Malinou v. Kiernan
| Citation | 105 R.I. 299,251 A.2d 530 |
| Decision Date | 26 March 1969 |
| Docket Number | No. 543-A,543-A |
| Parties | Martin MALINOU, Public Administrator v. Leonard A. KIERNAN, Public Administrator. ppeal. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Court of Rhode Island |
This appeal is sequel to Malinou v. Kiernan, R.I. 235 A.2d 105, where a proceeding pending in the superior court was certified to us on an agreed statement of facts. Following the filing of our decision in that case and after delays incident to the plaintiff's unsuccessful attempt to obtain review by the United States Supreme Court, 1 we transmitted the records therein to the superior court for entry of a final judgment in accordance with our decision. An assistant clerk of that court then inscribed on our order of transmittal the following notation:
'1968 April 5 In accordance with Supreme Court decision (as) of November 7, 1967 Final Judgment is entered Book #3 #407'
Several motions by the plaintiff followed, one of which was designated 'Motion to Enter Judgment.' All were denied in a bench decision by a superior court justice and it is from that ruling that the plaintiff appeals.
At the threshold we found that the appeal which plaintiff is now prosecuting is from an oral decision, rather than from a written order of judgment. That procedural defect would ordinarily be fatal because appeals lie only from judgments and judgments must be set out in writing on separate documents. East Providence Credit Union v. Brown, R.I., 242 A.2d 428. The litigation in this case, however, has been unduly protracted, and in an attempt to hasten the day when it will finally terminate, we have circumvented the procedural deficiency by sua sponte remanding the papers to the superior court for the entry of a nunc pro tunc written judgment incorporating the oral bench decision. Now that such a judgment has been duly made and entered and the papers returned, we consider the case as properly here.
The single issue briefed and argued is whether the superior court clerk's notation of April 5 incorporating our decision by reference constitutes an entry of judgment. The plaintiff's position is that it falls short of the requirements of rule 58(a) of the superior court's rules of civil procedure. That rule is patterned upon and, for purposes of this case, identified with federal rule 58. In pertinent part it provides that a 'judgment shall be set forth on a separate document.' Other than for that requirement, the rule does not prescribe what elements are essential to a judgment. Neither does it demand any particular words or a peculiar formal act. United States v. F. & M. Schaefer Brewing Co., 356 U.S. 227, 233, 78 S.Ct. 674, 678, 2 L.Ed.2d 721, 726-727. Its only specific is that the judgment shall be in writing and on a separate document. In addition, however, there is the decisional law. It says that the writing now required by rule to be on a separate document if it is to be considered a judgment, must clearly evince tha it is the final act in the proceeding and an adjudication of the issues involved. Id. at 232, 78 S.Ct. at 678, 2 L.Ed.2d at 726; United States v. Evans, 10 Cir., 365 F.2d 95, 97.
Both the rule and the decisional law were developed in proceedings where the issue had been resolved at the trial, rather than the appellate level and where the customary frame of reference related to whether the appeal taken was premature or untimely. What was of concern both in the conception of the rule and in its interpretation was to give definition and certainty to what kind of a judicial pronouncement by a trial court would support an appeal and to insure that no appeal could be taken from a ruling until a judgment had entered.
The setting of this case, however, is different from the considerations which influenced the development of the requirements. Here this case did not originally come to us as an appeal. Instead it came on certification 2 and the issues were initially resolved by us at the appellate rather than at the trial level.
Our question, then, is the relevance of a rule and the decisional law thus developed to judgments entered incidental to the certification procedure. Such a procedure is unknown to the federal system. Because it is unknown, neither the drafters of federal rule 58, nor the federal courts which applied it, were concerned with the mechanisms by which an appellate court's judgment in a certified case should be entered by a trial court. True, they prescribed requirements for the entry of judgment, but their prescriptions were designed in a different context and were not intended to provide guidance on how to enter judgment in a case like this.
Here, after we decided the case on an agreed statement of facts, we...
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...... We shall treat the appeal as having been claimed from said judgment. Beauvais v. Notre Dame Hospital, R.I., 387 A.2d 689 (1978); Malinou v. Kiernan, 105 R.I. 299, 251 A.2d 530 (1969). Our review of the granting of a Rule 12(b)(6) motion employs the same criteria that a ......
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...... The purpose of this rule is to provide certainty as to the kind of judicial pronouncement that will support an appeal, Malinou v. Kiernan, 105 R.I. 299, 251 A.2d 530, 532 (1969); State v. Birmingham, 96 Ariz. 109, 111, 392 P.2d 775, 777 (1964) (en banc), and to provide the ......
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...... See Beauvais v. Notre Dame Hospital, R.I., 387 A.2d 689, 691 (1978); Malinou v. Kiernan, 105 R.I. 299, 300, 251 A.2d 530, 531 (1969). 2 It should be noted in this case that the contract submitted to Mrs. Pansey provided for ......
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...... be considered a final judgment, "must clearly evince that it is the final act in the proceeding and an adjudication of the issues involved." Malinou v. Kiernan, 105 R.I. 299, 301, 251 A.2d 530, 531-32 (1969). Because the Family Court did not finally dispose of the matter before it, it retained ......