Hutchins v. State

• Decision Date: 05 December 1979
• Docket Number: No. 12415,12415
• Parties: Eldon I. HUTCHINS and Reynold L. Allgood, Plaintiffs-Respondents, v. STATE of Idaho, acting through Gordon C. Trombley, as State Land Commissioner, and as Executive Officer of the State Board of Land Commissioners, and as head of the State Board of Land Commissioners of the State of Idaho, Defendants-Appellants.
• Court: Idaho Supreme Court

Page 995

603 P.2d 995

100 Idaho 661

Eldon I. HUTCHINS and Reynold L. Allgood, Plaintiffs-Respondents, v. STATE of Idaho, acting through Gordon C. Trombley, as State Land Commissioner, and as Executive Officer of the State Board of Land Commissioners, and as head of the State Board of Land Commissioners of the State of Idaho, Defendants-Appellants.

No. 12415.

Supreme Court of Idaho.

Dec. 5, 1979.

Wayne L. Kidwell, Atty. Gen., Warren Felton, Deputy Atty. Gen., Boise, for defendants-appellants.

James E. Morgan, Lewiston, Nick Chenoweth, Orofino, for plaintiffs-respondents.

PER CURIAM.

This action, before this Court for a second time, concerns mineral leases in Clearwater County, Idaho, which the State granted to the plaintiffs-respondents Hutchins and Allgood in 1965 and 1966. The plaintiffs, alleging that the State had harassed their possession of the leased premises in a number of ways and that it had unilaterally and improperly deleted certain lands from the leases, brought this action (Clearwater County No. 4096) primarily seeking a declaratory judgment of their rights. ¹ On November 19, 1970, the district court granted part of the plaintiffs' motion for summary judgment, holding that the leases were valid and that the State could not legally delete any of the lands in the leases. The court granted summary judgment to the State on the rest of plaintiffs' claims, including that for damages.

The State appealed from the summary judgment; plaintiffs did not. This Court held that genuine issues of material fact existed, and that the summary judgment was therefore improperly granted: "The summary judgment is reversed, the order Pendente lite dissolved, and the matter remanded to the trial court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion." Hutchins v. Trombley, 95 Idaho 360, 366, 509 P.2d 579, 585 (1973) (hereinafter Hutchins I ). The trial court's summary disposition of the damage issue was not discussed.

Following the remand the plaintiffs amended their complaint to allege more specifically the damages caused by the State for which they were seeking recovery. ² The State thereafter filed an answer which included a counterclaim for damages. Before trial the parties and the court apparently agreed that the issue of recoverable damages would be tried later, and only if plaintiffs prevailed on the validity of the leases and the State's liability for damages. ³ After a trial before the court, the court held that the leases were valid, that no deletions had been or could be made therefrom, that the State had breached its duty as lessor, and that the State was liable for damages arising out of its breach. Proof of plaintiffs' damages was reserved for a second trial. Plaintiffs during the pleading stage had made the required request for a jury trial, but before any second trial took place the State appealed.

Seeing a question of appealability, we asked the parties for briefs on that issue. The State has acknowledged that its appeal may be premature, pointing out, however, that if the judgment which has been entered is appealable, the right to appeal might have been lost for the failure of a timely filing if it had not appealed. The State suggests it was a final judgment because: (1) the original 1970 district court judgment included an adjudication against the plaintiffs on the issue of their claim to damages; (2) that portion of the judgment was not appealed from; (3) the 1973 Supreme Court decision did not overturn that part of the district court's summary judgment; (4) that part of the 1970 judgment is therefore res judicata. Thus, the State continues, the only issue which was left open on remand was the validity of the leases, which the district court has now ruled on. It follows, says the State, that since there remained nothing further for the trial court to consider, I. e., damages, the judgment below is complete, final, and appealable. The State advises us, however, that the district court ruled against it on this contention, doing so on the basis that the entire summary judgment was reversed in Hutchins I.

The plaintiffs, on the other hand, contend that This action is solely one for declaratory judgment, ⁴ that issues of liability for damages and amounts recoverable were not before the court and were not considered. Plaintiffs argue that the appeal is proper because it is entirely separate and distinct from the separate action for damages, Civil No. 5963. Plaintiffs theorize that if the judgment now appealed from is upheld, they can move their proceedings for damages over into Civil No. 5963, and hence this judgment may be considered final. They express no opinion on the res judicata effect of this judgment insofar as it determines the State to be now liable for recoverable damages, and are likely content to think that it may be.

It becomes necessary that we reconstruct the salient aspects of the previous appeal and proceedings in district court thereafter. The underlying question is the validity of the State's contention that the damage issue was adversely decided against plaintiffs by the grant of summary judgment, and not affected by this Court's outright reversal on the first appeal.

First, an examination of the pleadings and the motion for summary judgment in the first trial shows that damages were an issue, and although perhaps an issue not at issue, "no liability" was decided by Judge Hyatt. ⁵ Count XII in the complaint alleged that defendants were being damaged at least to the extent of $1,500 per day, and the fourth item of judgment prayed for sought "such other and further relief that the Court shall find to be warranted upon the hearing, . . . including judgment for such amount or amounts against such of the defendants as the Court shall find to be warranted . . . ." Plaintiffs' affidavit in support of the motion for summary judgment alleged that plaintiffs had been damaged and that plaintiffs should be awarded damages for (1) defendants' violations of plaintiffs' rights under the leases and (2) for damages caused by the prevention of plaintiffs from mining, including

"a. Such losses as they have suffered as are set forth in their Complaint on file herein.

"b. Such losses as they shall suffer by reason of the loss of any access to the leased premises

"c. Such further damages as the Plaintiffs may at this time, or in the continuing future . . . suffer by reason of Plaintiffs' inability to have begun such mining operations heretofore."

That part of the summary judgment in favor of the State denied plaintiffs any damages.

Next we consider how that summary judgment was affected by this Court's outright reversal on the first appeal. A perusal of the notice of appeal on that first appeal shows that the State intended to appeal from only a portion of the summary judgment. The notice of appeal provided that the appeal was taken "from the Summary Judgment . . . made and entered . . . in favor of the Plaintiffs . . . and against the Defendants." The denial of damages was, of course, in favor of the State, the defendant. The State's brief in Hutchins I sought reversal only of the "(S)ummary judgment in favor of the plaintiffs."

The only place where the State seems to have exceeded the narrow thrust of this assignment of error was in its reply brief, where it stated that "(t)he differences between Plaintiffs' Statement of Facts in its Brief and Defendants' Statement of Facts in its Brief are startling, to say the least, and could well lead one to wonder whether or not there were disputed factual issues in this matter which should have been decided by the District Court." ⁶ The State went on to note in this connection that only the State had appealed, and that appeal was only from a portion of the final judgment.

This Court in Hutchins I specifically addressed only three matters: the order pendente lite, the summary judgment in favor of the plaintiffs, and the State's motion to dismiss. ⁷ These were the only matters actually passed upon: the order pendente lite was reversed, the summary judgment was reversed, and the denial of the motion to dismiss was upheld. The Court, although it did not discuss the judgment insofar as it was in favor of the State on the issue of damages, ⁸ reversed the entire summary judgment in general language: " . . . from our view of the record genuine issues of material fact do exist which prevent the entry of summary judgment as was done by the trial court." "The summary judgment is reversed." Id. at 365, 366, 509 P.2d at 584, 585.

When the cause was back in trial court after remittitur, the State there argued that only that portion of the summary judgment which it had appealed had been reversed. The State had not sought clarification or a narrowing of the general reversal through a petition for rehearing in this Court. Had it done so we believe that the same result would have obtained, simply because our reversal of the determination that the leases were valid resulted in there being no final judgment in district court and with the action in that posture, the trial court was not limited by any findings or conclusions theretofore made, and which were no longer deemed correct. We agree with Judge Mosman's ruling that where this Court did not specifically take note of the State's position that it had only challenged a portion of the final judgment in Hutchins I, the cause was generally reversed and remanded standing as it did before the summary judgment was entered. This is so where the opinion in Hutchins I did not pass upon damages at all; hence law of the case did not come into play.

We note also that although it was permissible at the time of the first appeal, under I.C. § 13-202, to appeal from only a specific portion of a final judgment, this could not ordinarily be done when the issues were so interwoven that an appeal from one part necessarily brought the entire judgment up for review. " '(T)he part of a judgment from which an appeal is taken...