Court Opinion

ID: 9624051
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 06:49:31.716653+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:05:38.107370
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Moore
specially concurring.
Although I agree that the opinion of the Court in this case reaches a correct result, I cannot concur in the language employed to reach that result.
The issue in this case is not whether the trial court was “at fault” to a degree that the Judge of the court should be chastized or rebuked in a manner which ill becomes this appellate tribunal. The issue involved does not require a finding by this Court that a member of the Bar of this state was guilty of gross neglect of his client’s business, or that “error of court was confounded by the improper practice of counsel.”
If a member of the Biar of this state is to be severely rebuked it should be done only in a proceeding where the issue is whether his conduct has been such as to warrant that action. In that proceeding he would be given a hearing and an opportunity would be presented for him to defend himself. It is entirely possible that if the attorney rebuked by the opinion in this case had been afforded an opportunity to be heard before being reprimanded by this Court (as the opinion very clearly does), an entirely different version of his “fault” might be shown. Mr. Sterling has been a reputable member of the Bar of this state for many years, and by this opinion he *52has been subjected to a rebuke without a hearing and without notice of any kind.
The critical inferences contained in the opinion, directed at the conduct of the trial judge, are unwarranted and unjustified by the record in this case. One of our basic principles is that a court should afford a full and fair hearing before passing judgment upon human conduct. The record before us records the fact that Mr. Sterling hias had no hearing, and this Court has no right to assume that the record in a case to which he was not a party contains all that might be said in his behalf.