Court Opinion

ID: 9758850
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 23:52:33.65227+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:00:55.443636
License: Public Domain

OPALA, J.,
with whom TAYLOR, V.C.J. and KAUGER, J., join, concurring.
T1 I write separately from the court to explain why its pronouncement in which I concur does not offend or intrude upon the common law's traditional respect for the role of counsel in the adversarial forensic practice, trial and appellate.
12 Just as the law which is to govern first-instance proceedings is shaped exclusively by the trial judge who defines its state through pretrial rulings and those offered from the bench as well as through the instructions for the guidance of the jury,1 so also the issues for the appellate pronouncement of the law are not formulated exclusively by the briefs of counsel but by the reviewing tribunal's careful analysis of the record in light of the applicable law.2
*1163{3 No stipulation by counsel of legal issues for trial or on appeal may prevail over the judiciary's exclusive power to formulate in and apply to a controversy the law that governs its disposition based on the record brought before the tribunal3 This and no other principle controls the correct division of forensic responsibility between the court and counsel for the parties in the adversarial regime of the common-law system.
T4 In the allocation of functions for the proper operation of the adversarial forensic regime of the common law counsel for the parties bear the responsibility to propose the law that is to govern the controversy.4 The court settles the law that will be applied. An agreement between (or among) counsel as to the applicable law does not change the division of responsibilities. The court is never compelled to accept the agreement reached by counsel. Its duty is unchanged and remains undiminished at all times.5
T5 A parties' agreement on issues of law in a case is not binding on the court when the record indicates otherwise.6 Fidelity to the law that governs the dispute must be the court's primary and exclusive concern. The parties are always free to stipulate the facts but they may not defeat the court's exclusive control over the law by stipulating the law that is to govern their case. The role of determining the norms of law to govern the facts in litigation is always assigned exclusively to the tribunal rather than to the parties' counsel. Simply stated, when counsel agree what law should be applied but the court does not accede to their view, the judge's choice of law will prevail over that of the lawyers.7
*11646 In sum, the court's pronouncement today remains faithful to the traditional Anglo-American notions of adversarial regime in the forensic practice by its insistence that the court must retain full control over the law that governs the appellate process of review and by not yielding to any departure based on contrary stipulation of counsel for the parties.
17 While a party's concession of harmful facts is always detrimental, no legal detriment will necessarily follow from a stipulation of improvident or inapplicable law. It is not binding on the court. Adversarial games cannot be played with the rules of law that are due a litigant. There lies the largely inflexible line of common-law fairness in the administration of legal process. Absent some extraordinary conduct by one who seeks to be relieved of the adverse consequence from conceding inapplicable law, the common law is often utterly unyielding in protecting the improvident litigant.
T8 Lastly, the dissenter's verbal abuse of my concurrence must not escape mention but does not deserve an answer with detailed jurisprudential analysis. The dissent manufactures nonexisting inconsistencies to create an illusion of conflicting pronouncements authored by me in the past. Even if I were guilty of every inconsistency of which I am accused, the legal quality of this concurrence would remain unaffected. It stands on solid grounds for a pronouncement of common law's adversarial litigation verity of ancient vintage. The attack aims at the messenger's person rather than at the text of his messages8 Expert readership of this Nation as well as in the world community of the Anglo-American legal system, I am confident, will doubtless prove more fit objectively to assess the value, if any, this contribution of mine will make to jurisprudence of the case at hand than I may do myself in today's anger from an utterly unwarranted and unprovoked attack upon my intellectual prowess and professional integrity. Restraint born of composure will silence with calm dignity all noise generated by recklessly and irresponsibly thrown personal insults in a desperate attempt to demonstrate some strained signs of inconsistent rulings in past opinions of which I am the author.

. It is the function of nisi prius courts to make first-instance determinations of fact or legal questions. Broadway Clinic v. Liberty Mut. Ins. Co., 2006 OK 29, ¶ 26, 139 P.3d 873, 880; Davis v. Gwaltney, 1955 OK 362, ¶ 13, 291 P.2d 820, 824. A trial court has the duty, on its own motion, to instruct the jury properly as to all of the fundamental issues of the case as supported by the pleadings and evidence. Young v. First State Bank, 1981 OK 53, ¶ 19, 628 P.2d 707, 712; Bradley Chevrolet, Inc. v. Goodson, 1969 OK 25, ¶ 17, 450 P.2d 500, 503.

. Issues of law are the province of courts, not of parties to a lawsuit. As the Court noted in Estate of Sanford v. Commissioner, 308 U.S. 39, 60 S.Ct. 51, 59, 84 L.Ed. 20 (1939); "We are not bound to accept as controlling, stipulations as to questions of law." Cf. United States v. John J. Felin & Co., 334 U.S. 624, 640, 68 S.Ct. 1238, 1246, 92 L.Ed. 1614 (1948) ("[even where the parties to the litigation have stipulated as to the 'facts,' this Court will disregard the stipulation, accepted and applied by the courts below, if the stipulation obviously forecloses real questions of law").
*1163"'The effect of admitted facts is a question of law." Nelson v. Montgomery Ward & Co., 312 U.S. 373, 376, 61 S.Ct. 593, 595, 85 L.Ed. 897 (1941).

. The parties may settle a controversy and request a judgment conformable to the terms of their agreement. But they may not direct that a judgment be rendered according to their stipulation of facts or of law. The common law's adversarial forensic practice does not reduce the judiciary to a servant status. Neither a stipulation of facts nor one of law will prevail over the duty and power of the appellate judiciary to render that judgment which is dictated by the law to be applied to the record before the court. The parties press their positions but the appellate court is bound by the law and by the record before it in deciding what issue will govern the controversy and how these issues should be resolved.
See, e.g., Swift & Co. v. Hocking Valley R. Co., 243 U.S. 281, 289-90, 37 S.Ct. 287, 289, 61 L.Ed. 722 (1917), where the Court held:
If the stipulation is to be treated as an agreement concerning the legal effect of admitted facts, it is obviously inoperative; since the court cannot be controlled by agreement of counsel on a subsidiary question of law. .... 'The duty of this court, as of every judicial tribunal, is limited to determining rights of persons or of property, which are actually controverted in the particular case before it.... No stipulation of parties or counsel, whether in the case before the court or in any other case, can enlarge the power, or affect the duty, of the court in this regard.! California v. San Pablo & TR. Co. 149 U.S. 308, 314, 13 Sup.Ct. Rep. 876, 37 L.Ed. 747, 748 [{(1893)]. See Mills v. Green, 159 U.S. 651, 654, 16 Sup.Ct. Rep. 132, 40 L.Ed. 293, 294 [ (1895) 1.

. According to one commentator, "[the jury is bound to decide the facts on the basis of legal instructions that, while given by the judge, are initially proposed by the advocates." Geoffrey C. Hazard, Angelo Dondi, Responsibilities of Judges and Advocates in Civil and Common Law: Some Lingering Misconceptions Concerning Civil Lawsuits, 39 Cornell Int'l L.J. 59, 61 (2006) (emphasis supplied). As one commentator notes, "lilt is still the American lawyer-not the court-that is responsible for gathering and presenting the proof. It is still the American lawyer-not the court-that is responsible for choosing the witnesses and for questioning and cross-examining them." Oscar G. Chase, Legal Processes and National Culture, 5 Cardozo Journal of International and Comparative Law 1, 6 (1997).

. United States v. John J. Felin & Co., supra note 2, 334 U.S. at 640, 68 S.Ct. at 1246; Swift & Co. v. Hocking Valley R. Co., supra note 3, 243 U.S. at 289-90, 37 S.Ct. at 289; California v. San Pablo & T.R. Co., supra note 3, 149 U.S. at 314, 13 S.Ct. at 878.

. See, e.g., Clark v. Munroe, 407 So.2d 1036, 1037 (Fla. App.1981). There the court held that while the parties may stipulate the use of summary judgment procedure, this does not authorize "the trial court to accept such a stipulation where the record reveals disputed issues of material facts. The parties cannot by stipulation control questions of law." Id., citing Massachusetts Bonding & Ins. Co. v. Bryant, 175 So.2d 88 (Fla. 1st DCA 1965), affd., 189 So.2d 614 (Fla.1966){emphasis supplied).

. The adversarial forensic practice of the Anglo-American law does not reduce appellate judges to the status of impotence comparable to that of *1164eunuchs in the sultan's harem. When a parties' stipulation attempts to reduce judicial review of a case to a single question which, if answered, would not fully dispose of the case, the appellate court does not violate any rule of common-law adversarial system by extending its consideration beyond the frame of the stipulation to reach other issues necessary for a legally correct disposition of the case.

. Interpersonal wars conducted in courts composed of multiple judges sitting in the same case, which inevitably move the focus of a legal controversy from its subject-matter to the personality traits of each combatant judge, tend to becloud and distort the issues under the court's consideration by injecting extraneous impurities into the decisional process.