Court Opinion

ID: 9539567
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:06:07.567155+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:58:58.173369
License: Public Domain

MOSK, J., Concurring and Dissenting.
I concur in the judgment and in most of the analysis. But I cannot join the majority in unnecessarily reaching out to overrule a decision of this court that has been the prevailing law for almost 30 years.
Pigeon Point Ranch, Inc. v. Perot (1963) 59 Cal.2d 227 [28 Cal.Rptr. 865, 379 P.2d 321], was authored by Chief Justice Gibson and concurred in by Justices Traynor, McComb, Peters, Tobriner, Peek, and White. I doubt that we are more competent to determine the rather simple rule of law involved than was one of the most distinguished courts in California history. Its opinion was sound when written, and three decades later it is not an obstacle to the result in the instant case.
According to Pigeon Point, law of the case is subject to “the requirements that the point of law involved must have been necessary to the prior decision, that the matter must have been actually presented and determined by the court, and that application of the doctrine will not result in an unjust decision.” (59 Cal.2d at p. 231.)
The foregoing was a practical rule then, and it is equally practical now. As Pigeon Point expressly declared, the fact that “law of the case will not be *902applied so as to do an injustice will be ample protection to the parties if any unfairness would result.” (59 Cal.2d at p. 232.)
Pigeon Point would in no way prevent the result properly reached in the matter before us. Unnecessarily overruling that venerable authority is counterproductive to stability in the law.