Title: Vantine Paint & Glass Co. of Dickinson v. Kudrna

State: north-dakota

Issuer: North Dakota Supreme Court

Document:

186 N.W.2d 127 (1971) VANTINE PAINT & GLASS COMPANY OF DICKINSON, Incorporated, Plaintiff, v. Laudie KUDRNA, Wesley Ray Foreman, and Montana-Dakota Utilities Co., a corporation, Defendants. MONTANA-DAKOTA UTILITIES CO., a corporation, Third-Party Plaintiff, v. Alice L. ABERSON, Third-Party Defendant. Civ. No. 8695. Supreme Court of North Dakota. April 22, 1971. Mackoff, Kellogg, Kirby & Kloster, Dickinson, for plaintiff. Albert A. Wolf, Bismarck, for defendants and third-party plaintiff. Reichert, Howe & Hardy, Dickinson, for third-party defendant. ERICKSTAD, Judge. The following question, answered in the negative by the district court of Stark County, has been certified to our court for our consideration: This question was certified to us after the defendant Montana-Dakota Utilities Company moved that the district court dismiss the action against it on the ground that the plaintiff, which we shall refer to as Vantine's, is not the real party in interest, since on receipt of $33,317.65 from its insurer, Great Northern Insurance Company of Minneapolis, Minnesota, it had given its insurer a subrogation receipt in complete settlement with said company of its contractual share of the loss sustained by it. Notwithstanding that Vantine's contended that its total loss was $39,759.60 and that it therefore suffered a substantial loss in excess of that for which it had been compensated by its insurer, and notwithstanding that one of the attorneys for the *128 plaintiff also filed an affidavit asserting that he was the attorney for the insurer and that he had from time to time billed the insurer for the legal services rendered in connection with the prosecution of this lawsuit, the district court held that Vantine's was not the real party in interest under Rule 17(a) of the North Dakota Rules of Civil Procedure, and, accordingly, required that the action be brought in the joint names of the insurer and Vantine's. The district court gave the plaintiff twenty days within which to join the insurer as a party plaintiff. When the plaintiff declined to do so, the court, at the request of the parties, certified the foregoing question of law to this court for decision. Interesting as the question is, it is not a proper question for certification to this court. The section of our statutes pertinent to this decision reads: What this court said, speaking through Judge Strutz, in 1964, applies in this case. In an earlier decision, this court was called upon to determine, among other things, the capacity of the plaintiff in a particular action to maintain the action. Speaking through Judge Burke, the court said: In this case, neither the amount of liability nor the issue of liability would be resolved by the answer to the question certified to us. Accordingly, we conclude that this lawsuit will not depend principally or wholly on the answer to the question certified to us. For the reasons stated in this opinion, we must decline to answer the certified question. The case is remanded to the district court for further proceedings. STRUTZ, C. J., and PAULSON, KNUDSON and TEIGEN, JJ., concur.