Laakonen v. Eighth Judicial Dist. Court In and For Clark County, 7654

Citation91 Nev. 506,538 P.2d 574
Decision Date31 July 1975
Docket NumberNo. 7654,7654
PartiesRobert W. LAAKONEN, Petitioner, v. The EIGHTH JUDICIAL DISTRICT COURT of the State of Nevada, IN AND FOR the COUNTY OF CLARK, Respondent.
CourtSupreme Court of Nevada

Wiener, Goldwater & Galatz, Gerald M. Gordon and J. Charles Thompson, Las Vegas, for petitioner.

Dickerson, Miles & Pico, Charles H. Wagner, Las Vegas, for respondent.

OPINION

MOWBRAY, Justice:

Petitioner, Robert W. Laakonen, seeks a writ of mandamus directing the district court in and for the County of Clark to grant partial summary judgment in petitioner's civil tort action, by declaring Nevada's automobile guest statutes, NRS 41.180, violative of the equal protection guarantees provided in article 4, section 21, of the Nevada Constitution and the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. For the reasons stated below, we find the petition meritorious and order the issuance of the writ sought.

1. On January 31, 1970, Petitioner Laakonen, while riding as a passenger in a borrowed automobile driven by Terry Lynn Floyd, suffered severe injuries, including brain damage, the loss of memory, learning loss, loss of partial use of the right side of his body, and disfiguration, when the automobile collided with a tractor trailer. Laakonen subsequently filed a tort action, alleging negligence on the part of Floyd. Floyd responded with the affirmative defense that Laakonen was a 'guest', and not a 'paying passenger', and is barred by NRS 41.180 from recovery. 1 Laakonen then filed a motion for partial summary judgment, asking the district court to declare NRS 41.180 unconstitutional under the Equal protection Clause of both the Nevada and United States Constitutions. The district judge denied the motion; hence this original petition for mandamus. 2

NRS 41.180 statutorily bars an automobile 'guest' passenger from any recovery for injury attributable to negligent driving by his host. 3 As a result, this statute denies a defined class of persons, passengers who give no compensation for their ride who are injured by their host's negligence, the right afforded to other classes of tort victims to recover for negligently inflicted injuries. Laakonen argues that this establishes a discriminatory treatment which conflicts with the equal protection guarantees of our State and Federal Constitutions. We agree.

2. Article 4, Section 21, of the Nevada Constitution provides in pertinent part that 'all laws shall be general and of uniform operation throughout the State.' The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution mandates that no state may 'deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.' Under Federal and State equal protection provisions, a statute may single out a class for distinctive treatment only if such classification bears a rational relation to the purposes of the legislation. In Reed v. Reed, 404 U.S. 71, 75--76, 92 S.Ct. 251, 253, 30 L.Ed.2d 225 (1971), the United States Supreme Court stated: 'The Equal Protection Clause of . . . (the Fourteenth) (A)mendment . . . den(ies) to States the power to legislate that different treatment be accorded to persons placed by a statute into different classes on the basis of criteria wholly unrelated to the objective of that statute. A classification 'must be reasonable, not arbitrary, and must rest upon some ground of difference having a fair and substantial relation to the object of the legislation, so that all persons similarly circumstanced shall be treated alike.' (Cite omitted.)' When a statute provides that one class shall receive different treatment from another, the Federal Constitution 'requires more of a state law than nondiscriminatory application within the class it establishes. (Cite omitted.) It also imposes a requirement of some rationality in the nature of the class singled out.' Rinaldi v. Yeager, 384 U.S. 305, 308--309, 86 S.Ct. 1497, 1499, 76 L.Ed.2d 577 (1966). See also Glona v. American Guar. & Liab. Ins. Co., 391 U.S. 73, 75, 88 S.Ct. 1515, 20 L.Ed.2d 441 (1968) (applying the rational basis test in striking down a Louisiana wrongful death statute). Interpreting the Nevada, as well as the Federal, provisions, this court summarily ruled in Doubles Ltd. v. Gragson, 91 Nev. ---, ---, 535 P.2d 677, 679 (1975): 'Equal protection is offended if the prohibition against corporate licensing is an unreasonable classification without basis in fact, and unrelated to the objective sought to be accomplished. (Cite omitted.)' Accord, Boyne v. State ex rel. Dickerson, 80 Nev. 160, 390 P.2d 225 (1964), where this court set forth a requirement of rationality in the nature of the class singled out.

3. In the recent case of Brown v. Merlo, 8 Cal.3d 855, 106 Cal.Rptr. 388, 506 P.2d 212 (1973), the California Supreme Court held the California automobile guest statute to be unconstitutional as violative of the equal protection clauses of the California and United States Constitutions. In its analysis of the California statute, the court described the three distinct levels of classification or discrimination that the statute establishes. It treats paying passengers differently from automobile guests, precluding those who ride without giving compensation from recovery for negligence; it treats automobile guests differently from other social guests; and it distinguishes between different subclasses of automobile guests, withholding recovery from those guests injured while in the vehicle during the ride while upon a public highway, but permitting recovery by guests coming within the statutory 'loopholes'. In addressing itself to the rationales advanced in support of the guest statute, the court, in Brown, stated, 106 Cal.Rptr. at 390--391, 506 P.2d at 214--215:

'. . . (T)wo distinct justifications--(1) the protection of hospitality and (2) the elimination of collusive lawsuits--have traditionally been proffered to support the guest statute's operation. Upon analysis, however, neither justification constitutes a rational basis for the differential treatment actually accorded by the statute's classification scheme. . . . (T)he 'protection of hospitality' rationale exhibits a number of fatal defects: first, this rationale fails to explain why the statute accords differential treatment to automobile guests as distinguished from all other guests or, indeed, all other recipients of hospitality or generosity; second, it fails to explain, in light of recent developments in comparable legal doctrine, how such an interest in protecting hospitality can rationally justify the withdrawal of legal protection from guests; and finally, it completely ignores the prevalence of liability insurance coverage today, a factual development which largely undermines any rational connection between the prevention of suits and the protection of hospitality.

'The 'prevention of collusion' rationale is similarly inadequate to justify, in equal protection terms, the elimination of all automobile guests' right to recover for negligence. Although the guest statute may prevent some collusive suits connived by automobile drivers and their passengers to defraud insurers, the enactment's classification scheme is far too gross and overinclusive to be justified by this end since the statute bars the great majority of valid suits along with fraudulent claims. On numerous occasions in the recent past this court has held similar 'anti-collusion' justifications insufficient to support significantly narrower classification schemes; the wholesale elimination of all guests' causes of action for negligence does not treat similarly situated persons equally, but instead improperly discriminates against guests on the basis of a factor which bears no significant relation to actual collusion.

'Finally, the irrationality of the guest statute's classifications is aggravated by a series of limiting statutory 'loopholes,' which fortuitously stay the operation of the statute under a variety of diverse, illogical circumstances. Although in specific cases such statutory quirks may work to ameliorate the harsh consequences of the general provision, these numerous exceptions when viewed in toto produce an absurd and illogical pattern which completely drains the statute of any rationality it might conceivably claim. In light of all these circumstances, we have concluded that the automobile guest statute must succumb to the constitutional demand of rationality imposed by our state and federal Constitutions.'

The Nevada automobile guest statute produces the same discriminations found in the California statute. The justifications propounded in support of the Nevada statute are identical to those discussed in Brown.

4. NRS 41.180 has been upheld in the past on the grounds that a generous host should be protected from suit by an ungrateful guest and that public policy is served by such a limitation. Kuser v. Barengo, 70 Nev. 66, 254 P.2d 447 (1953). We can no longer accept the notion that there is a rational relation between promotion of hospitality and removal of liability for negligent injury of another.

In discussing this public policy, Dean Prosser observed in his Law of Torts, § 34, at 187 (4th ed. 1971):

'. . . Essentially, however, the theory of the acts is that one who receives a gratuitous favor in the form of a free ride has no right to demand that his host shall exercise ordinary care not to injure him. The typical guest act case is that of the driver who offers his friend a lift to the office or invites him out to dinner, negligently drives him into a collision, and fractures his skull--after which the driver and his insurance company take refuge in the statute, step out of the picture, and leave the guest to bear his own loss. If this is good social policy, it at least appears under a novel front.' (Footnote omitted.)

The Michigan Supreme Court, in illustrating the extent of the irrationality of the...

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