Court Opinion

ID: 9794652
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 03:09:08.577017+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:17:20.707784
License: Public Domain

BAKES, Justice,
dissenting:
As the majority points out, this Court has previously upheld the constitutionality of the Idaho statutory small claims procedure in Foster v. Walus, 81 Idaho 452, 347 P.2d 120 (1959). The only deficiency which the Court at that time found in the statutory small claims procedure was the denial of counsel at the small claims trial which the Court held was cured by the right to a trial de novo in the district court. It is interesting to note that at the time of the Foster case the same appeal bond requirement which is now disapproved by the majority, was part of the statute, and the Court in Foster found no problem with that appeal bond provision. See I.C. § 1-1512, repealed by 1969 Idaho Sess.Laws, ch. Ill, § 19, and replaced by the present I.C. § 1-2312. See 1923 Idaho Sess.Laws, ch. 177, § 12.
Since the present small claims statutory scheme is substantially the same as the statutory small claims procedure which this Court upheld in Foster v. Walus, supra, the majority has apparently turned to the due process clause of the United States Constitution in its effort to strike down the Idaho small claims procedure. Thus, the majority states, ante at 1129:
“Until the small claims defendant has had an opportunity to appeal the judgment, due process is not satisfied, and any taking of property is unconstitutional. In this respect, appellant contends, the bond requirement and the pre-appeal execution on judgments, are not unlike pre-judgment garnishment, which is unconstitutional. See Sniadach v. Family Finance Corp., 395 U.S. 337, 89 S.Ct. 1820, 23 L.Ed.2d 349 (1969); Fuentes v. Shevin, 407 U.S. 67, 92 S.Ct. 1983, 32 L.Ed.2d 556 (1972). We agree." (Emphasis supplied.)
However, the Sniadach and Fuentes cases are not the most recent statement by the United States Supreme Court on the question of when a pre-judgment seizure of a person’s property constitutes a deprivation of procedural due process. Subsequent opinions of the United States Supreme Court have modified substantially the Sniadach and Fuentes concepts of due process.1 By not considering Mitchell v. W.T. Grant Co., 416 U.S. 600, 94 S.Ct. 1895, 40 L.Ed.2d 406 (1974), the majority in this case is unnecessarily discarding the state statutory small claims procedures that are constitutionally sound, as an analysis of those more recent cases will show.
In Fuentes v. Shevin, 407 U.S. 67, 92 S.Ct. 1983, 32 L.Ed.2d 556 (1972), the United States Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of a statutory replevin scheme that allowed a writ of replevin to be issued ex parte by the clerk of a court upon an affidavit alleging wrongful detention of the property. The affidavit stated in conclusory terms the entitlement of the party to the property. No prior notice or opportunity for hearing was allowed to the defendant. The question then presented was,
“whether procedural due process in the context of these cases requires an opportunity for a hearing before the state au*829thorizes its agents to seize property in the possession of a person upon the application of another.” Id. at 80, 92 S.Ct. at 1994.
The United States Supreme Court held that the replevin statutes, as discussed above, did not provide a fair, nonarbitrary determination of entitlement to property. The court, however, expressly limited its decision, stating:
“Our holding, however, is a narrow one. We do not question the power of a state to seize goods before a final judgment in order to protect the security interests of creditors so long as those creditors have tested their claim to the goods through the process of a fair prior hearing. The nature and forum of such prior hearing, moreover, are legitimately open to many potential variations and are a subject, at this point, for legislation — not adjudication.” 407 U.S. at 96, 92 S.Ct. at 2002. (Emphasis added.)
Later in Mitchell v. W.T. Grant Co., 416 U.S. 600, 94 S.Ct. 1895, 40 L.Ed.2d 406 (1974), the United States Supreme Court upheld the validity of state statutes authorizing the seizure of property before a final judgment. At issue in Mitchell v. W.T. Grant Co., supra, was the validity of a Louisiana sequestration statute, which allowed for a pre-judgment seizure of property pursuant to an ex parte application by a creditor, accompanied by an affidavit, specifying one of several specific grounds for sequestration. The writ itself could only be issued by a judge, rather than a clerk, as in Fuentes. However, it was issued upon the creditor’s ex parte application. The statutes provided the debtor with an immediate post seizure hearing, if requested, which required the creditor to prove the ground upon which the writ was issued.
The United States Supreme Court, after citing the rule that due process does not guarantee any particular form of procedure, upheld the Louisiana procedure, saying that “the state has reached a constitutional accommodation of the respective interests .... ” Id. at 610, 94 S.Ct. at 1901. The court emphasized the fact that the Louisiana procedure involved judicial participation, and even though it was an ex parte procedure, the writ could issue only upon allegations of specific facts showing the creditor’s entitlement to the property. These two factors in particular minimized the risk of a wrongful taking, while working to protect the creditor’s interest. Thus, the Supreme Court in Mitchell v. W.T. Grant Co., supra, indicated that due process is not violated if the property owner is given a pre-taking hearing or an immediate post-taking hearing.
Comparing the procedure approved in Mitchell v. W.T. Grant Co. with the procedure under our own small claims appeal statutes, it is apparent that those small claims procedures fully comport with the requirements of procedural due process as set out in our case of Foster v. Walus, supra, and the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Mitchell v. W.T. Grant Co., supra. In Mitchell, the pretaking hearing consisted of an ex parte procedure with judicial participation. That procedure was upheld.
In the Idaho small claims process, at the time that the appellant is required to post the cash appeal bonds, which the majority asserts results in the appellant being “deprived of his property before he has had a full due process hearing,” the appellant has had much more due process than that which the Supreme Court upheld for the State of Louisiana in Mitchell v. Grant. First, the small claims process is not ex parte, as it was in Mitchell; rather, the defendant was served with a summons and a complaint, both parties are given notice of a trial setting, and the trial was held before a lawyer magistrate judge, trained in the law, where both parties were allowed to present evidence and argue to the judge concerning their entitlement to the property. This trial certainly gave more procedural protection to the defendant than the ex parte judicial hearing in Mitchell, where the defendant was not only not represented by counsel, but was not even given notice of the proceedings and thus could not appear personally.
*830Under the Idaho statute and rule, if a judgment is rendered in favor of the plaintiff, the defendant, if he desires to appeal and is not indigent pursuant to I.C. § 31-3220, is required to post the cash bonds in order to appeal the judgment. That temporary property deprivation caused by the appeal bond requirement pending the final decision of the district court in the trial de novo is no more onerous than the temporary property deprivation approved by the Supreme Court in Mitchell where the court approved a state statutory procedure which permitted the sequestration of the litigant’s property pending the trial of the cause, based on an ex parte proceeding at which neither the defendant nor his attorney were given an opportunity to participate. The due process provided by the Idaho small claims statutes which gives the defendant a full trial, albeit without an attorney, before the temporary property deprivation occurs, far exceeds the due process approved by the Supreme Court in Mitchell v. W.T. Grant Co. Accordingly the majority errs in concluding that I.C. § 1-2311-12 and I.R.C.P. 81(7) are unconstitutional under Fuentes and Sniadach, in view of the subsequent decision of the Supreme Court in Mitchell v. Grant.
We recently upheld a similar Idaho statute imposing a $500 cost bond on appeal to the district court from the Board of Land Commissioners under I.C. § 58-147(c). See Kootenai Environmental Alliance v. Panhandle Yacht Club, Inc., Idaho (1982), filed July 8, 1982 (petition for rehearing granted on a different issue). There is no constitutional reason why a different result should obtain in this case.
The Idaho small claims statutes, I.C. § 1-2311-12, and I.R.C.P. 81(7) are constitutional, and the district court’s declaratory judgment holding those statutes and the rule unconstitutional should be reversed.
SHEPARD, J., concurs.

. Fuentes v. Shevin was only a 4-3 decision, with two justices not participating. In many respects it has been overruled in Mitchell v. W.T. Grant Co., supra. As we noted in Massey-Ferguson Credit Corp. v. Peterson, 96 Idaho 94, 524 P.2d 1066 (1974):
“While the majority opinion in Mitchell v. W.T. Grant Co., supra, does not expressly overrule the Fuentes requirement of a full adversary hearing before seizure of property under replevin type statutes, the court in Mitchell apparently discarded that requirement for- a more flexible test of procedural fairness which creditors may more easily meet.” Id. at 99, 524 P.2d 1066.