Title: Nordenstrom v. Swedberg

State: north-dakota

Issuer: North Dakota Supreme Court

Document:

123 N.W.2d 285 (1963) Fred NORDENSTROM, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Milton SWEDBERG, Doing Business as Swedberg Construction Company, Defendant and Appellant. No. 8101. Supreme Court of North Dakota. September 10, 1963. *286 Stokes, Vaaler, Gillig & Warcup, Grand Forks, for appellant. Shaft, Benson, Shaft & McConn, Grand Forks, for respondent. ERICKSTAD, Judge. This is an action wherein the plaintiff, Fred Nordenstrom, sued the defendant, Milton Swedberg, doing business as Swedberg Construction Company, to recover a certain amount of money for services rendered the defendant pursuant to a contract, the plaintiff having done lathing and plastering for the defendant as a subcontractor. The defendant, after interposing an answer which denied the material allegations of the complaint and after asserting an affirmative defense alleging that the contract required that any dispute arising from the contract should first be submitted to arbitration, which the defendant alleged had not been done in this case, moved for a dismissal of the action. The trial court denied the motion, and the defendant appealed from the order denying same. The plaintiff, Nordstrom, moved in this court for a dismissal of the appeal on the grounds that the order appealed from is not an appealable order. This court on many prior occasions has held that appeals from interlocutory orders will lie only in the cases authorized by statute and that an appeal will not lie from an order denying a motion to dismiss an action. See the case of Union Brokerage Company v. Jensen, 74 N.D. 154, 20 N.W.2d 343, and the many cases cited therein. The defendant, however, asserts that this case is different from all of the other cases cited and, thus, that the doctrine of stare decisis does not apply. To substantiate his claim that this appeal should be treated differently, he refers the court to the case of Wall v. First National Bank of Crosby, 49 N.D. 703, 193 N.W. 51, wherein Judge Nuessle, speaking for the entire Court said: It is argued by the defendant that the trial court, in denying the defendant's motion for dismissal, has deprived the defendant of a contractual right to have any dispute arising over the contract submitted first to arbitration and that in this respect the order involves the merits of this action. It should be noted, however, that in the aforesaid case the Supreme Court went on to find that an order denying a motion for judgment on the pleadings was not an appealable order. In a decision rendered in 1955, entitled Schaff v. Kennelly (N.D.), 69 N.W.2d 777, in discussing the meaning of the phrase which the defendant contends applies here, this court said: In this case, the order denying the motion to dismiss is not decisive of the question involved, nor does it prejudice the defendant's right to raise the question at a subsequent stage of the proceedings. We therefore conclude that the contention of the defendant, who is the appellant in this case, is untenable and thus find that the order appealed from is not appealable under Subsection 5 of Section 28-27-02 of the North Dakota Century Code as being an order which involves the merits of an action or some part thereof. We further find that it is not an order appealable under any other subsection of said statute, *288 which statute sets forth the orders which are reviewable. The appeal is dismissed. MORRIS, C. J., and BURKE, TEIGEN and STRUTZ, JJ., concur.