Title: Roe Village, Inc. v. Board of County Commissioners
Citation: 195 Kan. 247, 403 P.2d 970
Docket Number: 44,135
State: Kansas
Issuer: Kansas Supreme Court
Date: July 10, 1965

195 Kan. 247 (1965)
403 P.2d 970
ROE VILLAGE, INC., Appellant,
v.
BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS and D.L. SANDIFER, Appellees.
No. 44,135

Supreme Court of Kansas.
Opinion filed July 10, 1965.
Joseph H. McDowell, of Kansas City, argued to cause, and Milton Abrams, of Kansas City, was with him on the briefs for appellant.
Kenneth P. Soden, of Mission, argued the cause, and Donald E. Martin, of Kansas City, was with him on the briefs for appellees.
The opinion of the court was delivered by
FATZER, J.:
This was an action brought by Roe Village, Inc., to test the reasonableness of an order of the Board of County Commissioners of Wyandotte County in granting the appellee, D.L. Sandifer, a change of zoning.
Issues were joined and trial was by the district court on June 30, 1964, and taken under advisement. On July 6, 1964, the district court filed a detailed memorandum opinion upholding the order of the Board of County Commissioners. The last paragraph of the memorandum opinion reads:
On July 21, 1964, the appellant served and filed a notice of appeal "from the decision of the District Court entered on July 6, *248 1964, in this action, including but not limited to the finding and decision of the Court dated July 6, 1964 ... and all other findings and judgments entered on said date."
Counsel for the parties were unable to agree on a journal entry, and each presented suggested journal entries to the court. Appellee-Sandifer filed a motion on August 11, 1964, asking the court to approve his journal entry. On September 5, 1964, the district court settled the matter by approving and signing the journal entry submitted by the appellant. The journal entry was filed with the clerk on that same day. No notice of appeal was served or filed by the appellant after the journal entry had been approved and signed by the court and filed with the clerk.
At the outset we are confronted with appellees' motion to dismiss the appeal, which was denied by this court with leave to renew when the case was heard on its merits. The appellees assert the appeal was prematurely filed for the reason that on July 21, 1964, there was no judgment of record from which an appeal could be perfected.
Appellant relies upon the district court's memorandum opinion filed July 6, 1964, as a final judgment, reviewable as such by this court.
A judgment is the final determination of the rights of the parties in an action. (K.S.A. 60-254 [a].) It has long been settled that an appeal taken from a jury verdict or decision of the court before judgment has been rendered is premature and will be dismissed. (Upton v. Pendry, 110 Kan. 191, 203 Pac. 300; Skaggs v. Callabresi, 145 Kan. 739, 67 P.2d 566; Painter v. Monumental Life Ins. Co., 158 Kan. 585, 149 P.2d 626.) Whether a final judgment has been rendered in a given situation depends primarily upon the intention of the court, and upon the governing statutory provisions and rules.
The law in this jurisdiction with respect to the rendition of judgments and when they become effective was substantially changed by the adoption of the new code of civil procedure, effective January 1, 1964. The manner and method of entering a final judgment after a trial or hearing on the merits is presently governed by K.S.A. 60-258, which reads, in part:
Generally speaking, the prevailing practice heretofore has been to settle all forms of judgment entry by a formal journal prepared and agreed upon as to form by counsel of record, and approved and signed by the district court. The committee which drafted the code of civil procedure and the legislature which enacted it intended to eliminate the uncertainty which heretofore prevailed in the practice in Kansas as to when judgment became effective and to provide the moment when judgment became effective and the event which constitutes entry of judgment. The significance of subsection (b) cannot be emphasized too much in that it makes the entry of judgment of controlling importance.
Judge Gard, in his book entitled "Kansas Code of Civil Procedure Annotated," has this to say with respect to the effect of subsection (b) and the change it made in Kansas law:
Likewise, Vernon's Code of Civil Procedure, Vol. 3, by Fowks, Harvey and Thomas, commenting upon K.S.A. 60-258, has this to say with respect to what constitutes entry of judgment:
K.S.A. 60-2103, providing when and how appeals to the supreme court shall be taken, in pertinent part states that when an appeal is permitted by law from a district court to the supreme court, the time within which an appeal may be taken shall be 30 days from the entry of the judgment, as provided by Sec. 60-258.
In the case at bar it is obvious the district court neither intended nor regarded its memorandum opinion as a final judgment. The court specifically ordered that the judgment was not to become effective until it was signed and filed with the clerk. The record discloses the journal entry of judgment was not filed until September 5, 1964, some 46 days after this appeal was taken. Consequently, since the appeal was filed prior to the entry of final judgment (K.S.A. 60-258 [b]), there was no judgment from which to appeal, and we are compelled to hold that the attempted appeal was premature, and must be dismissed. An appeal from a judgment not yet rendered presents nothing for judicial review. See Martin v. Staples, 164 F.2d 106; St. Louis Amusement Co. v. *251 Paramount Film Distributing Corp., 156 F.2d 400, and Uhl v. Dalton, 151 F.2d 502, involving a similar situation.
Since the attempted appeal was filed before the district court's judgment was rendered and became effective, and since no notice of appeal was timely filed thereafter, this court has no jurisdiction of the appeal and it must, therefore, be dismissed.
It is so ordered.
SCHROEDER and FONTRON, JJ., dissent.