Justice Streeter ends this opinion with a fairly lengthy footnote justifying his decision to publish this opinion. I've got no qualms with that. The opinion is a 26-page discourse on the wide variety of frivolous appeals and other misconduct that a vexatious litigant and now-disbarred attorney -- Charles Kinney -- engaged in during an extended period of time. It's a sad, but informative, tale. It was worth the read.
My only countervailing thought, however, was that I'm not sure that Mr. Kinney even deserved the effort of a 26-page opinion that explained at length why his latest appeal was rejected and resulted in sanctions. Typically, I think that litigants are entitled to a fair explanation of why they lost. They devoted time and effort -- often, extensive time and effort -- into making arguments that they thought were persuasive. It's common courtesy, at a minimum, to explain in some detail why those arguments were found lacking.
But not here. The plethora of prior frivolous appeals and vexatious litigation, in my mind, waives the right to have the matter fully explained to you. Rather than writing a 26-page opinion, I might have deliberately written an incredibly concise two-page opinion that rejected quite cursorily Mr. Kinney's appellate claims. Novel or not.
Justice Streeter goes the other way, and writes a lengthy opinion. I've got no problem with that, either. The published opinion is for the public, not for Mr. Kinney.
That's good too.
