Opinion ID: 2002495
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Entry Of The Judgment

Text: Prior to the merger of law and equity procedure in 1984, there was a quite different method for entering judgments in the two kinds of cases. In a law case, the decision of a jury was entered as the jury's verdict, and the decision of the court, sitting without a jury, was entered as a judgment nisi. Neither constituted a final, appealable judgment but served only to mark the commencement of a three-day period in which the loser could file a motion for new trial. If no such motion was filed, the clerk enter[ed] a final judgment as of course. See former Md. Rules 567f and 564; also Lucke v. Commissioner, 245 Md. 706, 228 A.2d 313 (1967). The time for appeal did not begin to run until the clerk entered that judgment, which could be, and often was, in the form of a brief docket entry. See Brown v. State, 237 Md. 492, 207 A.2d 103 (1965); Merlands Club v. Messall, 238 Md. 359, 208 A.2d 687 (1965). In an equity case, there was no such thing as a verdict or judgment nisi. The judgment was entered by means of a written decree signed by the judge. See Hudson Bldg. Supply Co. v. Stulman, 258 Md. 304, 265 A.2d 925 (1970). The decree, this Court said in Hudson at 307, 265 A.2d at 926, quoting from Miller, Equity Procedure § 260 (1897), is the fiat or sentence of the law, determining the matter of controversy. This dichotomy was ended with the 1984 revision of the Maryland Rules. The concepts of judgments nisi and absolute were discarded, as was the absolute requirement of a written decree in equity cases. But in adopting Md. Rule 2-601, dealing with the entry of judgments, this Court continued to recognize that not all judgments could be handled the same way. General verdicts of a jury or analogous decisions of a court either denying all relief or allowing the recovery only of costs or of a specified sum of money are ordinarily easy for a clerk to record, and so we provided in Rule 2-601(a) that, upon the announcement of those kinds of verdicts or decisions, the clerk shall forthwith enter the judgment, unless the court orders otherwise. With the more complex kinds of decisions, however  special verdicts by a jury or court decisions granting other kinds of relief  more caution is required. The clerk does not forthwith enter the judgment but is required to enter the judgment as directed by the court. Id. The clerk does this by making a record of [the judgment] in writing in the file or in a docket book. Rule 2-601(b). The court's decision, or the jury's verdict, does not become a judgment until the clerk makes that entry; the date the clerk makes the record shall be the date of the judgment. Id. The docket entry of July 13, 1988, does not reflect the recording of a judgment as directed by the court. It confirms that decisions were made as to the listed matters, but it gives no clue as to what those decisions were. Nor, as we have said, was there any other document in the court file that would have supplied that critical information. Although Judge Bell evidently assumed that the clerk would, in some way, summarize and record the substance of the rulings she was announcing, that is not what, in fact, happened. [7] For that reason as well, then, the July 13 rulings did not constitute a judgment.