State, Dept. of Law Enforcement v. One 1955 Willys Jeep, v. I.N. 573481691

• Decision Date: 02 May 1979
• Docket Number: No. 12739,12739
• Citation: 595 P.2d 299,100 Idaho 150
• Parties: STATE of Idaho, DEPARTMENT OF LAW ENFORCEMENT, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. ONE 1955 WILLYS JEEP, V.I.N. 573481691, Defendant-Respondent.
• Court: Idaho Supreme Court

Page 299

595 P.2d 299

100 Idaho 150

STATE of Idaho, DEPARTMENT OF LAW ENFORCEMENT, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. ONE 1955 WILLYS JEEP, V.I.N. 573481691, Defendant-Respondent.

No. 12739.

Supreme Court of Idaho.

May 2, 1979.

David H. Leroy, Atty. Gen., L. Mark Riddoch, Asst. Atty. Gen., Boise, for plaintiff-appellant

Dennis L. Cain of Sallaz, Scanlan, Beer & Cain, Boise, for defendant-respondent.

BAKES, Justice.

This is an appeal by the State of Idaho from the dismissal of a forfeiture proceeding under the Uniform Controlled Substances Act, I.C. §§ 37-2701 to -2751, against a vehicle owned by Dan and Karen Rauch. We reverse and remand.

On August 13, 1976, the state filed a complaint seeking the forfeiture of the Rauches' vehicle pursuant to I.C. § 37-2744(a)(4). The defendant filed a verified answer on September 8, 1976. The case was later set for trial in the magistrate division on November 19, 1976, seventy-two days after the filing of the verified answer. The case was apparently set for trial as the number four priority behind three criminal cases set for trial on the same day. This trial date was later vacated on motion by the defendant.

The defendant moved for summary judgment on the ground that the case had not been tried within thirty days of the filing of the verified answer and that the case had not been given priority over other civil cases as required by I.C. § 37-2744(d)(3)(D). That section provides:

"(D) If a verified answer is filed, the forfeiture proceeding shall be set for hearing on a day not less than thirty (30) days therefrom; and the proceeding shall have priority over other civil cases."

The magistrate denied the motion on December 14, 1976, ruling that the section did not require forfeiture hearings to be heard within thirty days of the filing of a verified answer but on the contrary required that the proceedings be heard "on a day not less than thirty (30) days" from the filing of the verified answer. The magistrate further ruled that the case was given "priority over other civil cases" since the other cases given the same trial date were all criminal cases.

The defendant appealed to the district court from the magistrate's order denying the motion for summary judgment. Ruling on the merits of the appeal, the district court on April 11, 1977, reversed the magistrate and concluded that despite its literal language subsection (d)(3)(D) must be read as requiring commencement of the trial within thirty days of the filing of a verified answer. The district court ruled that if the delay was caused by the court the matter should be dismissed. The court therefore remanded the case to the magistrate for a determination of the cause of the delay. The district court did not decide whether the magistrate had also failed to give the case priority over other civil cases.

On remand the magistrate found that the delay was caused by the court and the court clerk's office and therefore dismissed the case on April 13, 1977. The state appealed to the district court from the magistrate's dismissal arguing (1) that since the magistrate's order denying the defendant's motion for summary judgment was not a final judgment the district court had not had jurisdiction over the matter in the first appeal and the resulting order was therefore void, and (2) that the district court had erred in its original interpretation of subsection (d)(3)(D).

On August 17, 1977, the district court dismissed the second appeal, concluding that it had had jurisdiction to hear the original appeal, even though the order appealed from was not a final judgment, since the jurisdiction of the district court in this matter "is concurrent with the jurisdiction of a magistrate (and) the district court jurisdictionally can adjudicate upon any matter before any magistrate where the hearings or proceedings have not been segmented." The district court reaffirmed its original construction of the thirty day provision and affirmed the dismissal by the magistrate. The district court also awarded the defendant, apparently pursuant to I.C. The power of the district court when acting as an appellate court is limited to reviewing "final judgments of the magistrate's division . . . ." I.C. § 1-2213(1); I.R.C.P. 83(a)(1), (b) and (u)(1). It is well established that an order denying a motion for summary judgment is not a final judgment for purposes of appeal. Twin Falls County v. Knievel, 98 Idaho 321, 563 P.2d 45 (1977); Wilson v. DeBoard, 94 Idaho 562, 494 P.2d 566 (1972); See also Pichon v. L. J. Broekemeier, Inc., 99 Idaho 598, 586 P.2d 1042 (1978). The district court therefore lacked jurisdiction to hear the first appeal from the magistrate's order denying the motion for summary judgment. ¹ Since all subsequent orders entered by the district court were based upon the law as established in that proceeding in which the district court acted without jurisdiction, we reverse all orders entered subsequent to the magistrate's order denying the motion for summary judgment, including the two district court orders and the magistrate's dismissal of the case.

§ 12-121, $519.50 as reasonable attorney fees and costs incurred as a result of the state's second appeal. The state then brought this appeal.

The statements in the dissent concerning the effect of the district court's first order and the state's failure to attempt an appeal to this Court from that order warrant some comment from a procedural standpoint. When the district court entered its first order, which reversed the magistrate's order denying the motion to summary judgment and remanded the case to the magistrate for further proceedings, there was not a final judgment from which an appeal could have been taken to this Court as was required by I.C. § 13-201 which was then in effect. The magistrate's order denying the motion for summary judgment and the district court's reversal and remand of that order were at best interlocutory orders and clearly neither met the requirements of a final judgment necessary for an appeal to this Court. See I.C. § 13-201(1) (now repealed); Oneida v. Oneida, 95 Idaho 105, 503 P.2d 305 (1972); State ex rel. State Board of Medicine v. Smith, 80 Idaho 267, 328 P.2d 581 (1958). The fact that the district court did not acknowledge the basic limitation on its appellate jurisdiction, I. e., the necessity of a final judgment, and permitted a piecemeal appeal from the magistrate to the district court does not, of course, require this Court to disregard that same rule and permit a piecemeal appeal from the district court to this Court. The dissent's suggestion that the state could have and should have appealed from the district court's first order to this Court is simply incorrect. Indeed, in light of our burgeoning caseload, the state should be commended, not penalized, for not burdening this Court with a premature appeal which obviously would have had to have been dismissed. Oneida v. Oneida, supra.

In support of its position, the dissent refers to Estate of Irwin (Russell v. Butler), 99 Idaho 543, 585 P.2d 953 (1978) (per curiam). That case involved an appeal from the magistrate's dismissal of objections to a final account filed by an estate's personal representative. The appeal was taken first to the district court and then to this Court. The appealability of the magistrate's order in Irwin was not raised at Any level by either the parties, the district court or this Court, probably because the magistrate's order in Irwin was an order approving the final account and petition for settlement filed by the personal representative and as such was clearly appealable to the district court pursuant to the special rules concerning The procedural course taken by the state in this case was the proper one. It accepted the remand to the magistrate and there obtained a final judgment, the dismissal of the action, the only final judgment entered to that date. With this final judgment the case was then procedurally ripe for an appeal to this Court, although that appeal had to be taken by way of a second appeal to the district court. Once properly before this Court, the state of course is entitled to challenge not only the final judgment entered in this case, but also all the interlocutory orders entered by the magistrate and the district court. The dissent's suggestion that the state's challenge to the district court's first order was an improper "collateral attack" misconceives the basic principles of Res judicata. The district court order was not a final judgment entered by a court with jurisdiction in a separate proceeding but was only an interlocutory order entered by the same court in the same proceeding which is now before this Court on direct appeal from the only final judgment entered in the proceeding. The state's attack of that order is a direct attack on appeal, not a collateral attack.

appeals of probate orders in I.C. § 17-201(6). The district court's decision was arguably appealable to this Court under I.A.R. 11(b), which went into effect while that case was pending on appeal before this Court. See I.A.R. 1. As a result, none of the parties in Irwin raised the non-appealability issue, nor did this Court.

The California decision, Gore v. Bingaman, 20 Cal.2d 118, 124 P.2d 17 (1942), which the dissent discusses at length, is not in point. As the dissent admits, the original decision of the trial court in that case, which was then appealed to the Court of Appeals, was a final appealable judgment, not an interlocutory non-appealable order as in the instant case. The California Supreme Court in Gore decided that a question of whether an earlier appeal should have been heard by the Supreme Court or an appellate court was conclusively decided by the appellate court's decision and the Supreme Court's denial of a hearing from that appellate court decision. However, in the case at bar the district court order was not a final determination but merely an interlocutory order...