Crafts v. Quinn

• Decision Date: 28 September 1984
• Citation: 482 A.2d 825
• Parties: Jeffrey H. CRAFTS et al. v. Rodney S. QUINN, Secretary of State.
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

Page 825

482 A.2d 825

Jeffrey H. CRAFTS et al. v. Rodney S. QUINN, Secretary of State.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Argued Sept. 20, 1984.

Decided Sept. 28, 1984.

Mittel & Hefferan, Robert Edmond Mittel (orally), Portland, for plaintiffs.

Peter Brann (orally), Robert S. Frank, Asst. Attys. Gen., Augusta, for defendant.

Before McKUSICK, C.J., and NICHOLS, ROBERTS, VIOLETTE, WATHEN, GLASSMAN and SCOLNIK, JJ.

McKUSICK, Chief Justice.

By a verified amended complaint filed on September 4, 1984, in the Superior Court (Kennebec County) the Libertarian and Populist parties, joined by certain of their candidates and other members, seek a declaration that the statutory deadline of July 1 for the filing of nominating petitions for independent candidates for President and Vice President violates the first and fourteenth amendments of the United States Constitution. After hearing, the Superior Court on September 6, 1984, denied plaintiffs' request for a mandatory preliminary injunction requiring the Secretary of State to place the names of the Libertarian and Populist candidates on the ballot for the election to be held on November 6, 1984. Plaintiffs now appeal the interlocutory order denying the preliminary injunction. We dismiss their appeal. Appellants fail to bring themselves within any exception to the final judgment rule, and in any event they do not establish any error in the action of the Superior Court.

In order to be placed on the Maine ballot, candidates for President and Vice President not affiliated with a party that is qualified to participate in a primary election ¹ must go through the process of nomination by petition provided for in 21 M.R.S.A. §§ 491-497 (1983 & Supp. 1983-1984). The Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates must collect nomination petitions for their slate of electors, signed by no fewer than 4,000, but no more than 6,000, Maine voters. Id., § 494(5)(A). Before the petitions are submitted to the Secretary of State for verification, local registrars must certify that the signatures are those of voters registered in their respective districts. Id., § 494(7)(B). The Secretary must receive the certified petitions on or before July 1 of the election year. ² Id., § 494(9)(A). The nomination petition must be accompanied by written consents, signed by the candidates, stating that they will accept the nomination. Id. § 495.

The Libertarians began collecting signatures in Maine sometime in late May of this year, having nominated their national candidates for President and Vice President in September 1983. ³ As of the July 2 deadline, however, they had collected only 3,521 of the required 4,000 signatures. In addition, only 330 of those signatures had been certified by local registrars. The Libertarians have since that date done nothing to collect further signatures or to have their existing signatures verified. The Populists have failed to collect any signatures for their petitions. Only the Libertarian candidate for President has submitted the required consent form.

On July 2, 1984, Jeffrey Crafts and other Libertarians filed a pro se request for injunctive relief in the Superior Court, alleging that the deadline established by the statute was unconstitutional. A hearing was scheduled for July 9 but was postponed at appellants' request in order to give them time to retain counsel. They took no further action in the suit until September 4, when an attorney entered an appearance on their behalf and filed an amended complaint, which added the Populists as plaintiffs. On that same date, the Superior Court held a hearing on appellants' request for preliminary injunctive relief. At the hearing, appellant candidates asked the court to order their names to be placed on the ballot pending review of the statute's constitutionality, but they presented no evidence in support of their claim. Two representatives of the Secretary of State's office and an employee of the company responsible for printing the ballots appeared as witnesses for the State. They testified that absentee ballots had to be sent to municipalities by early October so that, by election day, the ballots could be distributed to absentee voters, completed, and returned. In order to have the ballots ready on time, all of the information for the ballots had to be in the hands of the printers by the first week in September.

The Superior Court denied appellants' motion for preliminary relief, finding that:

1. Any injury to the Plaintiffs was outweighed by the harm which granting the injunctive relief would inflict upon the Defendant.

2. The public interest would be adversely affected by granting the injunction.

3. The Plaintiffs were not diligent in the pursuit of their rights in this matter.

I.

The usual rule that an appeal may be taken only from a final judgment need not be followed where "substantial rights of a party will be irreparably lost if review is delayed until final judgment." Plumbago Mining Corp. v. Sweatt, 444 A.2d 361, 368 (Me.1982), quoting Moffett v. City of Portland, 400 A.2d 340, 343 n. 8 (Me.1979). Another way of stating the principle is that where an interlocutory order has the practical effect of permanently foreclosing relief on a claim, that order is appealable. This exception to the final judgment rule is sometimes called the "death knell" doctrine. At first glance, the doctrine might seem to apply to the present case. If we were to require a final disposition by the Superior Court before we would entertain an appeal, the election would undoubtedly have come and gone before review in this court would be available, to say nothing of the printer's deadline date for printing the ballots. For several reasons, however, the death knell doctrine does not apply to the appeal now before us.

The first reason comes from the fact that appellants are themselves responsible for their present predicament. The Superior Court recognized that fact in holding that appellants' lack of diligence in pursuing their claim was one reason why the preliminary injunction should not be granted. Their failure at that time to prosecute their claim for two months is directly responsible for the time pressure that is now the only arguable justification for suspension of the final judgment rule in this case. If the hearing had been held as originally scheduled, on July 9, the appellants would not have been in a position to invoke the death knell doctrine for an immediate appeal to this court. It is anomalous that their failure to pursue their rights should create a new benefit for them, namely, interlocutory review by this court. See Anderson v. Federal Election Commission, 634 F.2d 3, 5 (1st Cir.1980). It is a firmly established principle that "extraordinary process will not be used to relieve a party from a situation which he has brought on himself by his own negligent act or omission." Winters v. Allen, 166 Tenn. 281, 62 S.W.2d 51, 52 (1933). See Benoit v. Johnson, 160 Me. 201, 202 A.2d 1, 5 (1964); cf. Lane v. Derocher, 360 A.2d 141, 143-144 (Me.1976) (laches). "[I]njunctive relief will be denied to those who slumber on their rights." Int'l Union, Allied Indus. Workers of Am., AFL-CIO v. Local Union No. 589, Allied Indus. Workers of Am., AFL-CIO, 693 F.2d 666, 674 (7th Cir.1982). See also Cook v. Equitable Life Assurance Society, 428 N.E.2d 110, 116 (Ind.App.1981); Mikulec v. United States, 705 F.2d 599, 602 (2nd Cir.1983). See generally 30 C.J.S. Equity § 100, at 1062 (1965), and cases cited therein.

As a second reason for not departing from the final judgment rule, even now, nearly three months after the statutory deadline, appellants have not made any further progress toward complying with the statute's requirements of verified signatures and have only partially fulfilled the requirement of signed consents. ⁴ They were not ready to proceed with their candidacies should the Superior Court have declared the July 1 deadline unconstitutional, nor were they prepared to go forward even on the date of oral argument, September 20, 1984. It is extraordinary that appellants should be before this court in late September seeking expedited interim relief when since early July they have not made any effort to get the required number of verified signatures on their nominating petitions or the necessary consents.

As a third reason, appellants' delay in the prosecution of this case has eliminated any chance that might have existed for third persons to "test" the Libertarian and Populist candidacies by challenging the sufficiency of their nominating petitions. ⁵ Although this consideration was not seen as critical in the recent federal district court case of Stoddard v. Quinn, 593 F.Supp. 300, 308-309 (D.Me.1984), it gains added force here from the fact that the nominating petitions are still not complete at this late date.

On the other hand, appellants assert that one of the most fundamental of citizens' rights, the right to vote for one's preferred candidate, is at stake in this case. If the Libertarian and Populist candidates are not placed on the ballot, it is claimed, the voting citizenry will be deprived of the opportunity to vote for them. In addition, the public at large will allegedly be deprived of the added political discourse provided by the presence of additional political parties. However, in every case cited in appellants' briefs, the plaintiffs had satisfied all the statutory requirements for placement on the ballot, including any requirement of signatures, except only those claimed to be unconstitutional. See n. 3 supra. Those cited cases thus differ from the present situation. Appellants, in failing to obtain even now the required nomination papers to show some minimal level of support for their candidates, have also failed to show that any significant detriment will result from their exclusion from the ballot. The threshold showing of support that Maine requires for placement on the ballot is 4,000 verified...