Stites v. DUIT Const. Co., Inc.
| Decision Date | 27 June 1995 |
| Docket Number | No. 79337,79337 |
| Parties | Edmond E. STITES, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. DUIT CONSTRUCTION COMPANY, INC., Defendant-Appellee. |
| Court | Oklahoma Supreme Court |
Harry Scoufos, Sallisaw, for appellant.
D. Stuart Basham, Oklahoma City, William K. Orendorff, Sallisaw, for appellee.
Three issues are dispositive of appellant's certiorari quest for corrective relief: (1) Did the trial court's jurisdiction end at either the satisfaction-of-judgment stage or at the point plaintiff dismissed the action? (2) Did the trial court in the exercise of its vacation power have ancillary cognizance to entertain defendant's restitutionary counterclaim? and (3) Should this appeal be dismissed as untimely?
We answer the first question in the negative and the second and third in the affirmative.
Edmond Stites [Stites] brought an action to recover damages for water claimed to have been taken from his property by DUIT Construction Company, Inc. [DUIT], for use in a highway project for the Oklahoma Department of Transportation [ODOT]. When his discovery quests had gone unanswered, 1 Stites successfully pressed for summary adjudication. The following month (February 22, 1991) Stites sought to satisfy the judgment by garnishing ODOT. On April 23, 1991, ODOT paid into court $48,525.00. The next month Stites filed a second garnishment affidavit for the balance of his judgment, and on June 24, 1991 ODOT paid into court $3,027.55. Three weeks earlier (on June 5 The trial court vacated the judgment on September 4, 1991 (its order was entered September 25, 1991), overruling Stites' challenges to DUIT's vacation plea. The court then afforded DUIT a restitutionary remedy by directing that garnishment funds still remaining in the trust account of Stites' lawyer be paid into court. 3 No motion addressed to that order was filed below within ten days of the order's entry. After the judgment's vacation DUIT filed its responses to Stites' discovery requests and applied, on September 16, 1991, for an order compelling Stites to pay into court all the funds received in satisfaction of the vacated judgment. On September 26, 1991 Stites voluntarily dismissed his water loss action against DUIT. 4
1991) DUIT timely commenced its quest for vacation of the summary judgment. 2
On October 23, 1991 DUIT renewed its restitutionary plea for immediate return of the funds (into court). At a post-dismissal hearing (on February 26, 1992) the trial court overruled Stites' multiple challenges to DUIT's restitutionary plea and reiterated its earlier directive that funds remaining in the trust account of Stites' lawyer be paid into court. 5 The order memorializing this ruling was entered March 26, 1992.
Stites, who lodged an appeal from the March 26, 1992 order, argues on certiorari that when he dismissed his suit against DUIT the trial court lost jurisdiction of the entire case and over the (unvacated) garnishment proceeds that constituted at least pro tanto satisfaction of his claim against DUIT. According to Stites, the nisi prius court acted dehors its authority when considering the belated filing of DUIT's discovery responses. DUIT counters that the trial court had cognizance to enter its March 26, 1992 order directing Stites to pay the contested funds into court. Because, as DUIT argues, Stites failed timely to appeal from the earlier September 25, 1991 (restitution) order requiring him to pay the funds into court, he should not now be allowed to secure review of the trial court's March 26th reaffirmation of that earlier order.
The Court of Appeals reversed the nisi prius decision, reasoning that Stites' judgment legally ceased to exist upon payment of garnishment proceeds, leaving absolutely nothing in the case for the trial court to act upon. 6 We granted certiorari on DUIT's
petition and now, for the reasons to be explained, vacate the Court of Appeals' opinion and dismiss Stites' appeal as untimely. 7
DUIT, who initially pressed for dismissal of Stites' appeal when it was at the pre-briefing stage, later argued on appeal that the March 26, 1992 disposition is not appealable. Although this dismissal quest was denied on July 7, 1992, 8 DUIT later re-pressed the motion in its answer brief. According to DUIT's brief, Stites is too late for corrective relief from the trial court's March 26 reaffirmation order; he should have perfected a timely appeal from the earlier September 25, 1991 ruling that initially gave DUIT its restitutionary relief.
Unless there is an express indication to the contrary--in the dismissal's denial followed by the time-honored phrase "with prejudice to its renewal "--this court's order that overrules a motion to dismiss is always subject to reconsideration. 9 Jurisdictional inquiries into appellate or certiorari cognizance may be considered and re-examined, on motion or sua sponte, at any stage of the proceedings. 10
This court's earlier denial of DUIT'S dismissal motion clearly poses no barrier to today's re-examination of appellate cognizance in this certiorari proceeding. Our July 7 order is unburdened by the "with-prejudice-to-renewal" verbal bar. DUIT was hence free to retender its jurisdictional challenge in the appellate brief and there is absolutely no impediment to this court's revisit of the issue on certiorari.
STITES' MISPERCEPTION THAT THE EARLIER SEPTEMBER 25, 1991
ORDER NEED NOT HAVE BEEN APPEALED BECAUSE IT IS
In his post-dismissal challenges to DUIT's restitutionary plea, 11 Stites asserts For the reasons to be explained, we hold that (a) the first (September 25) order was at once appealable under the provisions of 12 O.S.1991 § 952(B)(2) AND (B)14 the second one (on review here) constitutes a mere reaffirmation of the first. Central to this holding--that requires today's dismissal of the appeal--is our determination that the September 25, 1991 order, which vacates the judgment and grants DUIT restitution, was an effective exercise of the court's vacation power and of its ongoing cognizance over an ancillary issue. It follows that Stites' appeal from the March 26, 1992 reaffirmation of the September 25 vacation order (cum restitution relief) came here too late.
that once the judgment had been fully satisfied through the garnishment process, the action came to a legal termination and the nisi prius cognizance stood extinguished. There was then no longer any room either for vacation or for any other judicial action to secure restitutionary relief in an ancillary or independent proceeding. In short, Stites viewed the September 25, 1991 order as a facial nullity from which no corrective relief was needed. This is so because, to him, the order was void based on a mere inspection of the record. Owing to this notion, he neither brought an appeal from the September 25 order nor pressed a timely new trial motion. 12 He felt protected by the action's dismissal filed the next day (September 26, 1991). We assume it was after his later unsuccessful attack upon the first (September 25) order that Stites decided to appeal from the March 26, 1992 denial of relief. At this point, it would seem, Stites began to apprehend danger from the res judicata effect of the rejected jurisdictional challenges he vigorously pressed in the most recent nisi prius contest. 13
Even if the earlier order had been utterly void on its face, the time for appealing against its binding force would have been the same. One cannot justify postponing an appeal by one's good-faith belief in the decision's invalidity. 15 Mandatory appeal time applies to all orders, whether valid or infirm. 16 Stites was led into an erroneous assumption In sum, Stites' present quest for corrective relief by appeal against the reaffirmation of an earlier restitutionary order came too late.
by (a) his own misperception that the first order was facially void and hence of no effect and (b) his incorrect position that invalid nisi prius action need not be challenged at once. His belated post-order challenges, all designed to relieve him of the effect of the first order, did not operate to extend the time for appeal against the decision by which he stood aggrieved.
THE TRIAL COURT'S COGNIZANCE DID NOT END WITH ENTRY OF
Stites argues that the trial court lost jurisdiction in this case for all purposes upon the satisfaction of judgment through the garnishment process and was hence without power to entertain DUIT's quest to vacate the money judgment.
Oklahoma's jurisprudence holds that a voluntarily satisfied judgment moots both an appeal that is lodged against it and all nisi prius vacation process. 17 This is so because any errors in its entry become hypothetical or academic and hence no longer available for the exercise of judicial cognizance. 18 Within the meaning of this rule, loss of jurisdiction takes place because nothing else remains to be done in the cause before the court. This is not to say that the trial court automatically loses cognizance after release and satisfaction is filed. Its jurisdiction continues over fraudulent releases of judgment or over post-satisfaction disputes about the legitimacy of satisfaction. 19 In short, the ultimate power to determine (at the post-satisfaction stage) whether a judgment has been voluntarily satisfied rests in the trial court. 20 Coerced satisfaction of judgment through garnishment process (as in this case) raises no bar to (a) a timely attack upon the judgment, (b) its vacation, on timely motion or petition upon tenable legal grounds, or (c) the restitution of funds paid towards its satisfaction. 21
Neither does DUIT's failure to appeal from the pay orders in garnishment 22 operate as a barrier to advancing a restitutionary remedy. By allowing the garnishment process...
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