Court Opinion

ID: 9633880
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 12:04:58.627232+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:15:18.306101
License: Public Domain

HENRIOD, Justice
(dissenting).
I dissent. No authority cited by the main opinion supports it. The closest one is State ex. rel. Ellan v. District Court, which also stands alone, and which also is unsupported. That case not only is different factually, (the plaintiff actually having-driven the defendant from one state to another) but it is bottomed on a thesis quite foreign to that of the main opinion, and how that case can be cited as an authority for the broad proposition enunciated by the majority is a mystery to this writer.
The Elian case reasons that because the policy of the law is to settle disputes, the disputant who is invited to negotiate settlement should have thrown around him a • cloak of immunity from service of process while he is disputing, and for a little while before he starts disputing, and for a little while after he gets through disputing. In the instant case there is absolutely no mention made of such policy as-being the basis for the decision. The present case simply resorts to the frayed phrases of “'equity and good conscience” and “fair play” in gagging any inclination to take “sharp advantage” which the majority apparently assumes to exist when one 'of the disputants is invited into the forum to discuss settlement, even though there be absolutely no evidence (as *339is the case here) of any intention to take any “sharp advantage” of anyone. To suggest that there was any such evidence in this case is to take unwarranted liberties with the record, and is to ignore the statements made many times by all of the members of this court to the effect that the trial ■ court’s findings (that there was no such fraud or “sharp advantage” in this case) will not be disturbed if there is any substantial evidence to support it. To determine this case by the illuminating phraseology mentioned, by judicial fiat and ipse dixit, and clearly without judicial precedent, simply casts a shadow on the rule announced by the great weight of authority, obscuring that which seems to exist in the clear light of logic and reason.
Of course, the main opinion must have sensed the fallacy of the Elian reasoning in not mentioning it when a moment’s reflection would illustrate that the same kind of policy upon which that case is based, — ■ that of settling disputes, would be as applicable and sound in the case of prospective plaintiffs and defendants living in the same town or the same apartment house, so that if a neighbor were requested to talk settlement, he could be made immune from suit under the Elian rule so long as he kept up a protracted insistence that he simply was trying to settle the claim with an unreasonable disputant. This zvould result in the kind of “sharp advantage” about which the main opinion talks, but about which it can point to nothing in arriving at such gratuity.
This decision opens the door to the unscrupulous nonresident present in the state, who, on being served by a resident, need only conveniently to state that he is present in the state at the invitation of the plaintiff for the purpose of settling a claim, thus inoculating himself against the indignities of the process server. Before such immunity should be granted, there should be a finding of an allurement, enticement, trickery, fraud, legal or otherwise, or some o,ther kind of bad faith on the part of him, who did the inviting to negotiate, as the great weight of authority requires. The trial court in this case found that there was not any such trickery, bad faith or fraud, and this court should not guess otherwise, particularly since “honesty of intent on the part of plaintiff will be presumed in the absence of facts and circumstances justifying an inference to the contrary.” 1 In my opinion, the majority attacks the integrity of two members of the bar, neither of whom, in the opinion of this writer, has ever had the reputation of taking “sharp advantage” of others.

. 72 C.J.S. Process § 39.