Court Opinion

ID: 9865332
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 16:32:08.478308+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:38:28.945854
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Bouck,
dissenting.
With the decision and majority opinion I do not agree. For the reasons well stated in 1931 by Mr. Justice Butler when dissenting in Johnson-Olmsted Realty Co. v. City *117and County of Denver, 89 Colo. 250, 264, 1 P. (2d) 928, 934, I believe that the professional services of an architect as such are not properly subject to the Denver charter provision (Municipal Code, 1927, page 42, charter section 28), requiring the letting of certain contracts upon competitive bids. The majority opinion in the above mentioned case was concurred in without qualification by the justices then constituting' the majority, two of whom are no longer members of this court. The opinion contained two apparent grounds of decision. The first ground was that the Allied Architects Association, the claimant there involved, was a corporation and therefore could not legally supply services as an architect; the second, that architects fall within the aforesaid provision for competitive bids. The first ground, clearly preliminary, was in and of itself decisive of that case. The second ground therefore did not necessarily call for determination. Hence, I think, what was said in relation to the second ground partakes of the nature of a dictum. The questions arising' in that connection seem properly open for reconsideration. This seems desirable from the standpoint of fairness, not only because of the radical difference between that case and the case at bar, but because the services dealt with in the present case were rendered more than ten years before this court decided the Johnson-Olmsted case. Until long* after the services had been so rendered by the defendant in error’s husband and in small part paid for, such skilled and technical services as those of an architect were, so far as I am aware, generally regarded as not within the aforesaid charter provision. The doctrine of stare decisis (rather inaccurately referred to as “a blind following of an ancient precedent”) may doubtless receive proper application when a decision has long stood unchallenged. Where, however, as in the Johnson-Olmsted case, the decision is less than three years old and was based ostensibly on two grounds, the secondary and unnecessary *118ground may well be subjected to a reexamination under the special circumstances above referred to.
The City and County of Denver is using its West Side Court Building-, its Tubercular Hospital, and its Cody Memorial on Lookout Mountain. All these were constructed according* to the designs of Moorman, the architect, whose work had to precede that of the builders. The widow is here asking this court to uphold an admittedly small judgment awarded in the lower court as a balance due for that work. I think this judgment should be affirmed, not in any sense as a matter of sympathy, but as a matter of simple justice. I therefore dissent.