Court Opinion

ID: 9689035
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 18:17:07.049207+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:43.612836
License: Public Domain

PEDERSON, Justice,
concurring specialty-
Because I agree that the trial court erred in concluding as a matter of law that it had no jurisdiction to hear Mr. Howe’s plea, I concur in the opinion authored by Chief Justice Erickstad. I am, however, constrained to add some comments.
The availability and the worth of “ex-punction” as a remedy should not be presupposed. As necessity is mightier than the law and is the mother of invention, the elimination of the evil complained of may well require the design of a new tool.
The paradox is evident. Courts are not free to legislate at will — courts need not always deny a remedy merely because the Legislature has failed to provide for it by statute. To deserve society’s support, courts are obliged to recognize the deterring factors — we do not call them handicaps — which compel self-imposed judicial restraint. Free men and women can be injured by unwarranted invasion of privacy — whether we should call it a natural right or constitutional in scope has not been settled in the minds of judicial scholars. See City of Grand Forks v. Grand Forks Herald, Inc., 307 N.W.2d 572 (N.D.1981). An ad hoc, one-step-at-a-time approach will head us in the right direction. The invasion of privacy may perhaps be remediable only by suit against the person who misuses information when there is no remedy that will actually withhold the information from that person.