Court Opinion

ID: 9538987
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 07:45:07.206362+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:58:22.121601
License: Public Domain

BISTLINE, Justice,
specially concurring.
I have concurred in the Court’s opinion and judgment, and add only that I feel we are affirming because the district court achieved substantial justice. That it did so on the “equity” side of the court cannot be much doubted where our decision holds that the district court, though acting in an appellate capacity, had “inherent power to consider the question of reimbursement.” This holding may serve as precedent in future appeals from administrative agencies and boards of county commissioners, and is generally in tune with the views recently expressed in Daley v. Blaine County, 108 Idaho 614, 701 P.2d 234 (Sup. Ct.1985) (Bistline, J., concurring):
More than that, however, the most alarming aspect of our decision today is the debilitating effect which the present appellate review procedures, or perhaps better said, the appellate review procedures as presently interpreted and applied, have on our district court — which in days past were the only genuine protection which Idaho citizens had against the burgeoning bureaucracy. In former times — not all that distant — the district court’s judgment in this case would have been applauded, not appealed____
There, unlike this case, we perceived no inherent power in a district court to do substantial justice, but instead confined it *764to the performance of a purely appellate function so as to do injustice.
ADDENDUM
Since the foregoing was penned, I have now received the views of Justice Bakes outlined in his dissenting opinion. I agree with what he has written, other than where he states that “The judgment also attempts to affect the title of property ... in faraway England.” An equity court which is cloaked with in personam jurisdiction can exercise that jurisdiction to indirectly affect realty outside its own jurisdiction.
Notwithstanding my agreement with Justice Bakes, I continue to join the Court’s opinion authored by Justice Shepard, doing so on the basis of what I initially wrote— substantial justice achieved by a court of equity possessed of inherent power. If this Supreme Court has the inherent power it has declared for itself, perhaps there is nothing too far amiss in declaring a similar inherent power in our district courts.