Trujillo v. City of Albuquerque
| Decision Date | 10 April 1995 |
| Docket Number | 19118,Nos. 18296,s. 18296 |
| Citation | 119 N.M. 602,893 P.2d 1006,1995 NMSC 27 |
| Parties | Lawrence TRUJILLO, and Lisa M. Rogers, individually and as Personal Representative of the Estate of Crystal Rogers, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. The CITY OF ALBUQUERQUE, Defendant-Appellee. |
| Court | New Mexico Supreme Court |
Duhigg, Cronin & Spring, David Duhigg, Helena Gorochow, Leon Thomas, Albuquerque, for appellant Trujillo.
Freedman, Boyd, Daniels, Peifer, Hollander, Guttmann & Goldberg, Joseph Goldberg, Carpenter & Chavez, William H. Carpenter, David J. Stout, Albuquerque, for appellant Rogers.
Butt, Thornton & Baehr, Emily A. Franke, John A. Klecan, Albuquerque, for appellee City of Albuquerque.
Judith A. Olean, Santa Fe, Sive, Paget & Riesel, Steven Barshov, New York City, for amici curiae N.M. Municipal League and N.M. Self Insurers Fund.
Miller, Stratvert, Torgerson & Schlenker, Alice Tomlinson Lorenz, Nancy Augustus, Albuquerque, for amicus curiae N.M. Medical Society.
An opinion was filed in this case on September 6, 1994. Chief Justice Montgomery authored the opinion. Justice Franchini concurred. Justice Frost filed a special concurrence, joined by Justice Baca. Justice Ransom dissented. On motion for rehearing filed by the Plaintiffs-Petitioners, we now withdraw that opinion. We nonetheless reaffirm the holding of the four-member majority of this Court that, in considering the constitutionality of NMSA 1978, Section 41-4-19(A)(2) (Repl.Pamp.1989) (), the trial court was mistaken in limiting the evidence to facts applicable solely to the City of Albuquerque.
The City had the burden of demonstrating that enforcement of the statutory cap is substantially related to an important state interest. See Richardson v. Carnegie Library Restaurant, 107 N.M. 688, 695, 763 P.2d 1153, 1160 (1988) (). At trial, the district court considered only the City's treasury when evaluating empirical evidence of the relationship of the cap to the protection of public treasuries, as weighed against the individual interest in full recovery. We thus do not have comprehensive empirical evidence of the necessary relationship. As to the existence of a statewide relationship, we remain unwilling to rely on "anecdotal or speculative showings of a fit between means and ends," and on "Brandeis briefs." Trujillo v. City of Albuquerque, 110 N.M. 621, 630, 632, 798 P.2d 571, 580, 582 (1990).
In the withdrawn opinion, only Chief Justice Montgomery and Justice Franchini were of the belief "that we must decide, based on the facts available to us now, aided by the parties' and our own legal research, whether the caps as enacted in 1976 and as potentially...
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1998 -NMSC- 31, Trujillo v. City of Albuquerque
...articulated in Trujillo I, a standard that perhaps was unduly and artificially narrowed in Trujillo v. City of Albuquerque, 119 N.M. 602, 603, 893 P.2d 1006, 1007 (1995) [hereinafter Trujillo II ]. Fairness requires that this Court adhere to the standard under which the current parties were......
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1997 -NMCA- 40, Gallegos v. State Bd. of Educ.
...the parties have stipulated that, if the cap is held unconstitutional after further hearing in Trujillo v. City of Albuquerque, 119 N.M. 602, 603, 893 P.2d 1006, 1007 (1995), the case may be reopened and the judgment amended. Furthermore, Plaintiffs failed to preserve their argument regardi......
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1998 -NMCA- 30, Valdez v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
...based on current medical advances). ¶14 Worker relies on Richardson, 107 N.M. at 698, 763 P.2d at 1163, and Trujillo v. City of Albuquerque, 119 N.M. 602, 893 P.2d 1006 (1995), to support application of the intermediate standard of review. These cases are distinguishable because they concer......