Court Opinion

ID: 9849591
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 04:42:58.976733+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:20:18.438746
License: Public Domain

*48DISSENTING OPINION OF
KOBAYASHI, J.,
WITH WHOM ABE, J„ JOINS.
I dissent.
This case involves a testamentary trust that clearly violates the Rule Against Perpetuities, as acknowledged by the majority of the court. It is not a case involving an ambiguity in the will as in Queen’s Hospital v. Hite, 38 Haw. 494 (1950). Neither does it involve a situation wherein the proposition “the law is a ass, a idiot” may be applicable.1 Thus, this court is confronted with the basic, naked proposition of actually enforcing the Rule Against Perpetuities or of vitiating the vitality of the Rule!
I choose to enforce the Rule under the facts of the instant case. The majority, in its opinion, has now caused this court to be added to the list of appellate courts effectuating an escape to the “harsh” application of the Rule Against Perpetuities. Our attention has been called to the various doctrines relied upon for said escape: such as the cy pres doctrine or the doctrine of alternative contingencies that are “separable”, both of which are premised on giving effect to the alleged intent of the testator.2
The contradiction of such thinking and avoidance is obvious: the proponents following either of the above doctrines must violate the testator’s original intent. To say that an approximation of the intent of the testator is given effect is simply begging the question. In essence the majority of the court has “exercised” a power that it does not have: making a new will for the testator. The decision of the majority appears to be strongly influenced by the alleged fact that the attorney for the testator could have done a better job in drafting the will. It is amazing, to say the least, that the court would give substance or rele*49vancy to the so-called failure of thé attorney.
The issue actually boils down to competing “rules” or “policies”: rule against remoteness of the vesting of future interests to encourage circulation of property vs. rule of giving effect to the testator’s intent because the law abhors intestacy.
It is clear that the two rules or policies are not compatible in this case. As Professor Gray emphatically states:
“The Rule Against Perpetuities is not a rule of construction, but a peremptory command of law. It is not, like a rule of construction, a test, more or less artificial, to determine intention. Its object is to defeat intention. Therefore * * * the Rule is to be remorselessly applied.”3 (Emphasis added.)
I fail to see the logic in the majority’s ratio decidendi: that “limiting an invalid term of thirty years to the twenty-one year period prescribed by the rule does no violence to any of the above policies [of the Rule Against Perpetuities] or to the testator’s general intent.” (Emphasis added.) What a tenuous reasoning to rely on to attempt to justify a gross violation of the Rule Against Perpetuities. It is ironic indeed for the majority to claim that in actuality it is helping the Rule Against Perpe-tuities to “grow”; that the common law “does not remain in a somnolent and sedentary state.”
To say, as the majority does, that the Rule Against Perpetuities has not outlived its usefulness and yet to refuse to apply it in the face of a clear violation is the height of contradiction and illogic. Such “logic” adds to the volumes of confusing court-made law. If no justification exists in reason or on grounds of public policy for the continued enforcement of the Rule, this court should, with *50directness, do away with the Rule.4
The Supreme Court of California, in Lucas v. Hamm, 56 Cal. 2d 583, 364 P.2d 685, 15 Cal. Rptr. 821 (1961), cert. denied, 368 U.S. 987 (1962), held that the Rule Against Perpetuities is so perplexing, confusing and fraught with concealed traps that as a matter of law it could not be negligence for an attorney to. violate it!
The undiluted application of the Rule Against Perpe-tuities was initially rejected in. certain jurisdictions because the application of said Rule would have “shocked the conscience of justice”.
One of the chief arguments expressed by one of the proponents of the trust in the instant case is that the testator’s sons and the children of the sons of the testator will receive less if the Rule Against Perpetuities is strictly enforced. It is most difficult for this writer to agree that such a reason is sufficient to “shock the conscience of justice”. In the instant case greater justice and equity are achieved if the Rule Against Perpetuities is strictly applied.
Justice Abe joins in this dissent.

 Leach, Perpetuities in a Nutshell, 51 Harv. L. Rev. 638 at 645 (1938).

 Leach, Perpetuities in a Nutshell, supra.
Leach, Perpetuities: Nutshell Revisited, 78 Harv. L. Rev. 973 (1965).

 Gray, The Rule Against Perpetuities § 629 (3d ed. 1916).

 See Simes, “Is the Rule Against Perpetuities Doomed?”, 52 Mich. L. Rev. 179 (1953); Fletcher, “A Rule of Discrete Invalidity: Perpetuities Reform Without Waiting”, 20 Stan. L. Rev. 459 (1968); Leach, Perpetuities Legislation, 108 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1124 (1960).
See also Will of Walker, 258 Wis. 65, 45 N.W.2d 94 (1950).