Court Opinion

ID: 9557751
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 16:56:51.997331+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:06:34.507806
License: Public Domain

BISTLINE, Justice,
dissenting.
I
As the Court’s opinion notes, advice of counsel is in this state a complete defense to an action for malicious prosecution, provided, however, that advice of counsel is given only after a full and fair disclosure of all the facts. How, then, is that issue to be decided? Should it be upon a trial by a jury, or should it be decided, as here, by the prosecuting attorney who, without reciting in the least any facts stated to him, and without explaining by what means he could *262compare disclosed facts to actual facts, executes the wholly conclusory statement that, “To the best of my knowledge Mr. Cormican and Mr. Bergeron each gave a full and fair statement of the facts known to them prior to the filing of the criminal complaint”? The underlined portion suggests to my mind that the prosecutor (who did not prepare the affidavit which he signed) was being more equivocal than one would expect. Prior to that statement is this two sentence paragraph:
Prior to the filing of the complaint, Dave W. Cormican and Rodney L. Bergeron were interviewed in the office of the Prosecuting Attorney. I personally interviewed Mr. Cormican and Mr. Bergeron prior to the preliminary hearing held on the criminal complaint on November 19, 1975.
It is highly significant that while he states that he personally interviewed Cormican and Bergeron before they testified at the preliminary hearing, in the preceding sentence he only goes so far as to say that Cormican and Bergeron were interviewed in1 the prosecutor’s office.2 Perhaps it is mere inadvertence in sentence structuring, but I can not read from this affidavit that Cormican and Bergeron made fair and full disclosure of all the facts to the prosecutor or that he even talked with them prior to the filing of the criminal complaint. Couple that together with the affidavit’s being entirely conclusory in nature, and it becomes impossible to say as a matter of law that advice of counsel was given following a requisite fair and full disclosure. Even if Cormican and Bergeron had made affidavits of the supposed facts, which they did not, there would still remain the necessity of a trial. Therein a proper factfinder could determine the actual facts; determine what, if anything, was related to the prosecuting attorney; and then determine whether a fair and full (not a misleading or partial) disclosure was in fact made.
II
There is not, contrary to the Court’s opinion, “a total absence of evidence tending in any way to connect that corporation with the prosecution of Rowles.” The one call received (not “allegedly” as the opinion infers, but according to an affidavit) sworn to by the Chief of Police is something more than a total absence. Chief Nuttleman stated:
During midsummer of 1975, I received a telephone call from a person in Moor-head, Minnesota who identified himself as an official of Country Kitchen International, Inc., a Minnesota corporation. He requested information concerning the progress being made with respect to a criminal prosecution wherein two employees of the Country Kitchen, Coeur d’Alene, were the complaining witnesses.
This person expressed concern to me about the case and an interest in seeing the defendant prosecuted.
Whether this evidence inculpates the corporation is concededly a close question. A jury could very likely find that, where a corporation officer called from halfway across the United States to see how a rather inconsequential criminal prosecution was progressing, and identified it as one where the corporation’s employees were complaining witnesses, the corporation had encouraged the initiation of the prosecution. Any doubt should, at this stage, be resolved against the moving party, keeping in mind that all inferences are to be in favor of the non-moving party. This determination is to be based on the “pleadings, depositions, and admissions on file, together with the affidavits, if any . . .” I.R.C.P. 56(c). *263However, courts should liberally construe the facts in favor of the party opposing the motion, together with all reasonable inferences from the evidence. Farmer’s Insurance Company of Idaho v. Brown, 97 Idaho 380, 544 P.2d 1150 (1976).
The Court today is clearly weighing the credence and effect of Chief Nuttleman’s sworn statement, even though there are no contradictory affidavits from Country Kitchen, the supplying of which would not be at all any difficult task. At a trial the parties could with further discovery ascertain and present evidence from which the trier of facts could determine the extent of Country Kitchen’s involvement.
I dissent from the Court’s disposition of this cause.

. I see a great distinction between an affidavit saying that the interview was in the office of the prosecuting attorney, as against the statement of the opinion that the interview was by the office of the prosecuting attorney.

. Defendants in their brief to the trial court certainly left the trial court with the impression that the prosecutor had personally been presented with a fair and full disclosure:
The deputy prosecuting attorney in his affidavit sets forth that the complaint was prepared in his office. He personally interviewed defendants, CORMICAN and BERGERON. He believes they made a full and fair disclosure.