Court Opinion

ID: 9567525
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:54:58.370784+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:00:39.242796
License: Public Domain

WREN, Chief Judge,
specially concurring:
I concur with the conclusion reached here simply because Scott appears to be the better course for us to follow at this particular stage of our multifarious judicial inquiry into this troublesome area. However, I question whether the doctrine of stare deci-sis is the appropriate route to take us to that conclusion. As stated in my dissent in Scott and noted by the other judges in this opinion, the problem in Scott called for legislative, not judicial, action.
Since the correct procedure was not used, we now have a strange anomaly. Scott was decided by a different department of this court than that which determined Jordan, and yet the Scott court specifically stated that it was overruling Jordan. The court which now attempts to resolve the issue is comprised of yet a third department of judges from the court of appeals. We have thus, in my opinion, placed the law of “tips” in workmen’s compensation cases in “suspended animation.”
Considerable research has revealed no authority that one department or division of an intermediate appellate court may overrule a decision of another department or division. The subsequent court may follow the prior decision, or refuse to follow it, but I submit there is no power to overrule it, since they are coordinate courts. See the discussion in 21 C.J.S., Courts § 196 et seq. Thus, both Scott and Jordan remain, at this time, viable, albeit conflicting decisions. To which, then, should the doctrine of stare decisis apply — to Jordan, which formulated the point of law in the first instance, and which has been recognized in this opinion as the preferred authority; or Scott, which improperly overruled it? In my opinion, stare decisis cannot be invoked to sanction as authority a subsequent decision of a coordinate court simply because it purports to have overruled the prior decision.
Recognition of the principle that the various departments of this court are “coordinate courts” was made in Castillo v. Industrial Commission, 21 Ariz.App. 465, 520 P.2d 1142 (1974) when Judge Haire, writing for Department B, referred to Terrell v. Industrial Commission, 21 Ariz.App. 139, 517 P.2d 97 (1973) (Department A), as a prior conflicting decision of a coordinate court which “we [Department B] decline to follow.”1
*392I certainly agree that we should give what this opinion seeks — judicial “deference to a matter already decided,” — and for that reason I choose to join in the result. This decision, however, may well compound the error already made.
The problem of tips and the need for their inclusion has been so obvious it is difficult to understand why the legislature has not moved in the direction of Scott. Now, only legislative action or review by the state supreme court can solve the dilemma.

. Judge Eubank, who had concurred in Terrell, filed a special concurrence in Castillo which concluded: “It is hoped that our Supreme Court will consider this question and once and for all put it to rest.”