Court Opinion

ID: 9525594
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 03:05:21.930671+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:15:46.597905
License: Public Domain

CONOVER, Judge,
concurring in result.
While I concur with the majority that Harkrider's calculated pursuit of this series of appeals, designed to bankrupt Pearl's estate, is unconscionable and a contemptuous flaunting of our appellate process, I cannot agree with the mild sanctions imposed upon Harkrider. In addition to remanding the cause for imposition of punitive damages for the costs incurred by the estate, I believe this court, under Ind. Appellate Rule 15(G), is additionally obligated to discipline such utterly contemptuous behavior. Harkrider was a person skilled in the law who used our appellate process as a weapon, not as a tool for seeking legitimate remedial relief. Such calculated, contemptuous indifference to the rights of his opponents, to the legitimate purposes for which the right of appeal exists, and to the equitable conservation of judicial time at all levels demands much sterner punishment, I believe.
In that light, I would impose personally upon Harkrider and his estate an additional civil penalty in the sum of $150,000, to be paid directly to the clerk of the Tippecanoe Circuit Court, the same to be proportionately paid, subject to additional attorney fees *46to be approved by that court, by the clerk to the heirs and distributees of the estate of Pearl C. Posey and the estate of Floyd Wilcox according to the plan of distribution approved heretofore by that court in said estates, as additional punishment for such outrageous conduct, and to deter similar conduct by others so inclined in the future.