Court Opinion

ID: 9544388
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:55:14.316685+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:12:54.615676
License: Public Domain

Gunderson, J.,
concurring:
Assuming that a real controversy exists between the county commissioners and the county clerk — an assumption somewhat difficult to sustain — I can concur in the result of the majority opinion. However, I must note disapproval of this court larding its opinions with unnecessary constitutional dicta, discussing issues because attorneys desire it, and not because the case requires it.
I had misgivings about the excess language in State ex rel. Brennan v. Bowman, 88 Nev. 582, 503 P.2d 454 (1972). In that mandamus proceeding as in this one, it was unnecessary to decide any of the constitutional issues “raised” in the county clerk’s name. Indeed, we might well have declined to entertain the proceeding at all, on the ground that it presented no actual, present controversy. Cf. Muskrat v. United States, 219 U.S. 346 (1910).1 At most, in that proceeding as in this one, assuming a bona fide controversy between the commissioners and the clerk, we should simply have summarily ordered the clerk to perform her ministerial duty, i.e., in that case, to attest the trust instrument. Cf. State v. Glass, 44 Nev. 234, 192 P. 472 (1920). We have frequently declared we will not decide *336constitutional questions, unless that is necessary to adjudicating some interested party’s rights. See, for example, State v. Tax Commission, 38 Nev. 112, 145 P. 905 (1914), and authorities collected at 10 Nev. Digest, Constitutional Law, § 60.
Although the opinion issued in the first Brennan v. Bowman case discussed issues not necessary to decide it, purporting to resolve constitutional challenges to Stats. Nev. 1971, ch. 502 (NRS 242B), we at least refrained from suggesting blanket approval of that law and of the trust indenture ostensibly drawn pursuant thereto. In the instant case, if this court does not refrain altogether from advisory dicta, I suggest we should confine ourselves, as in the first Brennan v. Bowman matter, to considering whether, under some tendered theory, the state statute in question necessarily contemplates unconstitutional governmental action. Surely, we should not intimate that some county ordinance will hereafter be deemed lawful, either in form or in ultimate application. (Although the majority may not intend such sweeping approval, their opinion might be so understood.)
It will be a very dangerous practice, I think, if county commissioners can impel our advisory review of any ordinance they enact simply by having their county clerk refuse to publish it. This court lacks the time and foresight to assess, in the abstract, the constitutional implications and ramifications of every financial scheme county commissioners throughout the state may be motivated to enter by laws like that before us and that concerned in State ex rel. Brennan v. Bowman, supra. Such an undertaking is both foreign to our office and beyond our capacity. Particularly this is so because a district attorney, when he nominally represents his county clerk by tendering us constitutional arguments against an ordinance, will often be presenting a view he does not want to prevail — perhaps arguing against an ordinance he helped to prepare. If we approve such procedures, how much real advocacy can we expect from counsel?
Candidly, although the district attorney’s Points and Authorities in this case are responsibly prepared from the standpoint of scholarship, they reflect little desire for victory. I believe a taxpayer or a competitor of The Flintkote Company, truly interested in defeating the plan to buy pollution equipment for Flintkote, might prefer to retain other, truly interested counsel. And, as I now perceive it, the friendly litigation now before us has been concocted to obviate the danger that, at some later date, some interested party with interested counsel might persuade us that his constitutional rights were *337violated by selling bonds to purchase equipment for The Flintkote Company. Since that danger exists, I suggest it is our duty to wait, and hear the interested party.

In Muskrat, the United States Supreme Court ordered certain actions dismissed for want of jurisdiction, saying:
“. . . The whole purpose ... is to determine the constitutional validity of this class of legislation, in a suit not arising between parties concerning a property right necessarily involved in the decision in question, but in a proceeding against the Government in its sovereign capacity, and concerning which the only judgment required is to settle the doubtful character of the legislation in question. Such judgment will not conclude private parties, when actual litigation brings to the court the question of the constitutionality of such legislation.” Id., at 361-362.