Opinion ID: 1762616
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Sufficiency of Assignments of Error

Text: In registering our dissent to the majority opiniongranting appellee's Application for Rehearing on the insufficiency of appellant's assignments of errorwe wish to make it clear that it is not our purpose to either disagree with Supreme Court Rule 1, or ignore its application. The spirit of this rulerequiring appellant to specify error so as not to put the appellate court in search of erroris essential to good order and its enforcement mandates dismissal of the appeal where the spirit of the rule is violated. This dissent is based on our conviction that the spirit of this rule has not been violated in the instant case. The appeal is from a judgment of nonsuit superinduced by the adverse ruling of the trial court in sustaining defendant's demurrer to the plaintiff's complaint. There is but a single ruling of the court below contained in the record and the office of a motion for voluntary nonsuit in such cases is for the limited and exclusive purpose of reviewing such ruling, and on appeal only such ruling is reviewable. Roan v. Associates Discount Corp., 281 Ala. 100, 199 So.2d 643; Esslinger v. Spragins, 236 Ala. 508, 183 So. 401. As early as 1881, this Court, as then constituted, in Robinson v. Murphy, 69 Ala. 543, had the wisdom to recognize: ... when the decree ... is assailed as erroneous in the whole, an assignment of error, in the general terms of this assignment, must be accepted as conforming to the rules of practice. Later it was observed that this exception had been applied only in equity cases: As early as Brahan v. Collins, Minor, 169, this court declined to accept, as the requisite specification of error, a general undesignating assertion of error by an appellant. The only relaxation the practice has had is in equity cases, where the error relied on affected the whole decree. Robinson v. Murphy, 69 Ala. 543, 546. Kinnon, as Adm'r. v. L. &. N. R. R. Co., 187 Ala. 480, 482, 65 So. 397. Rule 1 is equally applicable to appeals at law and in equity; and, as the case at hand so forcibly demonstrates, where there is a general assignment of errorwhich goes to the entire order of the trial court no search of the record is required to discern the error complained of. In the usual case, absent specific assignments of error there is no pleading by which the appellate court's ruling is invoked. That an exception exists (where a review of a single error going to the whole of the lower court's order is the avowed purpose of the appeal) is the common sense holding of Robinson . The simple truth is (and we should bow our shameful heads in acknowledged blasphemy), except for the point being raised in appellee's brief, [1] the author of the original majority opinion would not have engaged in the futile exercise of searching the record for the assignments of error; and, this for the reason that the error complained of in an appeal from a judgment of nonsuit is more apparent from the record than are the assignments of error the basis of the Robinson exception. It is ironic, indeed, that the majority of the Court was put in search of the record to discover the insufficiency of the assignments of error, when the author of the original opinion was not put in search of the record to discover the error complained of. We further note that the majority opinion in setting forth the assignments of error omits the lead sentence, which reads as follows: Comes now Lisa Ann Holcomb, suing by and through her father and next of friend, Victor Holcomb, Appellant in the above-styled cause, and says that there is manifest error in this cause and separately and severally assigns each of the following errors: It is our opinion that the words there is manifest error in this cause, coupled with the fact that this is an appeal from a judgment of nonsuit, conform to the exception recognized by this Court in Robinson . The appellee's argument, in support of its contention that a failure to dismiss the appeal for appellant's violation of Rule 1 would deny to appellee equal protection of the laws, induces us to observe that perhaps some good may come from the granting of the Application for Rehearing. A public entity who enjoys sovereign immunity from tort actions, and who defended the instant appeal on its merits on that ground, is at least talking about equal protection of the laws.