Court Opinion

ID: 9759132
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 00:06:37.665848+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:59.677489
License: Public Domain

WELLIVER, Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent.
There is no question but what Section 1, 11, 12 and 13 of the order, as they relate to the filing of future lawsuits, set up additional requirements over and above those now required by our statutes and our rules for the filing of lawsuits. In so doing, the proposed order invades the rule-making power bestowed on this Court by Section 5, Article V of the Missouri Constitution. To the extent that our Rules are exceeded by the order, it constitutes an unauthorized limitation upon free access to the courts as guaranteed by the Constitution. Mo. Const, art. I, § 14. The duty is ours to assure that there be free access to the courts of Missouri and no standing is required of anyone to trigger our execution of this duty.
In the normal course of events, were this Court called upon to produce such a rule, we would first assign the original drafting to a special committee consisting of the most knowledgable judges and the most knowledgable specialist in the field that we could select and charge them to consider and recommend a rule. I would suggest that this process, based upon our experience with other such rules committees, could be expected to take six month to a year under the most advantageous circumstances. We would, under most circumstances run the recommended rule through the Missouri Bar Association Board of Governors and their appropriate standing committees for their recommendations. We would then act upon the recommended rule, which if approved, would be published to give a six months notice to the bar of our adoption of the rule and its effective date. Mo. Const, art. 5, § 5.
In spite of my view that Judge Mauer’s proposed order is overly broad is this, and possibly other respects, I would compliment him on the product of his effort to make this first major order relating to the management of multiple case litigation. It is a scholarly piece of work.
In my opinion, this case suggests both the need for and the propriety of this Court promulgating a rule setting forth guidelines within which our trial courts can make orders regarding the management of multiple case litigation. In this connection, three things appear to me to be clear. First, timely handling of this group of cases will not permit either the time for consideration or the time for notice involved in our usual rule-making process. Second, there will be variables in each multiple case management situation that can never be contemplated or covered in a single rule and the single rule can, at most, set guidelines. And third, I would respectfully suggest that any special rule committee selected as I have suggested above would involve and include both this judge and many of the attorneys already involved in this case.
In my view, approval of this order by the Court at this time sets the entire order in concrete just as effectively as if we had adopted the order as our rule after exhausting our normal rule-making process. This rule that I now perceive to be overly broad and extremely expansive of our existing rules, will, in my opinion, become the minimal rule upon which all who follow are challenged to build and further expand based upon the overwhelming approval bestowed upon the order by the principal *311opinion in this case. Such a course of action I deem to be both precipitious and dangerous. Unbridled delegation of this Court’s rule-making power to trial courts can only result in a situation we will live to regret.
There is an alternative course of action which I respectfully suggest would best preserve the integrity of this Court’s rule-making power while best serving the expeditious and orderly administration of justice.
We could make the preliminary rule absolute to the extent that the order limits access to the courts as I have above outlined and could then conditionally approve the remainder of the order for use on an experimental basis in these cases. In the meantime, this Court could create a Special Rule Committee to consider recommending a permanent rule setting general guidelines for the management of future multiple case litigation.