Opinion ID: 1413966
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: part x (a) of accolades

Text: Working with Justice Johnson on Horton's case has been for me the ultimate in collegiality  a characteristic which in an appellate court is beneficial to the litigants and to advancing the science of jurisprudence. To him by the luck of the draw fell the assignment of authoring the Court's opinion in Horton  a very complex case. As often as he wrote, I, with almost thirteen years of working with the cases coming up on appeal since the 1971 recodification, felt obliged to respond with suggestions and critiques. In turn Justice Johnson was responsive to my input, and has expressed appreciation, for which I am grateful. His opinion as presently written presents much with which I agree. There is, however, which by now is readily apparent to the reader, one proposition therein to which I am unable to subscribe, namely, according stare decisis effect to a holding in the Royce case. That holding is a holding because this Court acts through a majority of three. Three votes on this Court can do most anything. As a general principle where a holding has been made, so I suppose, that holding may be utilized without giving any consideration as to its validity. After all it represents three votes. In the Royce case it represented four votes  one from the author and three from those who concurred in the author's opinion. Only because of Royce do I part company with Justice Johnson and write my own opinion. We are obviously of two different philosophies. Anytime I see a case, such as Royce, where the opinion alters statutory law, my appetite for more information is whetted. In my dissenting Royce opinion I expressed amazement that the Royce author was amending the workers' compensation law. My lament there was a natural one. That change made a shambles of the law, and indeed effected a nullification of the provisions of I.C. § 72-332 dealing with the concerns of a worker who suffers a job-related injury and as a result of that injury plus a preexisting condition is totally and permanently disabled, and, not able to return to his former job by reason of such circumstances, is indeed a handicapped person seeking reemployment. As to the author's citation of Cox as support for this change in the legislature's law, like the others on the Court, I relied on the author's integrity. On discovering that my reliance was misplaced, it has become an outright impossibility to join an opinion which cites Royce as authority for depriving a worker or a surety of that which is legally due under I.C. § 72-332 as enacted, and before improper judicial tinkering. Basically I am waiting for some member of the Court to step forward and furnish a justification for the Royce aberration.