Tipsy Coachman

A Levels Academy Islamabad

Transcript

00:00You may have noticed the law is full of odd, arcane, baffling terminology.

00:07Floating easement or ejustum generis, anyone?

00:10But once in a while, a term comes along that is not only colloquial and amusing, but also legitimate.

00:16That term is tipsy coachman.

00:19Yes, tipsy, as in inebriated, and coachman, as in, well, coachman.

00:26Now, tipsy coachman is not a literal description.

00:29It's actually a rule of law where a higher court upholds a lower court's correct conclusion,

00:34despite it being based on flawed reasoning.

00:36Basically, tipsy coachman is saying the initial judgment was right, but for the wrong reasons.

00:42As long as the right reasons are somewhere in the appellate record,

00:45and the higher court agrees with the result itself, the trial court's ruling will not be reversed.

00:51Like a carriage driver, just under the legal limit,

00:54who eventually gets his passenger home, even if he took all the wrong roads.

00:58Although tipsy coachman as a legal expression wasn't used in Florida until 1963,

01:04the term itself originated in a case back in 1890s Georgia.

01:08The phrase tipsy coachman was taken from a passage in a 1774 poem written by Oliver Goldsmith.

01:15And it touches on the idea that, to quote the original Georgia case,

01:19the human mind is so constituted that in many instances,

01:24it will find the truth when wholly unable to find the way that leads to it.

01:29In more down-to-earth speak, it basically makes successfully appealing a case that much more difficult,

01:35as tipsy coachman is also designed to avoid pointless re-litigation.

01:39But it remains up for debate in Florida whether tipsy coachman is mandatory or discretionary for an appellate court,

01:46meaning whether an appeals court must use tipsy coachman when it applies,

01:51or if the decision is up to the appeals court whether to use it or not.

01:55But don't rely on a drunken carriage driver to get what you need out of the law.

01:59Rely on LegalYou, as steady a resource as they come.

02:03LegalYou. You can do this.