Court Opinion

ID: 9587802
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:26:26.260536+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:33:29.065736
License: Public Domain

BISTLINE, Justice,
concurring in the judgment only and dissenting from the award of attorney’s fees on appeal.
I.
Before Hogan v. Hermann, 101 Idaho 893, 623 P.2d 900 (1980), was put to rest the Court membership had heard oral argument twice and written six opinions. At the end the Court did have a majority opinion. Justice Bakes, author of the majority opinion today, was not in the Hogan v. Hermann majority and incorrectly today refers to Whitley v. Spokane Ry. Co., 23 Idaho 642, 132 P. 121 (1913), aff’d 237 U.S. 487, 35 S.Ct. 655, 59 L.Ed. 1060 (1915), as standing for the proposition that the plaintiffs in this case cannot “maintain this wrongful death action particularly in light of the fact that these plaintiffs failed to join in the action brought by decedent’s spouse.” Neither Whitley nor Hogan v. Hermann so held, and on the contrary, in both of those cases there were two suits. Bakes, J., with no one joining, espoused the single action theory and may be seen in his today’s opinion as again espousing his own previous view.1 Moreover, in so doing, seemingly there is an abdication of his sometimes stance that the Court should not decide cases on issues which were not presented to the trial court. Defendants’ motion was not predicated upon a single action theory, nor was that contention advanced in a supporting brief. The trial court, Judge Norris, did not rule against the appellants on that basis — nor should we — but on the grounds that they were not “heirs” as legslatively defined.
II.
Counsel for the appellants has endeavored to gain compensation for the losses his clients undoubtedly suffered. Counsel has urged new and novel contentions, and has submitted authority which did not convince the trial court, and has not convinced this Court. On other days and at other times, however, courts have accepted new and novel contentions, and thus new law is made. Here counsel for the respondents has submitted to us a most excellent brief containing authority and argument by which they have sought to persuade this Court against accepting the appellants’ argument. Although respondents are successful, the tremendous amount of effort which has gone into their brief obviously demonstrates that counsel for the respondents did not see adverse counsel’s attempt at creating new law as undeserving of close attention and frivolous in nature. Nor did the trial judge. Nor do I. For that reason *792I do not vote to assess an award of attorney’s fees against the appellants.2

. The single action theory was exhaustively reviewed in Hogan v. Hermann in the separate concurring opinion of Bistline, J.

. Many readers of our opinions will be comparing the appellants’ success here with the appellant’s success in Chandler v. City of Boise Fire Department, 104 Idaho 480, 660 P.2d 1323 (1983), and Lamb v. Robinson, 101 Idaho 703, 620 P.2d 276 (1980). A Court which can reverse as this Court did in those two cases is a court which should not be quick to award attorney’s fees where it happens to affirm.