Court Opinion

ID: 9793631
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:50:51.998834+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:06:18.006325
License: Public Domain

BISTLINE, Justice,
dissenting.
Without doubt the Court possesses the power to promulgate its own rules of procedure. The legislature, in 1941, in enacting what is now I.C. § 1-213, recognized the rule-making power of the Court, but admonished that court rules “shall neither abridge, enlarge nor modify the substantive rights of any litigant.” The case at hand brings to the fore again the question: What is procedural and what is substantive?
In 1957, by order of the Idaho Supreme Court, the Idaho Rules of Civil Procedure were adopted. Rule 1 stated the scope of the rules is to “govern the procedure” in the various courts of Idaho. The rules were patterned generally after the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, with changes being made where Idaho substantive law required changes. Such was true with respect to Rule 48, as it then read, which as applicable here stated that “[tjhree-fourths of the jury may render a verdict.” I.C. § 10-217, then in effect and remaining so until repealed effective as of March 31, 1975, provided that a verdict could be rendered when agreed upon by three-fourths of the jurors. This had been a provision of the statutory law since before statehood, going back to the Code of Civil Procedure enacted in 1881. That it was a statute of substantive law is not to be doubted; it also became and is a provision in our Idaho Constitution, art. 1, § 7. The long and eloquent debate at the constitutional convention centered. on an amendment which had for its purpose to leave to the legislature the determination of whether three-fourths of a jury could agree upon and render a verdict. It was the will of the convention, however, that the issue was fundamental and should be declared in the Constitution. The amendment was defeated. 1 Proceedings & Debates of the Constitutional Convention of Idaho, at 234 (1889) (I. W. Hart, ed. 1912). That which had been the statutory law was to remain the statutory law, but became firmly emblazoned in Idaho’s jurisprudence as a fundamental provision of the Constitution.
In 1975 the legislature was somehow induced to repeal I.C. § 10-217, and at the same time the Idaho Supreme Court amended Rule 48 into 48(a) and 48(b). Rule 48(a) reads, as pertinent, simply that “[tjhree-fourths (%) of the jury may render a verdict.” Notwithstanding that this is *574also the language of the Constitution, the Court today blithely agrees to an interpretation of its rule that modifies the Constitution as well by henceforth allowing any nine jurors to determine one issue, while yet another nine may determine another issue, and yet another nine determine a third issue, and so on.
In doing so the Court makes a serious inroad into the area of substantive law and goes beyond the bounds of I.C. § 1-213 and Rule 1 of the Idaho Rules of Civil Procedure. The Court resorts to a lower appellate court decision from New Mexico,1 Naumburg v. Wagner, as primary authority for this drastic change. With this I cannot agree.
Whether the number of jurors who must agree to a verdict be 12, 11, 10, 9, or 8, has nothing at all to do with procedure, but is a substantive matter affecting litigants, not lawyers. Procedure has to do with the rules and regulations which govern the progression of a civil controversy through the courts from the filing of the complaint to a final judgment, and properly deals with the filing of the pleadings, motions, discovery, etc.
There is no need to turn to New Mexico, to New Jersey, or to Arkansas for guidance. The statute, as it was in effect at the time the Constitution was adopted, and for 85 years thereafter, spells out in exact terms precisely what the people of Idaho, through their legislature, considered to be the purpose and intent of the Constitution and of the statute, namely, that a “jury, or three-fourths of them,” may agree upon and render a verdict.
The Oregon Supreme Court unanimously decided the same issue exactly contrary to that which the Idaho Court announces today. The Oregon Constitution, art. VII, § 5.7, as is true of the Idaho Constitution, requires a concurrence of three-fourths of the jury in civil cases. Oregon held: “This means that not less than nine jurors must agree to the verdict and the same nine jurors must agree on all issues determined by the verdict.” Shultz v. Monterey, 232 Or. 421, 375 P.2d 829, 830 (1962). Clark v. Strain, 212 Or. 357, 319 P.2d 940 (1958).
In sum, I cannot agree with the Court for the primary reason that its decision in this case invades the area of substantive law, and, under the guise of the Court’s rule-making power, purports to interpret its own rule, doing so in a manner which clearly violates a constitutional provision, the effect and meaning of which has been the subject of legislative attention. Courts, because they are the final arbiters, should be especially zealous in upholding the constitution and avoiding usurpation of powers which are those of the people through their legislature.

. New Mexico’s pertinent constitutional provision is unlike Idaho’s and unlike Oregon’s. The New Mexico Constitution leaves to the legislature to provide or not provide for civil verdicts by less than a unanimous vote.