Case Title: McCollum v. Kmart Corporation

Citation: 

Docket Number: S057609

State: oregon

Court: Oregon Supreme Court

Date: 2010-02-19T00:00:00Z

Document:
FILED: February 19, 2010
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF OREGON
RUTH McCOLLUM,
Petitioner
on Review,
v.
KMART CORPORATION,
a Michigan Corporation doing business in Oregon,
Respondent
on Review.
(CC0506-06750;
CA A134457; SC S057609)
En Banc
On petition for review
filed July 20, 2009.*
Kathryn H. Clarke,
Portland, filed the briefs for petitioner on review.  With her on the briefs
was Dylan R. Lawrence, Sam Hochberg & Associates.
Michael T. Garone,
Heidi L. Mandt, and Amanda T. Gamblin, Schwabe, Williamson & Wyatt, PC,
Portland, filed the response and supplemental briefs for respondent on review.
LINDER, J.
The petition for
review is allowed.  The decision of the Court of Appeals is vacated.  The
circuit court order granting plaintiff's motion for new trial is vacated, with
instructions to reinstate the judgment.
*Appeal from Multnomah County Circuit Court, Richard C. Baldwin,
Judge. 228 Or App 101, 207 P3d 1200 (2009).
LINDER, J.
This is a personal injury case in
which defendant appealed an order granting plaintiff a new trial.  The Court of
Appeals determined that the trial court's stated grounds for ordering a new
trial, as well as certain alternative grounds urged by plaintiff to support the
order, were not adequate bases for that relief.  McCollum v. Kmart Corporation,
228 Or App 101, 207 P3d 1200 (2009) (McCollum II).  The Court of Appeals
therefore reversed the trial court's order and remanded with instructions to
reinstate the judgment for defendant.  Id. at 123.
Plaintiff has filed a petition for
review of the Court of Appeals decision, arguing that the Court of Appeals
decision should be reversed and the case should be remanded to the trial court
for a new trial.  As part of our consideration of plaintiff's petition, it is
necessary to determine whether the trial court timely ordered a new trial; if
it did not, the merits of that order were not properly before the Court of
Appeals and would not properly be before this court.  As we shall explain, we
conclude that the trial court's order was not timely.  We therefore allow the
petition for review, vacate the Court of Appeals decision, vacate the order
granting a new trial, and remand the case to the trial court with instructions
to reinstate the judgment.
The pertinent facts are procedural.  Plaintiff's
personal injury action against defendant was tried to a jury, which returned a
verdict for defendant.  On October 13, 2006, the trial court entered judgment for
defendant, after which plaintiff timely moved for a new trial.  On November 17,
2006, the court held a hearing on the motion.  At the conclusion of the
hearing, the court took the matter under advisement.  On December 4, 2006, the
trial court signed and filed an order granting plaintiff's motion for new trial. 
On that same date, the trial court also signed and filed a letter opinion addressed
to counsel for the parties in which the court explained the basis for its
decision.  On the second and last page of the letter opinion, the letter
stated:  "Enclosed is a conformed copy of the Court's Order Allowing New
Trial."  The letter also had the notation "enclosure" in a
footer on the last page.  
The trial court administrator entered
the letter opinion into the registry (OJIN(1))
on December 6, 2006, which was 54 days after the entry of judgment.  Significantly,
the trial court administrator did not enter the order granting the new trial on
that same date.  Instead, that order was entered on December 11, 2006, which
was 59 days after entry of that judgment.  On January 5, 2007, defendant filed
a notice of appeal from the order granting a new trial.  Plaintiff neither appealed
nor cross-appealed.  
Approximately one month later, the
Court of Appeals dismissed the appeal and issued an appellate judgment.  In the
order of dismissal, the court noted that the motion for new trial was deemed
denied as a matter of law on December 8, 2006 (which was three days before the
order granting the new trial was entered in the register).(2) 
Consequently, the Court of Appeals vacated the order allowing a new trial and
dismissed the appeal.  Plaintiff filed a petition for reconsideration. The Court of Appeals granted the petition and, in a written
decision, concluded that the order granting a new trial was timely entered --
that is, within 55 days of the date of judgment -- because the trial court's
letter opinion "effectively incorporated the order" and therefore
"itself constituted an order granting the motion for a new trial."  McCollum
v. Kmart Corp., 214 Or App 367, 370, 165 P3d 372 (2007) (McCollum I).
Following that threshold decision, the parties fully
briefed and argued the case.  As noted, on the merits, the Court of Appeals concluded
that the trial court had lacked adequate grounds to grant a new trial, and that
the order therefore should be reversed and remanded and the judgment reinstated.  McCollum
II, 228 Or App at 123.  Plaintiff petitioned for review.  As part of our consideration
of that petition, we sent a letter to the parties inviting them to submit further
briefing on whether the trial court had timely granted plaintiff's motion for a
new trial.  We now conclude that that issue is dispositive of the case.  We
therefore turn to it.
The principles that bear on the timeliness of the
trial court's order in this case are well-settled.  A party's right to seek a
new trial following entry of judgment is created and controlled by statute.  Nendel
v. Meyers, 162 Or 661, 663, 94 P2d 680 (1939) (litigant's right to move for
a new trial arises only by statute; legislature may prescribe procedure for
hearing and determination of such motions).  Although variously codified, the pertinent
statute has remained unchanged for at least 85 years.(3) 
It is now codified in ORCP 64 F(1), which provides, in part: 
"The motion [for new trial] shall be heard and
determined by the court within 55 days from the time of the entry of the
judgment, and not thereafter, and if not so heard and determined within said
time, the motion shall conclusively be deemed denied."
The requirements of the statute are mandatory:  If a trial court fails to
"hear and determine[]" the motion within the 55-day period, any
subsequent order granting the motion is "null and void."  Nendel,
162 Or at 663.  Instead, the motion is "conclusively deemed to have been
denied."  Id.  After that time, the trial court has "no
jurisdiction over the matter."  Id.; see also Clark v. Auto
Wholesale Co. Inc., 237 Or 446, 449, 391 P2d 754 (1964) (untimely motion
under the statute is "void"); Ernst v. Logan Oldsmobile Co.,
208 Or 449, 451, 302 P2d 220 (1956) (trial court loses jurisdiction once order
is conclusively deemed denied).
Over the years, frequent issues have arisen over
what it means for a motion for new trial to be "determined."  Consistently,
this court has held that a trial court "determines" a motion for new
trial when the trial court makes an "effective order" resolving it.  See
Ryerse v. Haddock, 337 Or 273, 279, 95 P3d 1120 (2004) (so holding, and
discussing prior cases so holding).  To determine when an order is "effective,"
the court has looked to ORS 3.070.  Until amended in 1991, that statute
provided that orders, if not signed in open court, "shall become effective
from the date of filing."  ORS 3.070 (1989); see Ryerse, 337 Or at
280 (quoting statute).  As amended in 1991, however, and as the statute
continues to provide, orders, if not signed in open court, "shall become
effective from date of entry in the register."  ORS 3.070 (1991).(4)
 Thus, since 1991, the legislative policy has been that, for an order not
signed in open court, it is not enough for the trial court to file such an
order with the clerk with the intent that it be effective; instead, the order
must be formally entered into the register of the court.(5)
In Ryerse, this court examined at length
the effect of that amendment on ORCP 64 F.  This court concluded, based on the
text of ORS 3.070, that the legislature clearly intended to make "entry in
the register," not "filing," the effective date for orders not
signed in open court.  337 Or at 281.  The court further concluded that the
legislature amended ORS 3.070 "with knowledge of the implications that a
change to that statute would have on the operation of ORCP 64."  Id.
at 280-81.  Consequently, this court held in Ryerse that an order
granting a new trial, to be effective, must be entered in the register within
the 55-day period specified within ORCP 64; otherwise, it is "deemed
denied by operation of law."  Id. at 281.
The other issue that has arisen with
some frequency is what form of document will constitute an "order." 
More specifically, the question has been whether a memorandum (or letter)
opinion constitutes an order.  This court's answer has been:  it does not.  Ernst,
208 Or at 451.  In Ernst, we reasoned that, in general, an opinion
(written or oral) is not the equivalent of an order.  Id. (citing
cases).  Moreover, an appeal can be taken only from a "final appealable
order," not from an "opinion."  Id.
Those settled principles resolve this
case.  Here, the trial court's letter opinion, although filed with the clerk
and entered in the register within the 55-day period, was not an
"order."  It thus was not "determined" within the meaning
of ORCP 64 F(1).  And, although the trial court had signed and filed the
requisite written order within the 55-day period, that order was not entered in
the register within 55 days.  Instead, it was entered into the register 59 days
after entry of judgment, on December 11, 2006.  By then, plaintiff's motion for
new trial had been conclusively denied as a matter of law.  The trial court had
no power to alter that disposition of the motion.
In reaching a contrary conclusion, the
Court of Appeals recognized the basic principles we have outlined.  See
McCollum I, 214 Or App at 369-70 (citing authorities).  The Court of
Appeals nevertheless concluded that the letter opinion in this case was
exceptional, and constituted an order.  The court reasoned:
"In this case, the trial court included a
copy of its written order with the letter opinion that it sent to the parties
and filed with the clerk.  The letter opinion expressly referred to the order. 
By that reference, the letter opinion effectively incorporated the order and,
thus, itself constituted an order granting the motion for a new trial.  The
letter was entered in the register on December 6, 2006.  Consequently, entry of
the letter opinion was sufficient to determine the motion within 55 days as
required by ORCP 64 F."
Id. at 370 (footnote omitted).  We disagree, both
factually and legally, with that conclusion.
Factually, the letter opinion did not
"incorporate" the order or otherwise purport to be the order. 
To the contrary, the letter opinion expressly declared that enclosed with it was
a document entitled "Court's Order Allowing New Trial."  It thus referenced
a separate and independent document that constituted the trial court's order. 
That is exactly what the case law for many years has suggested must occur:  a
letter or memorandum opinion that is made effective by a signed and filed
(pre-1991) or entered (post-1991) order.  The form of this letter opinion and
the separate order that apparently accompanied it seem, if anything, distinctly
unexceptional.(6)
Neither is the letter opinion legally
exceptional in its form.  Legally, a letter opinion itself does not become
effective until it is reduced to an order.  This court so held in Beardsley
v. Hill, 219 Or 440, 442, 348 P2d 58 (1959), despite the fact that the
letter opinion in that case concluded by stating:  "The verdict and
judgment rendered are hereby set aside, and plaintiff's motion for a new trial
is granted."  That wording was far more "order-like" than
anything in the letter opinion in this case, but this court was unwilling to
dispense with the requirement of an actual order.  The court explained why a
memorandum or letter opinion is not an order:
"The cases cited hold, and we consider it to be an
important rule of orderly practice, that a memorandum opinion of the trial
court does not become effective until it is reduced to a proper order, judgment
or decree and entered in the records of the case in the office of the clerk. 
Anything less than a rigid adherence to such a rule gives rise to uncertainty;
it would then be impossible to determine what is an order and what a mere
opinion and upon what date did it become effective."
Id.(7)
The requirement of an actual order is
not just a matter of certainty and sound practice.  As Ernst recognized,
finalizing the resolution of a motion granting a new trial with an order also comports
with the statutory requirement that an appeal be from an order granting a new
trial, not some less formal and less final determination in the movant's
favor.  See Ernst, 208 Or at 451 (appeal must be taken from final order,
not from an opinion).  The statutes, in those respects, are unchanged in their
essential terms:  ORS 19.205(3) authorizes an appeal from "an order
granting a new trial," and ORS 19.255(2)(a) requires the appeal to be filed
within 30 days after an "order" disposing of a motion for new trial
is "entered in the register."  
For those reasons, we disagree with
the Court of Appeals that the letter opinion was an order.  It was, instead, a
letter opinion.  To be sure, it was accompanied by and prepared in tandem with
a signed order.  But that fact reinforces our conclusion that the two were not
one and the same; they were, instead, two distinct and different documents -- a
letter opinion explaining the court's decision and an order granting plaintiff
a new trial. 
Plaintiff makes two alternative
arguments in support of the Court of Appeals disposition.  First, plaintiff
urges that this court's decision in Ryerse was flawed and that this
court should take a more flexible approach, one that would have the
effectiveness of an order turn on the intent and conduct of the judge, not on a
clerk's performance of the ministerial act of entry into the register.  This
court in Ryerse considered many of the same arguments, both legal and
practical, that plaintiff makes here.  Plaintiff has not demonstrated to us
that our decision in Ryerse was in error, and we do not believe that it
was.  Beyond that, if the legislature determines that the practical and policy
points that plaintiff makes are well taken, it may change the statutes accordingly.
Second, plaintiff proposes that the
appropriate remedy here should be to permit the trial court to make a nunc
pro tunc order, apparently one that would make the order effective as of
the date of entry of the letter opinion.  We need not explore the parameters of
a court's general authority to render orders and other documents nunc pro
tunc.(8) 
For our purposes here, it suffices to point out that the terms of ORCP 64 F(1)
foreclose plaintiff's argument.  The rule declares that a motion for new trial
"shall be heard and determined by the court within 55 days from the time
of the entry of the judgment" and then, as if to emphasize the point again,
the rule adds "and not thereafter[.]"  If the trial court
fails to determine the motion as the rule requires -- viz., by entering
an order in the register within the prescribed time -- a legal consequence
flows from that failure:  the motion is conclusively deemed denied.  The
trial court is thereafter "deprived of power to act by operation of ORCP
64 F."  Propp, 313 Or 218, 226, 831 P2d 685 (1992).  Thus, a nunc
pro tunc order that would purport to enter an order in the register, when
it in fact was not so entered, cannot alter the legal consequence that attaches
to that omission.  To conclude otherwise would defeat the essential terms of
the statute. 
The Court of Appeals therefore erred
in concluding that the motion for new trial was determined, within the meaning
of ORCP 64 F(1), when the trial court's letter opinion was entered in the
register.  Because the trial court's order granting the new trial was entered
in the register beyond the 55-day period that the rule allows, the trial court
did not timely determine the motion, and the motion therefore was conclusively denied
by operation of law.  We cannot, and the Court of Appeals could not, reach the
merits of the trial court's order granting plaintiff a new trial.(9)
The petition for review is allowed.  The decision
of the Court of Appeals is vacated.  The circuit court order granting
plaintiff's motion for new trial is vacated, with instructions to reinstate the
judgment.
1. "OJIN"
refers to the Oregon Judicial Information Network, which serves as the official
register for the courts.  See ORS 7.010 (records of circuit and
appellate courts to include register); ORS 7.020 (register to reflect, among
other information, date of filing and entry of any order); ORS 7.095 (Chief
Justice authorized to keep records through use of electronic data processing
equipment).
2. As
we later discuss, under ORCP 64 F(1), a motion for new trial is conclusively
deemed denied if not "heard and determined" within 55 days of the
date of judgment.  The denial therefore occurs on the fifty-sixth day, which
the Court of Appeals correctly calculated to be December 8, 2006, in this
case.  See Propp v. Long, 313 Or 218, 226, 831 P2d 685 (1992) (motion
for new trial is deemed denied on the fifty-sixth day following entry of
judgment, if not effectively resolved by order before that date).
3. In
one of the earliest reported cases discussing a statutory predecessor to ORCP
64 F, this court traced what remains essentially the current form of the
statute to "Section 2-803, Oregon Code 1930, as amended by chapter 233,
Laws of Oregon for 1933 (§ 2-803, Oregon Code Supplement 1935)." Nendel,
162 Or at 663 (citing and quoting statute).  As set out in Nendel, that
predecessor statute was substantively identical to the pertinent text of ORCP
64 F. 
4. The
pre-1991 version of ORS 3.070 was consistent with the general rule that this
court followed -- that is, that filing was a sufficient act to make an order
effective, unless a statute specified that entry in the register was required. 
See, e.g., Robinson v. Phegley, 93 Or 299, 301, 177 P 942
(1919) (so observing).  The 1991 amendments to ORS 3.070 essentially changed
the general rule for orders not signed in open court. 
5. Older
cases sometimes used the terms "filing" and "entry"
inexactly and interchangeably.  See Charco, Inc. v. Cohn, 242 Or
566, 569-70, 411 P2d 264 (1966) (discussing inexact use of the terms and
resulting confusion).  In more recent cases, we have attempted to use them with
greater care and precision, and we do so here:  "filing" occurs when
a document has been given to a clerk with the intention that it be filed;
"entry" refers to formal recording of a document into the court's
register.  See Ryerse, 337 Or at 276-77 (so explaining and using those
terms).  
6. The
record is silent as to when the parties received the letter opinion and whether
the separate order actually accompanied it.  In the physical trial court file,
the letter opinion was placed in the file, without the order.  That is, the
order was not physically attached to the letter opinion, nor does it appear in
the file immediately before or after the letter opinion.  Instead, a lengthy
document is interposed between the letter opinion and the order.  It, too,
bears a file date of December 4, 2006, but was not entered until December 11, 2006. 
The order granting a new trial is the next document in the file, and was
entered, as we have noted, on December 11, 2006.  Per its placement in the
court's physical file, then, the order comes later than the letter opinion and
is separated from the letter opinion by a number of pages. 
7. The
legislature has added certainty to the process by requiring, through the 1991
amendment to ORS 3.070, that an order not signed in open court be entered in
the register to become effective.  Entering an order in the register, unlike
merely tendering it to the clerk, provides public notice of the court's
disposition and makes that disposition a matter of record.  This case
illustrates the importance of an entry of the order in the register.  Here, the
letter opinion was entered in the register as "Letter from Jud[g]e Richard
C Baldwin re [plaintiff's] motion for new trial."  The trial court
administrator did not regard the letter as an order, and the entry for the
letter made no notation as to whether or how the motion for new trial was
resolved.  The entry for the order, on the other hand, expressly declares that
it is an "Order" and follows that with "[plaintiff's] motion for
new trial GRANTED."  Thus, a person or party examining the register would
be unable to determine, from the entry regarding the letter, anything about the
resolution of the motion.  The entry of the order, however, provides clear and
unequivocal information about when and how the motion was resolved.
8. Literally
translated, the phrase "nunc pro tunc" means "now for
then." Black's Law Dictionary 1174 (9th ed 2009).  This court has
described the function of a nunc pro tunc order as "to supply an
omission in the record of action actually taken but omitted from the
record."  Gillespie v. Kononen, 310 Or 272, 276 n 7, 797 P2d 361
(1990).
9. In
its initial order, the Court of Appeals both vacated the order granting a new
trial and dismissed the appeal.  However, the notice of appeal was filed
timely, and the Court of Appeals at the least had jurisdiction to determine
whether the trial court timely heard and determined the motion for new trial.  Because
the motion was deemed denied as a matter of law, the proper remedy was to
vacate the trial court's order, not also to dismiss the appeal.