Court Opinion

ID: 9548536
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:05:06.110553+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:19:06.052035
License: Public Domain

DISSENTING OPINION OE
KOBAYASHI, J.
I dissent.
The majority opinion is tantamount to the Supreme Court taking judicial notice and subscribing to the absolute truth and correctness of the various scientific propositions mentioned in the majority opinion. Yet none of the relied upon scientific principles, texts and articles were admitted into evidence. The trial is barren of any testimony supporting the validity of the alleged scientific principles relied upon by the majority of the court. None of the principles, texts and articles were subjected to the fire of cross-examination in the trial court. Furthermore, the parties were never given the opportunity to brief this court in connection with any scientific principles, texts or articles that may be available.
The majority has concluded that the trial court has committed prejudicial error. Yet none of the cited scientific authorities, relied upon by the majority, deal with or resolve the following crucial questions:
1. Can a relevant inference of paternity be legitimately drawn from the child’s appearance, complexion, and features?
2. If the answer is yes, is the jury capable of drawing such an inference by viewing the child?
The various jurisdictions throughout our nation are in considerable disharmony in their answers to the questions. In our jurisdiction the courts have a long history of per*607mitting the jury to view the child. Thus, when the various jurisdictions are in such conflict and if our long-standing practice of exhibiting the child is to be reversed, a new law can better be developed if this appellate court, a court that is not a fact-finding body, provides the necessary impetus, direction, and requirement for the trial court to adduce all necessary seientific-oriented evidence and testimony to determine what are the proper and correct facts in answer to the questions above stated.
The method employed in the majority opinion endangers the proper growth of a possibly good law and also slants the course or direction taken by the law. Furthermore, the majority opinion effects a distinct and unwarranted invasion into the province of the trial court.
The majority opinion poses another question, a question which has never been resolved in an adversary hearing in this jurisdiction, to-wit: Is a scientifically trained expert the only person capable of drawing the proper inference of paternity from the child’s appearance, complexion, and features?
The majority, in effect, says “yes” to that question. Here, again the majority opinion effects an unwarranted and dangerous invasion into the province of the trial court.
In the present case the evidence adduced was heavily weighted in petitioner’s favor. The pi*evarications of the defendant are obvious from a reading of the transcript of his own testimony. Yet by creating a new legal concept the majority opinion disregards the harmless error rule1 and *608subjects the petitioner, the witnesses, if they are alive and can be located within the jurisdiction, and the overworked trial court to another expensive and time consuming ride on the legal merry-go-round. The petitioner here pays a heavy toll for the majority’s retroactively applied experiment in judicial legislation.
It is indeed regrettable that the ruling of the majority is not a prospective one giving the trial court the opportunity to really court-test the scientific approach and principles that the majority say are the absolute truth in the field of paternity.

 H.R.C.P. Rule 61 provides:
“No error in either the admission or the exclusion of evidence and no error or defect in any ruling or order or in anything done or omitted by the court or by any of the parties is ground for granting a new trial or for setting aside a verdict or for vacating, modifying, or otherwise disturbing a judgment or order, unless refusal to take such action appears to the court inconsistent with substantial justice. The court at every stage of the proceeding must disregard any error or defect in the proceeding which does not affect the substantial rights of the parties.” (Emphasis added)