Warfield Natural Gas Co. v. Allen

• Decision Date: 12 December 1930
• Parties: WARFIELD NATURAL GAS CO. v. ALLEN et al.
• Court: Kentucky Court of Appeals

33 S.W.2d 34

236 Ky. 358

WARFIELD NATURAL GAS CO. v. ALLEN et al.

Court of Appeals of Kentucky

December 12, 1930

Appeal from Circuit Court, Floyd County.

Suit between the Warfield Natural Gas Company and J. H. Allen and others. From the judgment rendered, the former appeals. On motion of both appellant and appellees asking the Court of Appeals to approve an agreed order extending time for filing respective briefs.

Agreed order approved in part and disapproved in part in accordance with opinion.

Kirk &amp Wells, of Paintsville, for appellant.

J. C Hopkins and C. P. Stephens, both of Prestonsburg, for appellees.

THOMAS C.J.

This record was filed in the Court of Appeals on October 14, 1930 and the appeal was granted by the court below thereby dispensing with delay in the issual of process for any of the appellees. Counsel for both appellant and appellees signed and filed a writing in this record headed and styled "Agreed Order," and moved this court to approve it as an order of the court and to be placed upon its record. The agreement says: "It is agreed by the parties hereto that the appellant, Warfield Natural Gas Company, may have to and including March 15, 1931, and the appellees thirty days thereafter to file their respective briefs in this case." If it is approved by this court as an order made by it, its effect will be to continue the hearing of the appeal until the spring term, 1931, since by its express terms (or the order if it is approved by this court) the appellees will have until April 15, 1931, to brief the case which is after both the adjournment of the winter term and after the convening of the spring term. If such agreements should be approved by us in one case, there would be no reason to deny them under similar showings in all other cases pending on appeal, the inevitable effect of which would be to continue the entire docket, leaving the members of the court with no work to perform.

A like consequence would follow, but with a pro tanto diminishing of the court's work, if a less number of such agreements were made and approved. It is the policy of the law to dispatch litigation to the end that its fruits may be reaped by the litigant entitled to it, and also to the end that crowded conditions of dockets, resulting in delay to other litigants, may be averted and the finished work of the court be kept abreast with incoming litigation, and to thus avoid protracted litigation of the "Jarndyce v. Jarndyce" type. In the case of Mutual Life Insurance Co. v. Will G. Evans, 185 Ky. 335, 214 S.W. 927, 928, the observations above made were approved by this court in this language: "Unnecessary or unreasonable delays or derelictions on the part of litigants or counsel, in the absence of satisfactory explanation, should not be tolerated by the courts. Litigation should be disposed of with reasonable and seasonable dispatch. Strader v. Strader, 163 Ky. 356, 173 S.W. 793; Southern Ins. Co. v. Johnson, 140 Ky. 485, 131 S.W. 270; New York Life Ins. Co. v. Long, 177 Ky. 445, 197 S.W. 948; United States F. & G. Co. v. Com. for Use, etc., 31 Ky. Law Rep. 35, 101 S.W. 360."

To accomplish the above ends, and as an aid in the orderly dispatch of litigation, courts are vested with the right to adopt and promulgate reasonable rules for the guidance of litigants and their counsel and which they are as much under duty to observe as if the rules had been created by statutory enactment in the form of a Code of Practice. Such right of adoption and promulgation inheres to an appellate court the same as it does to a trial court, and this court, in the exercise of that right, and to accomplish the same purpose has adopted section 5 of Rule 5, saying: "In all civil cases it...