Court Opinion

ID: 9581891
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:20:09.840896+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:37:19.304549
License: Public Domain

BISTLINE, Justice,
concurring in the opinion of HUNTLEY, Justice.
It has become apparent that not even one of the three members constituting the ma*497jority commanded by Justice Bakes’ opinion has any inclination to attempt dispelling the views which Justice Huntley has espoused in his dissenting opinion, and likewise with the views in mine.
This presents, then, a sad commentary on the supposed science of jurisprudence in Idaho. As I have pointed out on earlier occasions, when there is a dissenting opinion in other jurisdictions, including the Supreme Court of the United States, those in the majority — being in the position of making new law, or destroying old law — ordinarily are very conscientious in explaining away what is by the majority perceived to be the fallacy of the dissenting views.
Here, however, those in the majority make not the slightest response. Instead they have chosen to stonewall the dissenting opinions. This is not acceptable. The trial bar and the litigants are entitled to know by what logic those in the majority can undo the law of the case which was made in Vernon I. Where nothing has been forthcoming it becomes shamefully obvious that no one in today’s majority possesses the fortitude to even attempt an explanation.
What the trial bar and the citizenry of Idaho see today is a clear example of the damage which can be wrought in the judicial system whenever three Supreme Court Justices indulge in a power struggle born of the proposition that three beats two. This case, though important to Mrs. Vernon, was not that important that three members of the Court should find it necessary to shatter the underpinnings of a doctrine of law that has not heretofore been questioned in the slightest. For just one example of this Court in action in better days, see State v. Monroe, 101 Idaho 251, 611 P.2d 1036 (1980) where the lead and larger portion of the majority opinion was written by one justice, with another justice writing on but one issue in the case. We never doubted that there were in Monroe two majority opinions. The only distinction between Monroe and Vernon II is that, because of clerical inadvertence, we were not made aware when the opinions issued that Justice Pro Tern Bengston had joined Justice Huntley’s opinion. But he had, and the latter opinion wa,s a second majority opinion. The distinction is one without a difference. As a matter of fact probably a goodly share of this Court’s opinion come about in that manner. Ordinarily, where there is another opinion which also commands a majority, it is usually tendered to the author of the lead opinion (ordinarily determined by the luck of the draw) who willingly incorporates it into what he has written.