Opinion ID: 6353391
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: analysis

Text: We begin our analysis with Barnett’s argument that the district court erred by ordering him to repay the amounts he received from Happy Cab and Paratransit Insurance. The district court entered the order in response to appellees’ argument that such an order was required by the Court of Appeals’ mandate. [4-6] There is no question that the district court was obligated to follow the Court of Appeals’ mandate. A district court has an unqualified duty to follow the mandate issued by an - 472 - Nebraska Supreme Court Advance Sheets 311 Nebraska Reports BARNETT v. HAPPY CAB CO. Cite as 311 Neb. 464 appellate court and must enter judgment in conformity with the opinion and judgment of the appellate court. State v. Payne, 298 Neb. 373, 904 N.W.2d 275 (2017). A lower court may not modify a judgment directed by an appellate court; nor may it engraft any provision on it or take any provision from it. Id. No judgment or order different from, or in addition to, the appellate mandate can have any effect. Id. [7] While Barnett acknowledges that the district court was bound to follow the Court of Appeals’ mandate, he contends that the district court’s order directing him to repay the amounts he received from Happy Cab and Paratransit Insurance was not required by the mandate. Where, as here, the mandate makes the opinion of an appellate court a part thereof by reference, the opinion should be examined in conjunction with the mandate to determine the nature and terms of the judgment to be entered or the action to be taken thereon. Id. Our review of the Court of Appeals’ opinion leads us to conclude that its mandate did not require the district court to order Barnett to repay the funds he received from Happy Cab and Paratransit Insurance in November 2019. As discussed above, the district court entered two judgments in this case based on the offer to confess judgment. It first entered judgment against Happy Cab only, and then, after appellees filed a motion to alter or amend, it entered judgment against all appellees. Because the Court of Appeals concluded that Barnett had not effectively accepted an offer to confess judgment, it determined that the district court should not have entered a judgment at all. It therefore vacated the district court’s judgment against all appellees and directed the district court, on remand, to also vacate its prior judgment against Happy Cab only. While the Court of Appeals’ opinion focused on whether there was an effective acceptance of the offer to confess judgment and directed that the district court’s judgments based on the offer to confess judgment be vacated, the evidence submitted by the parties on appellees’ motion to enforce the - 473 - Nebraska Supreme Court Advance Sheets 311 Nebraska Reports BARNETT v. HAPPY CAB CO. Cite as 311 Neb. 464 mandate concerned other matters. Specifically, that evidence pertained to whether the payment of funds to Barnett by Happy Cab and Paratransit Insurance while the prior appeal was pending was, as appellees contend, the compulsory satisfaction of a judgment or, as Barnett contends, payment pursuant to a recently reached settlement agreement. We see nothing in the Court of Appeals’ opinion that spoke to the appropriate characterization of that payment or what the district court must do regarding that payment. Indeed, the Court of Appeals could not have spoken to these issues, because there is no way it could have even known that Barnett had received the funds while the appeal was pending. In ordering Barnett to repay the funds he received from Happy Cab and Paratransit Insurance, the district court relied on the Court of Appeals’ concluding language that its decision “places Barnett and appellees back in the same position they were before the offer to confess judgment was filed.” Barnett v. Happy Cab Co., 28 Neb. App. 438, 446, 945 N.W.2d 200, 206 (2020). Appellees likewise contend that this language required the district court to order the repayment of funds. We disagree. The context for this concluding statement was the Court of Appeals’ direction that the district court’s prior judgments be vacated. The Court of Appeals was observing that the vacation of those judgments would return the parties to the position they were in before any judgments had been entered, not directing that the district court make additional orders not expressly discussed by the Court of Appeals. Our conclusion that the district court’s order directing repayment was not required by the Court of Appeals’ mandate would not allow us to affirm unless the district court had some other authority to enter the order. On this subject, appellees assert that because Happy Cab and Paratransit Insurance issued the checks to Barnett under the compulsion of a nowvacated judgment, Barnett’s retention of those funds constitutes unjust enrichment. As we have noted, Barnett disputes - 474 - Nebraska Supreme Court Advance Sheets 311 Nebraska Reports BARNETT v. HAPPY CAB CO. Cite as 311 Neb. 464 this characterization of the payment, contending that the payment was made pursuant to a new settlement agreement. As we will explain, we need not resolve this dispute between the parties here. To the extent appellees suggest that the district court could issue its order requiring that Barnett repay Happy Cab and Paratransit Insurance because appellees established that Barnett had been unjustly enriched, we disagree. While unjust enrichment is certainly a recognized cause of action under Nebraska law, see, e.g., Washa v. Miller, 249 Neb. 941, 546 N.W.2d 813 (1996), appellees have not pled an unjust enrichment cause of action in this case. Moreover, the district court’s order appears to grant relief in favor of Paratransit Insurance, but Paratransit Insurance is not even a party to this case, let alone a party that has pled a cause of action against Barnett. And finally, even if the right cause of action had been pled by the right parties, those parties would still need to litigate that cause of action, and that has not occurred here either. The district court has entered an order based only on its understanding of the Court of Appeals’ mandate. Because we find that the district court, on this record, lacked authority to enter the order directing that Barnett repay the funds he previously received from Happy Cab and Paratransit Insurance, we vacate that order. And because the district court did not have authority to enter that order, it follows that the district court abused its discretion by dismissing Barnett’s case as a sanction for noncompliance. We thus also vacate the order dismissing the case and remand the cause for further proceedings. We express no opinion as to whether appellees may have some recourse they have not yet pursued with respect to the funds Barnett received while the first appeal was pending.