Court Opinion

ID: 9794134
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 03:00:09.926759+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:12:21.213978
License: Public Domain

*941OPALA, Justice,
with whom ALMA WILSON, C.J., joins, concurring in result.
The court holds that venue, once rightly laid at nisi prius, may not be changed, sua sponte, by a judge who deems another county in this State to provide a more convenient trial situs. Because I continue to counsel, with undiminished fervor, that all intrastate transfers for mere convenience are unauthorized by our statutory venue regime and should be permitted only when the defendant invokes (and is found entitled’to) the protection of a threatened fundamental-law guarantee (e.g., that of fair trial or of some other valued element of due process), I concur solely in today’s disposition but not in the court’s pronouncement. For a detailed analysis in my earlier assault upon the legitimacy of the so-called intrastate forum non conve-niens doctrine, see Kennedy v. Henderson, Okl., 794 P.2d 754 (1990) (Opala, V.C.J., dissenting).
I would today declare that rightly-laid venue of an action may not be changed to another county in this State, either sua sponte or on motion, merely to meet the defendant’s convenience.