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State v. Diprete5/1/1998
its place to fashion their new and unprecedented "no authority" or "lack of authority" rule of appellate review just for this particular case.
I am convinced from my review of the record facts before us that the state has failed to show any abuse of discretion on the part of the trial Justice and has failed to meet its appellate burden of proof. I would deny and dismiss the state's appeal and affirm the trial Justice's discretionary action. I am equally convinced that if my colleagues in the majority had considered this appeal in accordance with the long-standing abuse of discretion standard that has been applied in every previous appeal challenging a trial Justice's imposition of sanctions pursuant to Rule 16(i), they too would have denied and dismissed the state's appeal.
Unfortunately my colleagues in the majority have abandoned that precedent, and in so doing, one is left to surmise that perhaps adherence to precedent would not have permitted the desired end in this case, and, therefore, precedent was sacrificed on the altar of expediency. As Oliver Wendell Homes wrote in Dissent in Northern Securities Co. v. United States, 193 U.S. 197, 24 S.Ct. 436, 48 L.Ed. 679 (1904):
"Great cases, like hard cases, make bad law. For great cases are called great, not by reason of their real importance in shaping the law of the future, but because of some accident of immediate overwhelming interest which appeals to the feelings and distorts the judgment. These immediate interests exercise a kind of hydraulic pressure which makes what previously was clear seem doubtful, and before which even well settled principles of law will bend." 193 U.S. at 400-01, 24 S.Ct. at 468, 48 L.Ed. at 726.
The "great case" now before this Court should not have persuaded the majority to abandon our well-established standard of review upon which trial Justices and litigants alike have come to rely and depend. Rather we should all stand firm and apply the law evenhandedly regardless of who stands at the bar of Justice before us and of the vagaries of public sentiment.
Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 Rhode Island Personal Injury Attorneys
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