Court Opinion

ID: 9605024
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 02:29:34.711834+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:07:40.956444
License: Public Domain

BISTLINE, Justice,
on denial of petition for rehearing.
A second review of the appeal record convinces me again that there are some instances where for certain the rules of code pleading are superior to rules promulgated by a court which has better business to attend to. It is absurd to say that a jury trial, once demanded, is not waived by failing to appear at the jury trial which has been demanded. The Court having accomplished the demise of the former statute should either ask the legislature to resurrect it, or promulgate a rule which speaks similarly.
On reconsideration of the main issue, that of no notice being sent to the defendants at their last known address, I have weighed the facts and results of this case against what I consider to be a horrendous abuse of court rules in Sherwood & Roberts v. Riplinger, Idaho, 650 P.2d 677 (1982), and find absolutely no comparison. In the latter case the defendant Riplinger appeared through counsel, filed pleadings, went through discovery, and the controversy was completely at issue when his counsel withdrew. Never actually ordered by the district court to do anything, he nonetheless contacted the court’s clerk and advised that he would represent himself — but hoped to have an attorney if he could obtain one. For his transgression in not telling the court how he would appear (perhaps spiritually, perhaps in the flesh, whatever) he was defaulted and judgment taken against him without notice — as lamented by Justice McFadden in his opinion — all in the holy name of the Court’s rules of civil procedure. Yet I find it impossible to believe that any practicing attorney who took part in the meetings of that Rules committee ever envisioned such a manifestly unjust application. Presently I incline to the belief that a majority of the Court should require amicus briefs from the Rules committee whenever the Court’s rules are up for application or interpretation.
On the other hand, the Beckstrands did not deign to appear through counsel, plagued the district court with inept pleadings — including a demand for a jury trial— and in essence advised the court in ambiguous language as to where they might physically not be found, and then disappeared. Nevertheless, they did have a last known address. Everyone has to be some place, and when they leave that place it is inescapable that it becomes the last known address — even be it so vague as the Greyhound Bus Depot in Provo, Utah, which, according to the record here would not be much different than the last one of which the district court had any knowledge. With a majority of the Court willing to put the county to the expense of a jury trial, and with Justice Bakes seeing this case in a more enlightened view than that with which Riplinger was blessed, and because two (or more) wrongs do not make a right, I have concluded to join the point of view expressed by Justice Bakes in his opinion and change my vote to allowing an entire new trial on all issues.