find that governmental tort claimants have ever been held to form a protected class entitled to a heightened standard of review. Gladstone claims that subdiv. 14 arbitrarily and unfairly burdens a fundamental right— the right to life²⁶ as well as stifles the exercise of a fundamental personal liberty—that of obtaining redress from a governmental tortfeasor. ¶ 11 While the U.S. Supreme Court has examined "right-to-life" issues in other contexts,²⁷ Gladstone has presented nothing to show that bringing a wrongful death action against a governmental tortfeasor is a fundamental right for federal equal protection purposes. Because there is no federal supreme court jurisprudence which imposes upon the states some canonical regime of constitutionally acceptable public tort liability,²⁸ we must decline today either (a) to craft a mandate in advance of the highest court's authoritative pronouncement or (b) to hold that the legislature's exclusion from state tort liability of persons similarly situated to the decedent arbitrarily impinges upon a fundamental value.

Rational-Basis Review

¶ 12 Because we are dealing here neither with a suspect classification nor with an infringement upon a fundamental right, the rational-basis standard of review governs this dispute.²⁹ Rational-basis scrutiny is a highly deferential standard that proscribes only that which clearly lies beyond the outer limit of a legislature's power.³⁰ A statutory classification is constitutional under rational-basis scrutiny so long as "there is any reasonably conceivable state of facts that could provide a rational basis for the classification."³¹ The rational-basis review in equal protection analysis "is not a license for courts to judge the wisdom, fairness, or logic of legislative choices."³² For these reasons, legislative bodies are generally "presumed to have acted within their constitutional power despite the fact that, in practice, their laws result in some inequality."³³

The Legislative Objective Of § 155(14) Immunity

¶ 13 The common-law doctrine of governmental tort immunity protects public funds from claims by private persons.Vanderpool v. State³⁴ abrogated Oklahoma's judge-made source of that doctrine and left unaffected the legislature's power to regulate the entire field of governmental tort liability. The legislature then enacted a modified form of sovereign immunity into the body of statutory law and waived its shield against liability (of the state and its political subdivisions) "only to the extent and in the manner provided in" the Act. Subject only to the Act's specific limitations and exceptions, the GTCA extends governmental accountability to all torts for which a private person or entity would be liable. The legislature kept in force certain forms of immunity from liability by providing in § 155 thirty-two³⁵ carefully circumscribed exemptions. Section 155(14) of the GTCA affords immunity to a governmental subdivision for claims of bodily injury or death from an on-the-job injury which are "covered by any workers' compensation act or any employer's liability act." In short, while the state and political subdivisions are not liable for injuries to tort claimants who stand covered by the workers' compensation regime, they are legally accountable for the injuries to tort claimants not otherwise protected.³⁶

¶ 14 The hardship Gladstone complains of is the arguable unfairness in treating governmental tort claimants who are covered...