When an appellate court decides a case without issuing a majority opinion providing a single rationale explaining the result, the majority holding is the position taken by those members who concurred in the judgment on the narrowest grounds.

Opinions are to be written so as to advise the parties of the court's decision and the basic reasons for it. The CCA must hand down a written opinion setting forth the reasons for its decision.

Did that happen in McCumber? It does not seem so, because the judges concurring in the judgment stated no reason for their decision. Thus, effectively, no reliable reason was stated because a ruling by the Court requires five votes, not four. While the judgment got 7 votes in its favor, the plurality opinion has no precedential value at all as far as its reasoning goes.