Court Opinion

ID: 9543173
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:42:53.826345+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:09:55.235634
License: Public Domain

SHEPARD, Chief Justice,
concurring in result.
I join in the Court's decision to declare, for the first time, that appellate fees may be imposed as a part of the costs on appeal according to Appellate Rule 15(G), Ind. Rules of Appellate Procedure.
The Court has previously been unwilling to do so. See, eg., Borkholder Co. v. Sandock (1980), 274 Ind. 612, 413 N.E.2d 567; Indiana Department of Public Welfare v. Rynard (1981), 275 Ind. 212, 472 N.E.2d 888, vacating 403 N.E.2d 1110 (Ind.App.1980); William J. Briggs v. Clinton County Bank and Trust Co. (1983), Ind.App., 452 N.E.2d 989, transfer denied.
The parties who appear in our courts do so on an equal footing. For every citizen who files a frivolous pleading, there is a citizen who must spend money to respond. The threshold for frivolity should not be so low that it imposes a tax on responding parties, obligating them to spend money answering baseless claims as a way of encouraging others to be novel.
The American Bar Association's Commission on Professionalism has recently observed that: "It does not inexorably follow that a citizen's 'day in court' should include the ability to tax the limited resources of every stage of the judicial process." ABA Commission on Professionalism, "...In the Spirit of Public Service: A Blueprint for the Rekindling of Lawyer Professionalism" 48 (1986).
Speaking of appellate fee orders, the ABA Commission said, "the signals sent by such penalties extend beyond the immediate case and the immediate parties; the message spreads." Ibid.
Though I concur in affirming that Indiana's rules provide for attorney fees on appeal, I believe that Justice DeBruler has articulated a more appropriate standard for their imposition.
DeBRULER, Justice,
concurring in result.
The tension with which we deal here is between an equitable concept at the heart of Appellate Rule 15(G) and a legal concept at the heart of our system of precedents. Equity and basic justice demand that a party in civil litigation, having won a vieto-ry in the trial court, should not be robbed of that victory by the requirements of paying the costs attendant to defending that victory in the appellate courts against an appeal, the outcome of which is so highly predictable from the outset that it may be said that the appeal is meritless and should not have been prosecuted. The system of precedents on the other hand requires that the rules of law provide reasonable predictability of ouscome yet remain subject to change. The likelihood that this important objective of the system will be achieved will be seriously diminished if the risk of assessment of damages deters lawyers from asserting modified or novel appellate claims. The majority opinion eloquently describes the valuable role played by counsel within the system, and I heartily ascribe to it. However the idea of the lawyer and client cringing before the risk put in place by the rule, is no more compelling than that of the party who walks away from the appellate tribunal empty handed or worse, after having been victorious in both the trial court and the appellate court.
The legal concept which we seek to form in this opinion must accommodate both the equitable objective of Appellate Rule 15(G) and the objective of preserving our system of precedents. I am less than enthusiastic about the verbal formulation of the rule, namely "utterly devoid of all plausibility." This seems to cut too deeply against the equitable objective of the rule. It means to me that an argument without substance, but with a very superficial appearance of validity or even gloss of attractiveness, must be tolerated and will preclude assessment of damages under the rule.
I would prefer to develop this new legal concept about the term "arguable", a term employed in Anders v. California (1967), 386 U.S. 738, 87 S.Ct. 1396, 18 L.Ed.2d 493. An arguable point is one which is subject to *155rational dispute and debate. There is substance to opposing positions. Appellate counsel who properly presents a single arguable point for consideration of the court has presented a case which is not wholly frivolous. Points are not arguable in civil litigation if they have not been raised and preserved in the trial court, or are not supported by the record. Points are not arguable if they seek reconsideration of a prior holding without identifying significant new or different factors. It is not proper to leave an argument incomplete, as by failing to identify the trial court ruling deemed erroneous or by failing to identify the element of a claim or defense deemed unsupported by the evidence. I do agree that the appeal before us is not utterly devoid of all plausibility, since this court had not previously addressed the question of the validity of this statute of limitation as it applies to children and incapacitated persons.
SHEPARD, C.J., concurs.