Opinion ID: 1499045
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Timeliness of Defendant's Appeal to the Superior Court

Text: The timeliness of the Church's appeal to the Superior Court goes to the Superior Court's jurisdiction. If the Church failed to take its appeal from the District Court's judgment of February 1, 1977 within the time prescribed by Rule 73(a), D.C. Civ.R., the Superior Court lacked jurisdiction to hear the appeal. See Maine Mack, Inc. v. Skeels, Me., 330 A.2d 420, 422 (1975), and cases there cited. Rule 73(a) provides that a timely motion for findings, under either Rule 52(a) or Rule 52(b), tolls the running of the ten-day period for taking an appeal to the Superior Court. Thus, the Church's motion filed three days after the February 1 judgment [thus within the five days prescribed by Rule 52(a) and a fortiori within the ten days prescribed by Rule 52(b)] tolled the period within which the Church could take an appeal to the Superior Court from that judgment. The same Rule 73(a) under which the appeal period was tolled also specifies when the tolling will terminate; it states that the full time for appeal [10 days] commences to run and is computed from the entry of any of the following orders made upon a timely motion under such rules: making findings of facts or conclusions of law as requested under Rule 52(a); or granting or denying a motion under Rule 52(b). . . . (Emphasis added) In the case at bar the order which would trigger commencement of the running of a new appeal period was never entered by the District Court. Neither the District Court judge's letter nor the entry of the docket reading Letter to Atty. [for the Church] sent, constituted an order within the meaning of that rule. We held in State v. Baker, Me., 390 A.2d 1086, 1088 (1978), that the mere notation of motion granted by the judge on the motion paper and the corresponding docket entry did not constitute a pretrial order from which the State could appeal under 15 M.R.S.A. § 2115-A. A similar test applies in determining what is an order for purposes of Rule 73(a), D.C.Civ.R. As State v. Baker, supra at 1089, stated: The efficiency of the appellate process is enhanced if the various time periods provided by statutes and rules begin unambiguously on the dates when judgments and orders are entered as such. Since no order making findings of facts or conclusions of law as requested under Rule 52(a) or granting or denying a motion under Rule 52(b) was ever issued on the Church's timely motion, the tolling of the appeal period was never terminated. The running of that appeal period was still tolled on November 9, 1977, when the Church filed its notice of appeal. It was not too late to file the appeal. Thus, there was no infirmity in the Superior Court's jurisdiction over the Church's appeal. Having concluded that the Church's notice of appeal to the Superior Court was not filed too late, the question naturally arises whether the Church's appeal conversely suffers from any infirmity by reason of having been filed too early. We conclude that it does not. On November 9 when the Church filed its notice of appeal, the District Court judge, even though he had not entered any order, had declared in writing his rejection of the Church's request. On that day, by filing its notice of appeal, the Church clearly made an election to go forward with an appeal to the Superior Court and abandoned any attempt to press further its request for additional findings from the District Court. There was at that point nothing standing in the way of the Church's appeal proceeding in the ordinary course. Having rejected plaintiff Torrey's attack upon the propriety of the Superior Court's reviewing the District Court judgment on the Church's appeal, we now turn to the merits of Torrey's appeal from the Superior Court's reversal of that judgment.