Hall v. Blackman

• Decision Date: 02 February 1904
• Citation: 75 P. 608,9 Idaho 555
• Parties: HALL v. BLACKMAN
• Court: Idaho Supreme Court

75 P. 608

9 Idaho 555

HALL v. BLACKMAN

Supreme Court of Idaho

February 2, 1904

LAW OF THE CASE-PRIOR APPEAL.

1. A decision by the appellate court upon a point distinctly made and essential to its determination upon a previous appeal is in all subsequent proceedings in the same case a final adjudication, from the consequences of which the court cannot depart.

2. The appellate court is at liberty, in a subsequent and independent case, to depart from a rule or principle which it may have announced that it afterward determines unsound or unwise to follow, but a conclusion once reached becomes final, and the law of the case in which it is announced.

(Syllabus by the court.)

APPEAL from District Court in and for Elmore County. Honorable Kirtland I. Perky, Judge.

Action by Adin M. Hall and others against Wm. H. Blackman and others. From a judgment in favor of Blackman plaintiff Hall appeals. Affirmed.

Affirmed, with costs.

N. M Ruick, for Appellant, cites no authorities.

Hawley & Puckett and Wyman & Wyman, for Respondent.

We believe no one will care to assert that the jurisdiction of this court at this time in this case extends any further than to ascertain if the lower court properly carried into effect the directions contained in the mandate to it. There can be no re-examination of the facts and no reconsideration of the law. The rule known as the law of the case applies here in all its strictness. (Phelan v. San Francisco Co., 20 Cal. 40; Palmer v. Utah etc. Ry. Co., 2 Idaho 382 16 P. 553.) It is well settled that when a case has been once taken to an appellate court and its judgment obtained on points of law involved, such judgment, however erroneous becomes the law of the case, and cannot on a second appeal be altered or changed. (Clary v. Hoagland, 6 Cal. 685; Heinlen v. Martin, 59 Cal. 181; Keller v. Lewis, 56 Cal. 466; Argenti v. San Francisco, 30 Cal. 460; Jaffe v. Skae, 48 Cal. 540; Horton v. Jack, 115 Cal. 29, 46 P. 920; Benson v. Shotwell, 103 Cal. 163, 37 P. 147.)

AILSHIE, J. Sullivan, C. J., concurs. Justice Stockslager, having tried the case, expresses no opinion.

OPINION

AILSHIE, J.

This case was decided upon a former appeal by this court on January 31, 1902, and is reported in 8 Idaho 497, 68 P. 19. After an extended discussion of the various questions involved in the case, this court announced its conclusion in the following language: "It is apparent that a new trial would entail a great expense upon the parties, and would fail to benefit them, and for that reason we think it is to the interest of all parties that the cause be remanded to the trial court, with instructions to modify the findings of fact and judgment in accordance with the views expressed in this opinion, and it is so ordered. The judgment in all other respects is affirmed."

After the original opinion was filed the respondent Hall, who is the appellant here, filed his petition for a rehearing and accompanied the same with an exhaustive brief covering the same questions which are discussed in the brief upon this appeal. The court after an examination of the petition for rehearing filed a further opinion (8 Idaho 500, 68 P. 24), wherein it adhered to the conclusions reached in the former opinion and denied the application for a rehearing. Thereafter the remittitur was sent to the trial court, and the case was brought on at the next term thereof for further proceedings in accordance with the conclusions announced by this court. When the cause was called in the trial court the plaintiff Hall appeared and asked leave of the court to introduce further evidence for the purpose of showing the court "the extent and area of the lands included in the so-called 'Ethel Tract,' which lies south and southerly from the line of road referred to in the evidence in this case and in the opinion of the supreme court." He also asked the court to find that the water right claimed for the "Fielding Ethel Homestead" was subsequent to 1879 and subsequent to the perfection of plaintiff's water appropriation. The court declined to hear any further evidence in the case, and proceeded to make its findings of fact and conclusions of law upon the evidence as introduced upon the previous trial, and thereupon entered judgment accordingly.

The plaintiff Hall prepared, and had settled, a bill of exceptions, and thereafter appealed from this latter judgment. Appellant here contends that the trial court should have taken further testimony in the case and that he also erred in awarding the respondent Blackman a water right for the Fielding Ethel Homestead of a date prior to the right of plaintiff. Counsel for respondent insist that the only question which the court can consider upon this appeal is whether or not the trial court has followed the opinion as announced by the supreme court upon the former appeal, and that this court is powerless and without jurisdiction to re-examine any of the facts of the case, or to reconsider the law as applied to the case. There is no doubt but that the identical questions presented upon this appeal for our consideration were passed upon in the former appeal. As before stated, the same questions are discussed in appellant's brief that were discussed upon his petition for a rehearing on the first appeal. It is true that the appellant in this case was a respondent in the first appeal but that can make no difference as to the application of the principles of law involved in the case. In passing upon the petition for a rehearing in the former appeal, this court said: "Thus it is made to appear that Fielding and David B. Ethel entered under the laws of the United States four hundred and eighty acres of land on Bennett creek as early as 1874, and obtained patent for the same from the United States; and it also appears that they diverted, as early as 1872, five hundred inches of the waters of said Bennett creek for the irrigation of lands owned or claimed by them. It also appears from the complaint of the petitioner, Adin M. Hall, that he claims no water earlier than 1879, and as Ethel Bros. had received patents...