Court Opinion

ID: 9854102
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:00:53.191382+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:22:55.763908
License: Public Domain

Evans, Judge,
concurring specially.
The majority opinion feels we should overrule a certain case in order to reach the opinion we have in this case. But the Supreme Court has recently rewritten the law and it now becomes unnecessary to overrule any previous decision in any case. Simply see that "justice” is done, and forget earlier cases which may contradict or contravene the decision being reached in the case before the court. "Stability must give way to justice.” So, we mourn the passing of stare decisis but wonder whether the pallbearers were capable of bearing the weight of the deceased as they marched with it to the cemetery.
The late Charlie Bloch, for many years recognized as *698one of the leading lawyers in Georgia, and who had as much to do with holding the Georgia Bar Association together as did any living man, writing in Georgia Bar Journal, issue of November, 1960, Volume 22, had these strong words to say as to the rule of stare decisis, quoting from and endorsing Judge Hutcheson of the Federal Bench: ".. . With respect to the doctrine of stare decisis— which gives some degree of certainty and continuity to the law, that doctrine without which there is no rule of law but rule of men who happen at a given time to be able authoritatively to expound their views, and impose their will upon others.”
In Hall v. Hopper, 234 Ga. 625, 631 (216 SE2d 839), our present Supreme Court of Georgia, or four of the seven members, has spit in the face of stare decisis, cast it aside, and thrown it out the window. What wisdom! What audacity! What whimsy!