Court Opinion

ID: 9709834
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 03:55:41.342321+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:51.759873
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE INGLIS, specially concurring: While I concur with the majority in the result of this case as being correct under the law, I am nevertheless troubled that we are countenancing a grave injustice. The majority correctly notes that a party is obligated to follow the progress of its own case and may not blindly trust in its attorney to handle all of the details of the litigation. Yet institutionally, the legal system is organized to foster a party’s almost total reliance on its attorney to navigate through the litigation process. The fact that attorneys are licensed and obligated to follow written rules of professional conduct ordinarily vindicates this forced reliance. In a case such as this one, in which plaintiffs attorney so flagrantly and completely abandoned his client, our assumptions tend to break down. Are we sure that plaintiffs attorney was truthfully communicating the status of the case to plaintiff? Are we confident that the trial court’s March 3, 1998, order requiring plaintiffs presence at the next hearing was duly passed from the attorney to plaintiff? Sadly, it is entirely reasonable and possible that plaintiff was actively misled by its attorney, lulled into a belief that all was well until it received its attorney’s abrupt resignation, especially since, despite being earlier defaulted, it continued to retain the attorney in this litigation. This court is constrained to follow the law as it exists and, in this case, it has. The law in this case, however, leads to an unjust result. Therefore, I respectfully suggest that our supreme court review the circumstances of this case as it relates to the unfortunate presumption that a party is responsible for the misdeeds and incompetence of its counsel.