Court Opinion

ID: 9543520
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:46:05.022379+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:10:30.472384
License: Public Domain

BISTLINE, Justice,
concurring in part, and dissenting in part. .
This is another of an increasing number 0f cases where a highly qualified district judge has made a judicial determination accepting the jury’s decision, only to find that a five-member appellate court ingloriously and disingenuously elects to interfere.
I can concur in Part I and Part II of the majority opinion. I dissent in part as to Part III, particularly as to the citing of Linscott v. Rainier and Hatfield v. Max Rouse & Sons Northwest,10 as purporting to be reputable authority for the principles stated. Those two decisions were entered in questionable circumstances which deprived both of any vitality or precedential value. Therefore, I concur in Part IIIA, but dissent as to Part IIIB. No one presently on the Court participated in either the Linscott case or the Max Rouse case. The stage was set for those two cases when two members of this Court waged an undeclared war on exemplary damages in the companion cases of Cox v. Stolworthy, 94 Idaho 683, 496 P.2d 682 (1972), and Jolley v. Puregro, 94 Idaho 702, 496 P.2d 939 (1972). The Jolley case cited to the Cox case, which was authored by Justice McFadden who later was solely responsible for authoring the Linscott case and the Max Rouse case, where the two respective defendants were favored with an astonishing decision destroying a jury verdict and a district trial court award of substantial exemplary damages for outrageous conduct. All of the foregoing was, in this writer’s experienced view, attributable to efforts of the ABA to sabotage awards of exemplary damages.
Not questioning the statement of underlying facts in this opinion, the record which we review demonstrates that the clinic/hospital was wholly indifferent as to what the nurses were doing, what they were not doing, and what they should have been doing. It appears all too clearly that there was no one in authority; in essence the clinic was a ship afloat with no captain on *58board. It claims absolution from liability by reason of its election to remain ignorant, a defense apparently appealing to the other members of the Court. This Court has often stated the truism, that where judge, or jury, as the case may be, has reached a correct result but has done it on a theory not relied upon, the verdict and the judgment will be affirmed on the correct theory. This is clearly what happened here.
The jury cannot be said to have gone awry in absorbing the evidence before it, all of which demonstrated a wholly lackadaisical attitude on the part of the corporate entity, notwithstanding that patient care was the very nature of the corporate business venture.
Because the respondents are ably represented by counsel in this $180,000 matter, a petition for rehearing is anticipated with great expectation which will advise the Court in considerable detail where it has gone astray in invalidating a jury’s award of exemplary damages. It seems that just a few months ago the Court similarly performed the same service (or disservice) in O’Dell v. Basabe, 119 Idaho 796, 810 P.2d 1082 (1991).

. Linscott v. Rainier National Life Insurance Co., 100 Idaho 854, 606 P.2d 958 (1980); Hatfield v. Max Rouse & Sons Northwest, 100 Idaho 840, 606 P.2d 944 (1980).