Court Opinion

ID: 9717279
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 07:01:04.873268+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:52.261002
License: Public Domain

HENDERSON, Justice
(concurring in result).
Although I concur in the results of this case, I cannot agree with all of the language and tenets of law therein expressed.
Particularly, I cannot conceive of affirming this contempt proceeding under any circumstance as it appears to me that the court order was void ab initio. I view the oral order as being injunctive in nature. This order was entered without sufficient notice, without a court reporter, without the parties’ presence, without any findings or conclusions, and without any formal en*860try of the trial court’s decision. Supposedly, the trial court’s decision was to be relayed, by word of mouth, to a litigant who was being enjoined from a continuation of harvesting. Violations of an oral order expressed in a judge’s living room, invites the return of the star chamber. Employing oral orders, injunctive in nature, as a basis of contempt proceedings would lead to a scenario of “who said what to whom.”
Though this contempt proceeding arose during the course of civil proceedings, that did not bask it with a civil air. I would denominate it as a punitive type of contempt and label it as a criminal contempt proceeding.