Indiana appellate courts are bound by Indiana Supreme Court pronouncements until changed, either by the Supreme Court or legislative enactment
How later courts described this case
- Indiana appellate courts are bound by Indiana Supreme Court pronouncements until changed, either by the Supreme Court or legislative enactment
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Concurring Opinion
White, J.
This is the type of case in which rhetoric flows easily. I shall attempt to add as few words as possible.
I agree with much that is said in both the majority opinion and in the dissent. In Galbreath v. City of Indianapolis, 145 Ind. App. 80 , 248 N. E. 2d 553 (1969), I found myself in disagreement with a decision resting, in my view, almost wholly on stare decisis. There was in that case, however, good reason, I thought, to believe that the Indiana Supreme Court had destroyed the foundation on which the precedents there followed were constructed. Here, however, I agree with the majority that we should follow our own precedent so recently set in Miller v. Sparks, 136 Ind. App. 148 , 189 N. E. 2d 720 (1964). While I do not consider the Supreme Court’s denial of transfer nor even its citation of the decision in McDaniel v. McDaniel 1 as an adoption of the decision, it is certainly some indication that as late as 1964 our Supreme Court was not looking for a vehicle by which it could join the “trend” referred to in the dissent as a comment by Dean Prosser in his TORTS, 3d ed., p. 918. 2
As an intermediate court we do not enjoy the same freedom to disregard what we may think to be outmoded or erroneous Supreme Court decisions which that body possesses or which we may rightfully exercise with respect to our own prior deeisions. *118 3 The authority of Burk v. Anderson, 232 Ind. 77 , 109 N. E. 2d 407 (1953), has not been eroded by the passage of time as had the precedents disregarded in Brinkman v. City of Indianapolis, 141 Ind. App. 662 , 231 N. E. 2d 169 (1967). Burk presents us not with a problem of judicial consistency but with a question of judicial authority — the primacy of the Supreme Court. I would applaud that court’s overruling Burk v. Anderson , but until it is so overruled, I must follow Miller v. Sparks, supra, in which we so recently reaffirmed the authity of Burk and of Boden v. Del-Mar Garage, 205 Ind. 59 , 185 N. E. 860 (1933).
I, therefore, concur in the result reached by the majority.
245 Ind. 551, 558 , 201 N. E. 2d 215, 218 (1964). This was a divorce case in which the consortium cases were cited to underscore the wife’s equitable interest in the res of a spendthrift trust growing out of the husband’s duty to support the wife, which McDaniel stated was a reason for denying a wife “the right to bring a separate action for her husband’s injuries resulting in his loss of earnings.”
See 245 Ind. at 357 . where Judge Achor, in a dissenting opinion in State ex rel. Harris v. Superior Court, 245 Ind. 339 , 197 N. E. 2d 634 (1964), discusses eifect of denial of transfer.
The quotation in the majority opinion from Judge Cooper’s opinion in Miller v. Sparks, supra [ 136 Ind. App. 148, 154 , 189 N. E. 2d 720 ] states well the basic rule of the binding effect of Supreme Court decisions.