Court Opinion

ID: 9583243
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:36:22.380886+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:38:53.950998
License: Public Domain

VANDE WALLE, Justice,
concurring in result.
I concur in the result. The result reached by Justice Meschke for the majority is “in the interest of justice.” Other than that general platitude, however, I discern no legal basis for so concluding.
Unless we are to grant the supervisory writ to make up for our ineptness in adopting the North Dakota Rules of Disciplinary Procedure without clarifying the language which is the root of this dispute, I can find no valid distinction between this matter and those considered in Spence v. North Dakota District Court, 292 N.W.2d 53 (N.D.1980), in which we denied the writ because the petitioner had an adequate remedy by review on appeal from an unfavorable final judgment. In those cases in which the writ was granted, as cited in the majority opinion, the rationale for granting the writ was that the required disclosure, if not permitted by the rules, could not be undone on appeal from the judgment. Here, if the petitioner receives an unfavorable recommendation from the Disciplinary Board he, like the parties in those eases in which we denied the writ, would be entitled to raise that matter before this court at the time the recommendation of the Disciplinary Board was considered. Many questions which may be “fundamentally important” can be raised only on appeal.
Furthermore, the answer to this question is not fundamentally important for all disciplinary proceedings if, as the majority notes, the revised North Dakota Procedural Rules for Lawyer Disability and Discipline, pending before this court, are adopted, for if they are the question would seem to be answered for the future.
Perhaps the majority is only indicating that when the court has, by its own action, created the problem, it ought to resolve it when requested to do so by the exercise of our supervisory authority. That seems to be reasonable but I shudder when I realize there are statements in opinions issued by this court in the past (and which will be issued in the future) that will create problems of which this court is totally unaware. Such a standard will haunt us in the future for it will open the way for more requests for exercise of our supervisory jurisdiction than this court has the capacity to handle.
Perhaps the only legal rationale for granting the writ is that the writ is discretionary; using that discretion to grant the writ in this case is an aberration; and that we do so because to restrict the use of discovery in this instance if we intend to permit it under the pending rules is unreasonable. Hopefully the exercise of free discovery will result in a better record should this matter come before us on a recommendation from the Disciplinary Board.
I likewise cannot agree with the rationale used by the majority to explain the language of the current rules. The rationale of the majority, as I understand it, is that because the rules do not specifically state that the civil discovery procedures are unavailable, they may be used. But if that is the intent of the language used in Rules 10(i) and 21(f) of the Rules of Disciplinary Procedure, it does not explain why any rules, such as Rule 11, governing the discovery process, were necessary if the civil discovery rules were to apply. It is akin to arguing that although Section 1-01-06, N.D.C.C., states that there is no common law in any case where the law is declared by statute, not only must there be a statute which is concerned with the subject but the statute must, in specific words, also negate the common law.
The wording of the rules and my understanding of the actual experience with and interpretation of the rules by the Disciplinary Board, as reflected by the record of disciplinary matters previously determined by this court, do not, in my estimation, justify the result reached by the majority. However the disciplinary rules are adopted by this court, the pending rules propose to permit exactly what petitioner here requests, and it serves no useful purpose to *508continue what appears to be an inequitable procedure. I therefore concur in the result.