Case ID: ala_7/html/0200-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "GOLDTHWAITE, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

JOHNSON v. LATTIMORE.
    1. A Court may at the same term at which it renders a judgment, set it aside, and retrace its steps, and a writ of error will not lie to review its action in recalling its judgment.
    Writ of error to the Circuit Court of Randolph County.
    Lattimore had obtained a judgment in an attachment suit, in a justices’s court of Randolph county, and having caused an execution to be levied on a tract of land, he then moved the-Circuit Court at the Spring term, 1S40, for an order of sale, under the statute directing such proceedings. The order was made, and a venditioni exponas issued the 22d August, 1842, tinder which the land was sold to the plaintiff Lattimore. At the Spring term, 1844, amotion was entered by Johnson, that the constable should be permitted to correct his return upon the execution, under which the levy was made, so as to show that no notice of any kind was given to the defendant of the levy. This motion was granted and the amendment made. Afterwards in the same term, the order for the amendment was set aside, although resisted by Johnson, who excepted to the action of the Court in setting the amendment aside. This is the only matter assigned as error.
    Rice, for the plaintiff in error,
    cited Watkins v. Gayle, 4 Ala. Rep. 153; Burns v. The State, 5 lb. 228; Clay’s Digest, 207, § 31.
    White, contra.
   GOLDTHWAITE, J.

— The writ of error in this case must be dismissed, because there is nothing for it to remove to this Court. The power of a Court to set aside its own judgments at the term at which they are rendered has never been disputed. It may be that here, the Court became satisfied that the evidence upon which it acted was unsatisfactory or not sufficient to allow the amendment; or it might have considered the amendment as immaterial, and for that reason unnecessary. Whatever may have been the reasons which induced the Court to retrace its action and recall its judgment, its effect was to leave the case as it originally stood, and consequently there is nothing to review. Writ of error dismissed.