Opinion ID: 1707963
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: MARTIN v. ZWEYGARDT

Text: The Court of Appeals found it had no jurisdiction to hear the appeal because the decision of the district court was not a final, appealable order. The Court of Appeals cited Martin v. Zweygardt, 199 Neb. 770, 771, 261 N.W.2d 379, 380 (1978), in which this court stated, [A] judgment of reversal with a remand for further proceedings is not final for the purposes of appeal. However, we find that Martin v. Zweygardt is inconsistent with prior decisions regarding final orders. Martin v. Zweygardt distinguished Ribble v. Furmin, supra , stating that the order in the latter case was appealable because a proceeding for leave to file a claim was distinct from a hearing on the merits of the claim at the trial court level. This distinction is unwarranted. The issue in both cases was whether an order of the district court reversing a county court's final order, resulting in a full hearing on the merits of the claim in the county court, is a final order. In concluding such an order of the district court was a final order, this court focused, in Ribble v. Furmin , on whether the district court had retained the cause for any further action by the district court, not on whether the proceeding for leave to file the claim was separate from the hearing on the claim. This court found that since the district court did not retain the cause for further action, the district court's order remanding the case for further proceedings was a final order. This is a correct statement of the law. To the extent that Martin v. Zweygardt is construed to provide that an order of a district court reversing a final order of the trial court and remanding the case for a trial on the merits is never a final order, it is overruled. Since we find that the district court's judgment of reversal with a remand for further proceedings was a final order, this court has jurisdiction to review the issues raised on appeal by the parties.