Opinion ID: 2607251
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: The Effect of Stites' Voluntary Dismissal on DUIT's Restitutionary Claim

Text: Some of this court's extant jurisprudence appears to treat a voluntary dismissal of a case as the district court's jurisdictional cut-off. [31] According to this line of authority, when a claimant's dismissal is filed the case stands as if no judgment had ever been entered. [32] These precedents are clearly inapposite in the procedural posture of this case. When by plaintiff's dismissal the district court cognizance was sought to be terminated, the court was amidst administering an ancillary post-vacation remedy of restitution. Its September 25, 1991 order for the return of money that remained in the lawyer's trust account had already been issued in response to DUIT's pre-dismissal restitutionary plea (for repayment of all funds Stites had received through garnishment process). [33] Because DUIT's quest for affirmative relief came to be invoked before Stites' dismissal of his claim, there was no impediment to the post-dismissal proceeding. [34] In short, Stites' dismissal divested the trial court neither of its jurisdiction over DUIT's affirmative plea for ancillary restitutionary relief nor of its power to enforce the September 25 order. We hence hold that plaintiff's post-vacation dismissal was ineffective to terminate nisi prius cognizance in the face of the then-pending post-vacation counterclaim for restitutionary relief. The court was clearly authorized to consider that claim as a dispute ancillary to the exercise and administration of its §§ 1031 et seq. vacation power.