Brill v. Johnson

The majority, in quashing the writ, has abandoned a substantive and, in my opinion, an unassailable legal principle in favor of an appellate rule of review — the presumption of correctness of the finding of the trial court. This misconstrues that rule of review in that it omits the parallel rule that a trial court’s findings are subject to reversal on review when the holding necessarily resulted from a misapplication of the law to such findings. That is to say, the ore tenus rule evolved from the scope of review principle which prohibits a de novo trial on the weight and credibility of the…