Court Opinion

ID: 9569666
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:16:14.797835+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:03:42.882160
License: Public Domain

SHEPARD, Justice
(dissenting in part and concurring in part).
I concur with that portion of the majority opinion which reverses the summary judgment granted to the City of Grange-ville. I would remand the cause for the purpose of permitting the defendant-respondent City of Grangeville the opportunity of entering an answer to plaintiff-appellant’s complaint and thereafter proceed to trial or in the event the city declined to plead further to enter a default judgment in favor of plaintiff.
Plaintiff’s complaint in this case is relatively simple. As demonstrated in the transcript he claims to have been appointed Chief of Police of the city in February 1973. He asserts that such employment was for 11 months. My examination of the record does not disclose denial of either of those two facts. He then alleges that said contract of employment was wrongfully and without legally sufficient reason breached and terminated by city officials in June of 1973. My examination of the record indicates that the plaintiff accepts the breach of his employment contract and his termination of employment as a fait accompli. He does not seek specific performance of the contract, any declaration of tenure, any restoration to the position of Chief of Police, nor any damages above and beyond his salary for the months remaining on the employment contract.
This Court has continually admonished itself not to pass on questions of constitutionality unless it is absolutely necessary to do so in order to determine the merits of the case. See Thompson v. Hagan, 96 Idaho 19, 523 P.2d 1365, and Curtis v. Child, 95 Idaho 63, 501 P.2d 1374, and cases cited therein. Although this case does not in*173volve the restoration of rights to employment, determination of tenure or “academic freedom,” the majority here follows the path of constitutional law cleared by the heavy artillery of United States Supreme Court decisions albeit in cases which I do not consider on point herein.
I would take the more restrained approach of remanding the matter for further proceedings in the lower court on the basis of the conventional law of contract. If as alleged by Buckalew he had a right to employment until January 7, 1974, and if the City of Grangeville breached that contract, absent legal and sufficient justification, then I am inclined to believe that Buckalew is entitled to damages for breach of contract. I see no point in laboring the question of the rightness or wrongness in the constitutional sense of Buckalew’s firing. All parties herein seem to accept such as an existing fact which at this late date cannot be changed. Buckalew’s brief and argument before this Court did not deal with procedural due process except in the most cursory manner. The city did not dignify the point at all.
I would reverse the summary judgment of the trial court and remand the cause for further proceedings consistent herewith.