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Greenwalt v. Ram Restaurant Corp. of Wyoming6/26/2003
s that the statute is neither special legislation that provides absolute immunity to liquor vendors nor a law that abolishes a well-recognized common law cause of action. Noting that the common law rule is one of non-liability for liquor vendors, Ram asserts that the statute modifies this non-liability rule by creating a cause of action against those persons violating the extensive mandates governing sales and service of alcoholic beverages found in Title 12 of the Wyoming statutes. Ram states that the purpose of the open courts provision is to guarantee access to the courts for the administration of justice for recognized rights that have a known remedy and argues that the Greenwalts' contentions concerning the open courts provision amount to a request that this Court determine that there is a fundamental right to sue anyone who allegedly causes injury or death. Ram warns that such a determination would remove all limitations from tort actions and preclude the legislature from altering, repealing, or restricting the common law within constitutional bounds.
Our treatment proceeds along the following lines. First, it reviews this Court's past common law decisions involving liquor vendor liability because they provide an important historical and analytical backdrop for consideration of the constitutional questions. Next, it reviews the nature and scope of the legislative department's exercise of its police power in its central law-making role under our form of government. Then, it explains the legislative department's exercise of its police power in its 1985 enactment and subsequent 1986 amendment of § 301 which codified and then expanded the common law decisions of this Court thus creating a statutory tort cause of action for victims of the tortious behavior of intoxicated consumers unlawfully furnished intoxicating liquor by liquor providers. It parses § 301 and explains its elements. Next, it reviews the heavy burden that must be carried by a litigant who challenges the constitutionality of a statute. In this review, we identify and comment on the pertinent court access and equal protection guarantees located within the provisions of the United States and Wyoming Constitutions. Next, it reviews the elements of the rational basis test used in equal protection analysis. Finally, it applies those elements to § 301 in order to determine whether that section passes or fails equal protection muster.
As we begin our review, we accept, as do all members of the judicial department, that decision-making in response to a constitutional challenge to a product of the legislative and executive departments of our state government is a burden profoundly felt by the judicial department which is invested under our constitution with the responsibility to resolve the challenge. This Court cannot refuse to bear that burden. Such is the special nature of the judicial enterprise. Of that, Justice Stephen Breyer has written
hat enterprise, Chief Justice Marshall explained, may call upon a judge to decide "between the Government and the man whom that Government is prosecuting; between the most powerful individual in the community and the poorest and most unpopular." Independence of conscience, freedom from subservience to other Government authorities, is necessary to the enterprise.
Williams v. United States, 535 U.S. 911, 921, 122 S.Ct. 1221, 1227, 152 L.Ed.2d 153 (2002) (Breyer, J., dissenting, with whom Scalia and Kennedy, JJ., join) (citation omitted). As Justice Breyer explains, judges, who are often called upon to answer our society's thorniest legal questions where a constitution demands it, should not be moved by potential adverse public opinion, whichever way it might cut. Id. at 9
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