Court Opinion

ID: 9565551
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:23:41.001142+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:19:44.997560
License: Public Domain

BISTLINE, Justice,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I am in agreement with the majority view that the Department of Employment can award attorney’s fees if it wants to do so, but the Court itself should be awarding attorney’s fees as suggested by the Department. Instead, the majority sets a record of dubious distinction. By refusing to award attorney’s fees, it limits the precedential value to one day of a case decided this year.
Plante v. Ken’s Electric, 108 Idaho 809, 702 P.2d 847 (1985) was released one day prior to Ullrich. Both Ullrich and Plante reached the same conclusion on other identical issues, and in Plante the Court’s award of attorney’s fees was unanimous, although Justice Shepard disagreed with the grounds upon which the majority based the award:
I concur in the result obtained by the majority, i.e., that the Commission’s award of unemployment benefits should be affirmed and that attorney’s fees on appeal should be awarded.
Plante, supra, 108 Idaho at 814, 702 P.2d at 852 (emphasis added) (Shepard, J., concurring).
Today the Court, per Justice Shepard, does not explain how this Court denies attorney’s fees in Ullrich but awards them in Plante. The entire decision-making process is thus laid suspect. Only in consistency and reason lies justice.
One is reminded of an applicable statement:
The most intolerable evil, however, under which we have lived for the past twenty-five years, has been the changing and shifting character of our judicial decisions, by which we have been deprived of the inestimable benefit of judicial precedents as a safeguard to our rights of person and property.
Modifying that passage to a slightly shorter time interval, I add only that as a Court we this day do little to display stability in the science of jurisprudence where case law is involved.