Court Opinion

ID: 9680699
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 07:36:57.741272+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:30.013983
License: Public Domain

SEILER, Judge
(concurring in result).
I concur in result, but do so on the basis that under Fuentes v. Shevin, 407 U.S. 67, 92 S.Ct. 1983, 32 L.Ed.2d 556 (1972), the prejudgment possession portions of the re-plevin statutes of Missouri are unconstitutional.
In my opinion, we are bound by Fuentes v. Shevin. Its force as a final and binding decision of the Supreme Court of the United States is not lessened by its being handed down by seven justices instead of nine. As Justices Lockwood and Struckmeyer point out in Roofing Wholesale Co., Inc. v. Palmer, 108 Ariz. 508, 502 P.2d 1327, 1331-1332 (banc 1972), we cannot decide whether we will follow a United States Supreme Court decision on the basis of speculation as to how justices who did not participate would have voted if they had participated. If we are to be guided by speculation (and the majority opinion in the Arizona case says that if they believed the other two justices would make it a majority the next time around they would be willing to follow Fuentes now), we might as well speculate on what the outcome would be if the question were to be reexamined when new justices eventually replace present justices. The United States Supreme Court has never said that it takes a majority of five for its decision to be binding generally. As pointed out by Justice Struckmeyer, the Supreme Court has on many occasions decided important cases by a four man majority and if we were to take the position these cases do not constitute binding precedents, the “resulting mischief [would be] intolerable.”