Court Opinion

ID: 9757497
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 22:42:59.517253+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:39.989988
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Mr. Justice Musmanno:
I would reverse the lower court’s refusal to grant to the petitioner (appellant here) a rule to show cause why the stipulation entered into by his attorney in his absence should not be set aside. All that the appellant asked for was an opportunity to show that the stipulation in question was made without authority from him, and did not accord with his rights or intentions.
The lower court’s refusal to grant the rule to show cause and this Court’s affirmance of his refusal will forever enshroud the litigation in this case with doubt as to whether justice was not denied a litigant pleading for a chance to be heard. The appellant, in a sworn pe*98tition, averred that at a conference between his lawyer and the defendant company’s lawyers, (held in a room adjoining the Court) the officers of the defendant corporation were apparently present but that the appellant was denied admittance. The appellant further averred in his petition that, during his absence, a stipulation was entered into and that this stipulation was not exhibited to him until later on in a restaurant and that on that very day he voiced objections to the stipulation, asserting it did not represent what he had agreed to. The petition also declared that the appellant was willing to return the $5,000 paid by the defendant, if the Court would set aside the stipulation and settlement.
So far as this action is concerned, the statements made by the appellant in his petition must be accepted as true since they were sworn to and were not denied by the defendant. In fact, the defendant did not even file an answer to the petition. The lower court, without receiving any answer to the petition, without conducting any hearing and without conducting any recorded inquiry, refused the rule with the declaration that the appellant’s “present satisfaction may be due to the fact that his machinery was not readily salable as he had hoped.” “May be due” is a strange phrase in a court’s decision which is supposed to be based upon established facts. It is also sardonic language with which to shut definitively the doors of the courthouse in the face of a litigant.
It is possible, and certainly excusable, for a judge to err in his appraisal of evidence adduced before him, but it is intolerable for a court to guess at facts, when a simple hearing can establish them conclusively. There is no excuse for groping in the darkness of conjecture when a simple lifting of the blind will reveal the circumstances of reality.
*99If, as tlie lower court seems to suggest, the appellant is merely litigious, a short hearing would have punctured the balloon of his pretensions. But it is possible that, despite whatever the court may have thought of the appellant as a person, he may have been imposed upon in the settlement of his lawsuit, which settlement took place outside his presence and which he never signed. Even a moral bankrupt can be the victim of an intentional plot or design or of an accident* and he is entitled to his day in court.
On April 23,1951, the lower court said: “The Court is of the opinion that the plaintiff did not object to the settlement and was perfectly satisfied until he found that he could not raise the money to repurchase the machinery.” (Emphasis supplied) There can be no question that the learned Judge below believed this opinion to be true or he would not have stated it, but unfortunately there is nothing in the record to substantiate his surmise. A hearing could have placed the prop of substantiation under the bough of his surmise, but without a hearing the surmise falls to the ground emptily.
The majority decision of this Court says that the appellant agreed to a settlement of “$5,000 and the machinery,” but nowhere does it appear that he agreed to a settlement to pay $25,308.00 for the machinery and that he was to pay that enormous sum within 90 days.
The majority opinion states that the appellant has in effect been guilty of laches in asserting tardily any inequity in the settlement but the petition (whose assertions were never denied) declared he, the petitioner, voiced his objections on the same day the stipulation was signed, and further that he directed his attorney not to cash the $5,000 check received. Also that he stands ready to return the $5,000.
*100At the oral argument, present counsel for the appellant explained that he had delayed in filing the petition for the appellant because he was hesitant to embarrass the previous counsel (the one who had made the settlement. )
And so, between the Scylla of his present attorney’s deference to the-previous attorney, and the Charybdis of the lower court’s deference to the defendant (which it believed was being persecuted) the appellant has drifted out into the open sea of indecisive, irresolute and indefinitive adjudication.