Court Opinion

ID: 9550133
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:30:13.912011+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:14:35.435365
License: Public Domain

Finley, J.
(dissenting)—In 1897, Justice Holmes sagaciously observed:
It is revolting to have no better reason for a rule of law than that so it was laid down in the time of Henry IV. It is still more revolting if the grounds upon which it was laid down have vanished long since, and the rule simply persists from blind imitation of the past.
O. Holmes, The Path of the Law, 10 Harv. L. Rev. 457, 469 (1897).
The majority opinion, whether anticipating some dissent or not, does render brief lip service to the thoughts and operating principle posed by the statement of Justice *354Holmes. But then, as though suddenly shocked at such an approach, or stricken by some sense of disloyalty or compelling necessity as to stare decisis, the majority turns to the doctrine in an endurable and unshakable embrace.
The majority certainly does not demonstrate any strong or compelling reason for this 180 degree retreat to a stare decisis rationale. The switch from giving lip service to the juristic principle emphasized by Holmes to an antithetic application of stare decisis in this case seems to me dictated more by habit and rather sterile, automatic thinking than by critical, careful and responsible reasoning. Contrariwise, the Holmes statement seems to me reasonably applicable to the case before us for it provides a persuasive basis for reaching a better-reasoned, more rational resolution of the problem involved than was reached by this court in a number of previous cases. The statute involved, ROW 19.36.010, was in my judgment wrongly construed soon after its enactment, and this wrong construction has unnecessarily been followed blindly by the court for a number of years. In this, the court has confused the requisites of a real estate commission contract with the requirements of precise legal descriptions in contracts or other documents for the actual conveyance of title or an interest in real property. This latter type of situation is certainly not involved in the instant case.
The necessity of an exact property description in a contract to convey land arises from the fact that the land itself is at once the subject and the most basic element of the agreement. To require that a contract dealing with that land be in writing, and then to admit parol evidence to identify the land, would be inconsistent with the fraud prevention purpose of the statute of frauds. As applied to land sale contracts, the substance of the statute of frauds assumes that the presence of a writing will more reliably prove the transfer or conveyance of an interest in land, as well as the quantum, existence and location of the land being sold, than will the admission of parol evidence. Where a land sale contract is unclear in its description of *355realty, to admit parol evidence to identify the land is to subvert the purpose of the statute of frauds.
There is no comparable justification for requiring a legally expert and precise description in a real estate commission contract. The identification of the land in question is subsidiary to, and not necessarily relevant to, the creation of the brokerage relationship. I am convinced that RCW 19.36.010 requires a writing to show only the existence of an agreement to create such a relationship; a legally precise description of land is unnecessary. This position is evidenced by the obvious; absence of any language within the statute requiring a legal description of property in such brokerage agreements. Rather, RCW 19.36.010 demands only a writing to evince the contract for the payment of a commission. Stewart v. Preston, 77 Wash. 559, 137 P. 993 (1914); Peirce v. Wheeler, 44 Wash. 326, 87 P. 361 (1906). The purpose of this requirement of a writing is to prevent fraudulent and deceptive activities in- the commissioned sale of realty. Heim v. Faulstich, 70 Wn.2d 688, 424 P.2d 1012 (1967). The very fact that no fraud was or could have been perpetrated upon the vendors by the real estate broker in the instant case suggests in itself that the fraud prevention purposes of the statute were met by the written commission contract before this court, notwithstanding the majority’s characterization of the property description as inadequate. All parties—vendors, broker, and purchaser—knew beyond doubt which 534-acre parcel of realty, described in the listing agreement as the “AlbrechtErwin Ranch”, was referred to in this contract. This fact is shown by the subsequent sale of the 534-acre Albrecht-Erwin Ranch by the Albrechts, as vendors, to a purchaser whose interest in the property was occasioned by the activities of the broker. The opinion of the majority suggests that any body of precedent to be overruled must first be found to be harmful. In the case before us, to permit the vendors to avoid a contractual duty to compensate the broker for the services which he faithfully rendered in advertising and arranging the sale of the real property in ques*356tion as the result of a technicality of questionable origin is to so extend a misconstruction of the statute of frauds as to authorize the perpetration of fraud upon the broker. The majority’s condition precedent is met by its “blind adherence .to unworkable and harmful precedent.”
Indeed, authority may be found which suggests that questionable precedent need not be harmful before it may be overruled, as long as no harm is created by overruling such precedent. In In re Estate of Yand, 23 Wn.2d 831, 162 P.2d 434 (1945), we stated at page 837:
While long acquiesence in an erroneous decision may make the decision a rule of property or practice 'and raise it to the dignity of law, it must not be understood that a previous line of decisions affecting even property rights can in no case be overthrown. . . .
If a series of decisions are clearly incorrect, through a mistaken conception of the statute or rule, and no injurious results would follow from overruling those decisions, it is the duty of the court to overrule those decisions.
The point to be made is simply that the doctrine of stare decisis is a judicial tool which should be wielded only to render a just and reasoned result. Further evidence of the doctrine’s pliability is the fact that Washington authority exists for the proposition that reliance upon precedent is inappropriate in cases involving statutory construction, such as the instant case. See Windust v. Department of Labor & Indus., 52 Wn.2d 33, 323 P.2d 241 (1958); Petersen v. Department of Labor & Indus., 40 Wn.2d 635, 245 P.2d 1161 (1952). Blind adherence to precedent, then, would require that this court ignore the doctrine of stare decisis in this case. A reasonable middle position was, however, suggested in Powell v. Superior Portland Cement, Inc., 15 Wn.2d 14, 18, 129 P.2d 536 (1942), and should be followed in the instant case:
While due deference should be paid to precedent, the question in determining whether to accept or reject the precedent is how far it accords with good sense or reason; that is, the law should not be confined to precedents, *357but consists in the reason of them, as “the reason of the law is the soul of the law.”
(Italics mine.) In accord with this Washington standard are some of this nation’s leading jurists both past and present. Similar in substance to the earlier-stated thoughts of Justice Holmes, the observations of Justice Cardozo on the application of precedent are suggested in the following:
I think that when a rule, after it has been duly tested by experience, has been found to be inconsistent with the sense of justice or with the social welfare, there should be less hesitation in frank avowal and full abandonment.
B. Cardozo, The Nature of the Judicial Process 150 (1921). In like manner, Justice Brandeis, in Di Santo v. Pennsylvania, 273 U.S. 34, 42, 71 L. Ed. 524, 47 S. Ct. 267 (1927), commented upon the overzealousness in the approach of the judiciary to stare decisis:
It is usually more important that a rule of law be settled, than that it be settled right. . . . But the doctrine of stare decisis does not command that we err again ... In the search for truth through the slow process of inclusion and exclusion, involving trial and error, it behooves us to reject, as guides, the decisions upon such questions which prove to have been mistaken.
Justice Douglas, noting that it is easy to “over-emphasize stare decisis as a principle in the lives of men” (W. Douglas, The Supreme Court: Views From Inside 123 (1961)), suggested the following:
It is, I think, a healthy practice (too infrequently followed) for a court to reexamine its own doctrine. Legislative correction of judicial errors is often difficult to effect. Moreover, responsible government should entail the undoing of wrongs committed by the department in question. That course is faithful to democratic traditions. Respect for any tribunal is increased if it stands ready . . . not only to correct the errors of others but also to confess its own.
W. Douglas, Stare Decisis, 49 Colum. L. Rev. 735, 746-47 (1949). While the United States Supreme Court has evidenced its willingness to utilize the doctrine as a judicial *358tool to ensure consistency and predictability in our law, several cases suggest a comparable willingness to reject precedent when it is realized that the doctrine may perpetuate a statute’s misconstruction or an unjust ruling. See, e.g., Erie R. Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64, 82 L. Ed. 1118, 58 S. Ct. 817, 114 A.L.R. 1487 (1938) (overruling a century of precedent established in Swift v. Tyson, 41 U.S. (16 Pet.) 1 (1842)) and West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, 300 U.S. 379, 81 L. Ed. 703, 57 S. Ct. 578, 108 A.L.R. 1330 (1937) (overruling Adkins v. Children's Hosp., 261 U.S. 525, 67 L. Ed. 785, 43 S. Ct. 394, 24 A.L.R. 1238 (1923) and thereby declaring the Minimum Wage Act to be a violation of due process).
Our sister states appear no less inclined to recognize the doctrine’s point of diminishing returns. The Supreme Court of Illinois for example, during the 150-year period from 1818 to 1968, overruled 170 of its previous decisions in 140 opinions, with a time lapse between original and overruling decisions varying from a period of only 4 months in one instance to a period of 110 years in another, the average span for all cases being less than 15 years. See Moran, Stare Decisis in an Era of Judicial Activism: One State's Answer, 1 U. Tol. L. Rev. 51 (1969).
Our own court has earlier stated its position as one of refusing to yield to the doctrine of stare decisis when to do so would perpetuate error and sacrifice principle. State ex rel. Bloedel-Donovan Lumber Mills v. Savidge, 144 Wash. 302, 258 P. 1 (1927); Schramm v. Steele, 97 Wash. 309, 166 P. 634 (1917). The majority’s decision to succumb to questionable precedent without sound basis in logic or reason to support such a position seems to be, in itself, a break with this court’s tradition of closely examining the legal principles upon which our opinions rest, thereby ensuring against the further extension of error. Perhaps this is due to the fact that cogent reasoning will not support the precedential construction of RCW 19.36.010 upon which the majority relies, since it is evident that the judicial requirement of a legally precise description of property to be sold is both *359unjustified and unnecessary in a real estate commission contract. Under these circumstances, the following comment seems applicable:
It is not the rule of stare decisis that is odious, but the blind and stubborn adherence to it and its use as an excuse for not finding the time and the inclination to decide that bad, old rules must be changed, . . .
F. Hare & F. Hare, Jr., Stare Decisis, 31 Ala. Law, 273, 281-82 (1970).
Because of the resulting injustice to the appellant-broker in this case which inheres in the rigid and unwarranted devotion to outmoded and mistaken precedent, I believe that it is time to correct a persistent error of interpretation and to cease to make this particular statutory provision a means of fraud rather than a means to prevent it. I concur entirely in the reasoning and result reached in the dissenting opinion of Wright, J.
Utter, J., concurs with Finley, J.
Petition for rehearing granted December 26, 1972.