Court Opinion

ID: 9670632
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 03:23:46.599766+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:05.790568
License: Public Domain

HENDERSON, Justice
(concurring in result).
I concur in the totality of this opinion with the exception of an obvious attempt to ingratiate already settled law by employing a quotation of the author’s dissent in Guthmiller v. Dept. of Transp., 502 N.W.2d 586 (S.D.1993).
The clearly erroneous rule, a scope of review announced in previous cases by this Court, was set forth in the majority opinion in Guthmiller (quoting Caldwell v. John Morrell & Co., 489 N.W.2d 353 (S.D.1992)).*
The majority writer in the case before us quotes a portion of his dissent in Guthmiller; that portion of his dissent in Guthmiller was actually in accord with the majority opinion in Guthmiller on the scope of review and previous decisions in this Court. However, it is perfectly obvious that the dissent in Guth-miller inappropriately weighed the evidence, at the appellate level, and determined that Guthmiller had established his case, whereas four Justices held that “Guthmiller simply failed to prove his case for the reason that his own doctors could not substantiate a causal connection between the wrist injury and his claimed diabetic neuropathy.” Guth-miller was bound by his own doctor’s testimony.

 Justice Sabers joined the "clearly erroneous test” in Day v. John Morrell & Co., 490 N.W.2d 720 (S.D.1992), a unanimous decision. He authored Shepherd v. Moorman Mfg., 467 N.W.2d 916 (S.D.1991), a unanimous opinion supporting the same rule.