holding in context of nonjurisdictional questions that prohibition is appropriate only to correct “substantial, clear-cut, legal errors plainly in contravention of a clear statutory, constitutional, or common law mandate which may be resolved independently of any disputed facts”
How later courts described this case
- holding in context of nonjurisdictional questions that prohibition is appropriate only to correct “substantial, clear-cut, legal errors plainly in contravention of a clear statutory, constitutional, or common law mandate which may be resolved independently of any disputed facts”
- this Court will use prohibition in a discretionary way to correct substantial, clear-cut, legal errors in cases where there is a high probability that the judgment will be reversed if the error is not corrected in advance
- "The writ of prohibition should not be used except in cases where relief is not available through ordinary channels of practice."
- writ of prohibition is to be used “to correct only substantial, clear-cut legal errors” and when there “is a high probability that the trial will be completely reversed if the error is not corrected in advance”
Written by the judges who cited it.
Later courts went against this
Superseded by statute, as recognized in SER Thornhill Group v. Charles E. King, Jr., Judge
164 W. Va. 112 , 262 S.E.2d 744 (1979) (“[T]his Court will use prohibition . . . to correct only substantial, clear-cut, legal 21 errors plainly in contravention of a clear statutory, constitutional, or common law mandate which may be resolved independently of any disputed facts and only in cases where there is a high probability that the trial will be completely reversed if the error is not corrected in advance.”),…
The opinion
Caplan, Justice,
concurring:
While I agree with the decision to deny the writ in this case, I am not in agreement with much of the dissertation in the opinion relative to the function of the extraordinary remedy of prohibition. Preliminarily, I do not agree that the subject of prohibition “has not recently been adequately considered.” The decisions of this Court, recent and throughout the years, which have, with clarity, instructed the bench and bar on the proper use of prohibition, are indeed legion and the purported instruction contained in the opinion, which I believe in large part is erroneous, tends „to- confuse rather than aid.
*126 My basic disagreement goes to the general tenor of the opinion, wherein, despite the writer’s protestation that “we are adamantly opposed to being in the interlocutory appeals business”, we are instructed that we may use prohibition as an interlocutory appeal to correct “clear-cut, legal errors where there is the high probability that the trial will be completely reversed if the error is not corrected in advance.” This over-simplification may sound of Solomonic justice at first blush, but I submit that the efficacy of prohibition, designed to serve an extraordinary purpose, will suffer by its implementation.
Which clear errors may be corrected by a writ of prohibition? Upon the admission of clear hearsay testimony, do we interrupt the trial and proceed in this Court in prohibition? Upon the giving of an erroneous instruction, is there to be another interruption of the trial to correct what appears to be clear error? The answers to these queries should be obvious — a trial could be subjected to unreasonable delay and endless shuttling from trial to appellant court. No, I do not, as suggested by the writer of the opinion, “cringe at the bare mention” of interlocutory appeal — interlocutory appeal, properly used, serves a proper function in our jurisprudence — but I do “cringe” at the cavalier manner in which the Court, in this case, has subverted the clear and well established office of the writ of prohibition.
To carry out the teachings of the opinion could, and probably will, result in the piecemeal handling of litigation. This was deplored by the writer of the opinion in Woodall v. Laurita, 156 W.Va. 707 , 195 S.E. 2d 717 (1973) in the following language: “The piecemeal challenge of discretionary rulings through writs of prohibition does not facilitate the orderly administration of justice.” It is my firm conviction that the pronouncements in the opinion in relation to the function of the writ of prohibition are far too broad, that they obliterate the distinction between that extraordinary remedy and appeal and that the use of prohibition in the manner prescribed will cause confusion and delay in the trial of cases.