Court Opinion

ID: 9659597
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 21:50:23.205509+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:03:40.667372
License: Public Domain

RAWLINGS, Justice
(dissenting).
It is impossible for me to agree with the reasoning in Division III of the majority opinion and result reached, therefore I respectfully dissent.
The majority prefatorily concedes “We are bound under the holding in Fuentes [v. Shevin, 407 U.S. 67, 92 S.Ct. 1983, 32 L Ed.2d 556 (1972)] to declare unconstitutional and invalid sections 643.5 and 643.6, The Code, for their want of notice and judicial hearing requirements prior to seizure.” It then proceeds to sanction, under the guise of harmless error, a replevin procedure here pursued and effected under the aforesaid admittedly unconstitutional statutory enactments. I cannot join in that conclusion.
As the Supreme Court first made clear in Fuentes v. Shevin, 92 S.Ct. at 1994-1995:
“If the right to notice and a hearing is to serve its full purpose, then, it is clear that it must be granted at a time when the deprivation can still be prevented. At a later hearing, an individual’s possessions can be returned to him if it was unfairly or mistakenly taken in the first place. Damages may even be awarded to him for the wrongful deprivation. But no later hearing and no damage award can undo the fact that the arbitrary taking that was subject to the right of procedural due process has already occurred. ‘This Court has not . . . embraced the general proposition that a wrong may be done if it can be undone.’ Stanley v. Illinois, 405 U.S. 645, 647, 92 S.Ct. 1208, 1210, 31 L.Ed.2d 551.”
With regard thereto these defendants were never accorded the foregoing pre-sei-zure rights. Furthermore, we cannot presume they had no good and sufficient legal cause which would have prevented the admittedly illegal divestment.
*538Even more significantly it is to me evident the'majority flies squarely in the face of Fuentes v. Shevin. In that case, 92 S. Ct. at 1997-1998, the court unmistakably declared:
“If it were shown at a hearing that the appellants had defaulted on their contractual obligations, it might well be that the sellers of the goods would be entitled to repossession. But even assuming that the appellants had fallen behind in their installment payments, and that they had no other valid defenses, that is immaterial here. The right to be heard does not depend upon an advance showing that one will surely prevail at the hearing. ‘To one who protests against the taking of his property without due process of law, it is no answer to say that in his particular case due process of law would have led to the same result because he had no adequate defense upon the merits’ Coe v. Armour Fertilizer Works, 237 U.S. 413, 424, 35 S.Ct. 625, 629, 59 L.Ed. 1027. It is enough to invoke the procedural safeguards of the Fourteenth Amendment that a significant property interest is at stake, whatever the ultimate outcome of a hearing on the contractual right to continued possession and use of the goods.” (Emphasis supplied).
Surely that which developed in the instant case after pursuit by plaintiff of an unconstitutional seizure cannot effectively eliminate the inceptional taint of invalidity.
It would appear the majority, at least inferentially, agrees with the position here taken by conceding, “ * * * we cannot allow application of an unconstitutional statute with the excuse it will or can be later corrected by showing at trial.”
In light of the foregoing I would reverse.
MASON and LeGRAND, JJ., join in this dissent.