Court Opinion

ID: 9509301
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-06 21:45:03.014459+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:07:47.581434
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE GRAY
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. My objection is a procedural, rather than a substantive, one. It relates, however, to the critical importance of maintaining our system of administrative law and the manner in which that system interrelates with the judicial system.
My concern with the Court’s decision here is that § 2-4-701, MCA, permits immediate judicial review of an interlocutory agency action or ruling only under the specified condition that review of the final agency decision would not provide an adequate remedy. The importance of this statute in our system of administrative law cannot be overstated; thus, in my view, district courts must address applications for immediate judicial review with extraordinary care. To me, this means that the district courts must perform a particularized analysis of a party’s entitlement to immediate judicial review under the facts of the case before it. In turn, such an analysis would provide this Court with a sufficient basis to review whether the district court’s action in granting immediate judicial review pursuant to § 2-4-701, MCA, was appropriate in a given case.
The District Court’s bare conclusion here that “[i]t is appropriate” to review the agency’s action is insufficient. It provides the appealing party with nothing to argue from and, at the same time, provides this Court with an inadequate means of review.
*174In affirming the District Court without requiring an analysis on this critical question, this Court undertakes to provide the initial analysis of whether immediate judicial review was available. Thus, we not only gut any requirement that the party seeking immediate review affirmatively establish entitlement to such review under § 2-4-701, MCA, we also permit the district courts to take entirely too cavalier an approach to this important issue.
I do not suggest that the District Court here did not have in mind the basis for its conclusion that immediate judicial review was appropriate; I suggest only that it is not possible either to know what that basis is or to properly perform this Court’s review function. I would require in this important area, as we require in almost every conceivable situation, that the district courts both perform and provide an analysis in support of the conclusion that immediate judicial review is appropriate. I would remand this case to the District Court and direct it to do so.
JUSTICE HARRISON joins in the foregoing dissent of JUSTICE GRAY.