Tipsy Coachman

The Tipsy Coachman doctrine is a rule of law that upholds in a higher court a correct conclusion, despite flawed reasoning by the judge in a lower court. In other words, the lower judgment was right but for the wrong reason.

The colorful "tipsy coachman" label comes from a 19th-century Georgia case, Lee v. Porter, 63 Ga 345, 346 (1879), in which the Georgia Supreme Court, noting that the "human mind is so constituted that in many instances it finds the truth when wholly unable to find the way that leads to it", quoted from Oliver Goldsmith's Retaliation: A Poem written in 1774:

The Florida Supreme Court explained the doctrine in a 2002 appeal from a second-degree murder conviction:

External links

• An exhaustive article addressing the applicability of the principle can be found in The Florida Bar Journal at: http://www.floridabar.org/DIVCOM/JN/JNJournal01.nsf/c0d731e03de9828d852574580042ae7a/31a5fce82d401c5e8525739f004c7f9e?OpenDocument
• In yet another article in The Florida Bar Journal the efficacy of the principle is questioned at: http://www.floridabar.org/DIVCOM/JN/JNJournal01.nsf/c0d731e03de9828d852574580042ae7a/c0109640122fbcde852573050052d2ed?OpenDocument