Court Opinion

ID: 9543543
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:46:25.063823+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:10:34.200762
License: Public Domain

BISTLINE, Justice,
dissenting.
Justice Boyle’s succinct opinion, although generally concurring with the views expressed by the Chief Justice, serves to show his "concern that the majority opinion is conveying to the bench and bar the message that presumptions are “out” and Bongiovi is “in.” It is much feared that what the Court is doing to Idaho jurisprudence does not bode well for the people of Idaho. An after-the-fact assessment of the situation can do little toward undoing what has been done, therefore making it all the more imperative that the alarm be spread now in order that the entire citizenry can be heard on an issue of greatest importance.5 It is to be remembered that dissent is a part of *31the American way, although to exercise it on the appellate court level ordinarily occurs only when a Justice’s sense of outrage overcomes his sense of inertia,6 to which I add my own view that there is no place in the appellate tiers of the judicial system for “dissenting without opinion.” There were many of such dissents in my early years of service, but few come to mind in the past two or three years. Clearly, if a member of this Court finds himself unable to join an opinion which has been proffered, a nonspeaking dissent does not suggest in the least where the author is thought to have erred. Accordingly, the bench, the bar, the legal scholars, and the litigants are deprived of knowing wherein the silently dissenting member sees a problem. Moreover, the author and his majority have no reason to write further.
To the contrary, where views do differ, and are expressed and responded to, the system functions as it should. The Supreme Court of the United States presents a good example of a court which performs its function in a commendable manner, where readers gain insight from the benefit of a majority opinion, dissenting opinions, and ordinarily footnote responses thereto which are worked into the majority opinion. Having indulged in these comments, it is in order to return to this particular case where obviously any sense of inertia has been sufficiently overcome that I take pen in hand.
As noted above, Justice Boyle has expressed his concern with what may become the demise of presumptions by the majority’s intertwining of Bongiovi with rules of evidence. It is to be kept in mind that we have had presumptions with us since before statehood. Rules of evidence, however, apparently were one attorney’s lifetime objective, just in the past ten years, and were adopted by a majority vote of this Court just a short year ago.
Prior to the Court’s adoption of the rules of evidence, attorneys and judges were guided by I.C. tit. 9, § 101-1702. Surviving statutory presumptions appear to be found in I.C. § 5-211 and I.C. § 7-1119. Today our concern is with presumptions as they had heretofore existed, and as with Justice Boyle, my concern is the majority’s unexplained goal of striking down the presumptions which were born primarily of case law precedent set by able justices who were elected to the Supreme Court pursuant to the Idaho Constitution which was ratified by the people of Idaho in November 1889, and approved by an act of Congress on July 3, 1890. As to presumptions in civil actions, I.R.E. 301 states in essence exactly that which Justice Donaldson and I stated in the year 1980, five years before the Court adopted Rule 301:

. Having so stated, it seems that I have heard that song before. Similarly to the situation here, Volk v. Baldazo, 103 Idaho 570, 651 P.2d 11 (1982), was a four-to-one decision of this Court authored by Justice Shepard. Chief Justice Bakes was in dissent and sounded the alarm far more emphatically than I do today, striking out at the Court’s opinion in that case, and.for good measure tossing into the bargain a 1975 decision:
This Court may be, unwittingly, opening another Pandora’s box similar to that wrought by our Rogers v. Yellowstone Park Company case, 97 Idaho 14, 539 P.2d 566 (1975). In that case this Court abolished the defense of spousal immunity. By today’s decision, when combined with the Rogers decision, the husband can not only sue the defendant Baldazo for the alleged wrongful death of his unborn child, but he may also sue his own wife if she was also negligent in the accident which resulted in her miscarriage. The defendants assert that the accident was caused solely by Mrs. Volk’s negligence.
Today’s decision opens the door for suits by the husband against the wife when she negligently causes herself to miscarry, whether in an automobile wreck or otherwise. In fact, it may very well authorize a husband to sue his own wife if she submits to an abortion.
Today’s decision may seem like a small step, but, like Pandora’s box once opened, it is difficult to envision all of the mischief which may ultimately emerge.
*31Volk v. Baldazo, 103 Idaho at 577, 651 P.2d at 18.

. Per Shepard, J., dissenting in Deshazer v. Tompkins, 93 Idaho 267, 272, 460 P.2d 402, 407 (1969).