Court Opinion

ID: 9789162
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 01:29:17.631537+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:20.220724
License: Public Domain

J. JONES, Justice,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur in the Court’s opinion, excepting only that part of Section III.C, where the Court denies attorney fees to Mr. Welsh based on the Court’s opinion in Bowles v. Pro Indiviso, Inc., 132 Idaho 371, 973 P.2d 142 (1999).
As I pointed out in Barbee v. WMA Securities, Inc., 143 Idaho 391, 397, 146 P.3d 657, 663 (2006), the Court in Bowles did not analyze the issue of whether an attorney acting as a pro se litigant may be entitled to attorney fees. Rather, the Court merely cited to a Court of Appeals decision, Swanson & Setzke, Chtd. v. Henning, 116 Idaho 199, 774 P.2d 909 (Ct.App.1989), wherein the Court of Appeals held that the rule preventing awards of attorney fees to pro se litigants included attorneys litigating pro se. The Court of Appeals decision was not based upon the language of the statute in question but, rather, upon public policy considerations. As I noted in Barbee:
The Court of Appeals determined that it would be unfair to allow a lawyer pro se litigant to recover fees where non-lawyer pro se litigants could not. The public policy considerations do not take into account that non-lawyer pro se litigants do not have a license to practice law and are not engaged in the business of making a living through the practice of law. The Court of Appeals indicated that lawyer pro se litigants do not make disbursements for time they devote to their own litigation. However, this ignores the fact that “a lawyer’s time and advice is his stock in trade,” as so aptly put by that great lawyer, Abraham Lincoln. When a lawyer devotes time to a legal action of his own, either to collect an account, to defend a legal action, or otherwise, the attorney may not make a disbursement of funds, but the attorney does make a disbursement of merchandise that could have been sold elsewhere, i.e. his time. If the attorney prevails, there is no language in any of the statutory fee provisions that precludes an award of fees to the attorney. The Court of Appeals in Swanson & Setzke went even so far as to state that it would make no difference if the entity seeking fees was a professional service corporation, as opposed to the individual lawyer in the corporation, thereby permitting a de facto piercing of the professional corporation veil in order to apply its public policy. That holding is bad public policy and should not be perpetuated by this Court.
Barbee, 143 Idaho at 397, 146 P.3d at 663.