Court Opinion

ID: 9549168
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:14:20.701243+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:19:56.310467
License: Public Domain

HENRIOD, Chief Justice
(concurring in the result).
I concur in the result because of Title 78-31, Utah Code Annotated 1953, and Latter v. Holsum Bread, 108 Utah 364, 160 P.2d 421 (1945), but not for most of the other reasons assigned in the main opinion. Personally, I see nothing wrong with a fair, voluntary arbitration agreement, and *231the one incorporated in the insurance contract involved here seems to he such a provision, actually beneficial to the insured, unobnoxious to the policy of facilitating settlements for damages suffered, but being inimical only to Title 78-31, and its interpretation stare decisis-wise in the Latter case. The legislature has done nothing about the impractical situation provoked by the jealousy of courts that survived by fees, not salaries, in a judicial atmosphere existing along about the turn of the 18th century in England. Only a few states follow the holding of the main opinion.
• That people should be able to resort to courts of law to wash their linen, is axiomatic and fundamental in the American system, but I have doubts that such a principle pre-empts the other principle, that people are free to make a binding contract. But it is not for me to question the legislative fountain of wisdom by judicial fiat,— and in conforming, can only suggest that the legislature might take another look at 78-31, which suggestion similarly was urged in the Latter case, but which for two decades has not impressed the biennial solons.