Court Opinion

ID: 9785894
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 22:45:45.715251+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:36:35.649198
License: Public Domain

OPALA, J:,
dissenting in part.
¶ 1 The court denies petitioner’s quest for Bar relicensure without affording him an opportunity to complete a diminuted record1 by adding to its contents proof of circumstances that surround his earlier resignation and its acceptance by the Bar. Of legitimate interest here is the role, if any, petitioner played in a scenario that kept the resignation from being channeled for this court’s approval. While I share the court’s interest in petitioner’s participation, if any he had, in an agreement for irregular disposition of his resignation, I would not seal his professional coffin by closing today the door to any chance of re-pressing in this very cause his relicensure efforts aided by a supplemented record. He certainly should have a chance to clear himself of voluntary complicity which casts a cloud upon his prior resignation. That opportunity for exculpation should be extended to petitioner as part of the process that is his constitutional due.
¶2 I would hence declare, as the court does today, that the record is insufficient for consideration of petitioner’s reinstatement quest; instead of denying the petition, I would retransfer the cause to the PRT with directions that, if petitioner so requests, the panel should proceed further to conduct a full-scale inquiry into petitioner’s participation, if any, in circumnavigating this court’s approval of his earlier resignation.

. A diminuted record is one that incompletely reflects the proceedings sub judies. BLACK’S LAW DICTIONARY, 7th ed. (1999).