Court Opinion

ID: 9639616
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 16:41:48.642677+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:05:03.560710
License: Public Domain

Tom Glaze, Justice, concurring. I agree with the majority opinion, but write to mention what it further suggests, but does not say. First, it must be emphasized that the trial court in this matter had litde other choice than to exercise its power of contempt when a person willfully refused to comply with the court’s order directing the person to comply with the law. Here, Doherty, as an area manager of DHS, countermanded the trial court’s order by telling case worker Heather Harper not to pay the family’s utilities even though DHS had sufficient funds to pay the utilities.1 While the trial court was within its power to use its criminal contempt authority to punish Doherty for her disobedience of the court’s order, I think it would have been more appropriate in these circumstances to have compelled Doherty’s and DHS’s compliance through the trial court’s civil contempt power — which brings me to the real point of this concurrence.2  While Doherty certainly was a party to the willful disobedience of the trial court’s order, the then-DHS Director, Tom Dalton, and three other officials had been ordered to show cause why they should not be found in contempt as well. None of these officials appeared, although they were personally served. Unfortunately, by the trial court’s failure to compel these officials’ appearance, the trial court sent the mixed signal that only subordinates, and not high-ranking officials, are answerable for department In my view, the three ranking DHS officials who were served with a show-cause order should have been made to appear and explain why they adhered to a policy that contravened the court’s directives. Because these officials appear to have shared in DHS’s willful refusal to abide by the trial court’s order, it is only fair that Doherty not be saddled with the entire brunt of the punishment. Therefore, I agree with the majority’s substantial remittance of the sentence rendered in this case.   The case worker and Doherty apparently were following department policy in declining to use budgeted cash assistance funds to pay the family’s utilities. The case worker, though, tried to obtain monies from other independent sources, but failed.    Civil contempt would have availed Doherty the opportunity to comply with the court’s order or present evidence, if any, why she could not comply with court directives, e.g., whether she was ordered by supervisors not to pay cash assistance. The dissent incorrectly suggests Doherty was acting under fixed agency policy which she had no authority to supersede. If this were true, Doherty should have presented it in her defense. She did not, and this court is in no position to surmise on whether or not she was compelled to follow a DHS policy that contravened the trial court’s order.