Court Opinion

ID: 9629790
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 09:49:37.771898+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:07:24.194756
License: Public Domain

HOWE, Justice,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent. I believe that under the proper interpretation of rule 4, Utah Rules of Appellate Procedure, plaintiffs timely filed their notice of appeal, and the appeal should not now be dismissed by this court.
*418I
This case presents for our decision the proper interpretation and correlation of paragraphs (a), (b), and (c) of rule 4. So far as is pertinent here, paragraph (a) states that a notice of appeal shall be filed within thirty days
after the date of entity of the judgment or order appealed from.
(Emphasis added.) Paragraph (c) modifies paragraph (a) by stating:
Except as provided in paragraph (b) of this rule, a notice of appeal filed after the announcement of a decision, judgment, or order but before the entry of the judgment or order of the trial court shall be treated as filed after such entry and on the day thereof.
I shall hereafter refer to this provision as the “announcement modification.”
We now turn to paragraph (b) to ascertain the scope of the exception made therein to paragraph (c). Paragraph (b) states that if a timely post-trial motion is made under rule 50(b), rule 52(b), or rule 59,
the time for appeal for all parties shall run from the entry of the order denying a new trial or granting or denying any other such motion.
(Emphasis added.)
The majority interprets this exception too broadly. Their interpretation denies an appellant the benefit of the announcement modification contained in paragraph (c) and requires an appellant to file a notice of appeal only after the actual entry of the order denying a new trial or granting or denying any of the other post-trial motions. I disagree with that interpretation because the announcement modification applies to orders disposing of post-trial motions as well as to a decision, judgment, or order made after a trial on the merits when no post-trial motion is made. The very language in paragraph (b) which the majority relies on to deny the appellant the benefit of the announcement modification, i.e., “the time for appeal shall run from the entry of the order” granting or denying the post-trial motion, is the very same language used in paragraph (a) set out above, i.e., the notice of appeal shall be filed within thirty days “after the date of entry of the judgment or order appealed from.” Thus, there is no basis to recognize the announcement modification in an appeal where there is no post-trial motion (paragraph (a)) but deny it when there is a post-trial motion (paragraph (b)).
The majority reads too much into the “except as provided in paragraph (b) of this rule,” which is contained in paragraph (c). That language means nothing more than if one or more of the post-trial motions mentioned in paragraph (b) is filed, a notice of appeal cannot be filed until the motion has been disposed of. It does not additionally mean that the announcement modification is not available to orders granting or denying post trial motions. This is made clear by the penultimate sentence of paragraph (b), which states, “A notice of appeal filed before the disposition of any of the above [post-trial] motions shall have no effect.” Thus, when the trial court ruled and announced by signed minute entry its disposition of plaintiffs’ post-trial motions, paragraph (c) allowed a notice of appeal to then be filed even though it was before the actual entry of the order denying the motion.
The majority’s interpretation creates a strange anomaly in the rule. They would allow a notice of appeal to be filed after the announcement of a decision, judgment, or order when no post-trial motion has been filed but would deny the benefit of this announcement modification when a post-trial motion is filed and an announcement is made by the court disposing of the motion. No reason has been or could be suggested why the drafters of the rule would so limit the benefit of the announcement modification. It creates a trap for the unwai’y appellant, as this case demonstrates. Rule 1(a) of the Utah Rules of Civil Procedure states that those rules “shall be liberally construed to secure the just, speedy, and inexpensive determination of every action.” While there is no parallel provision in the Utah Rules of Appellate Procedure, I believe that the appellate rules should be similarly liberally construed, and the distinction which is drawn in the majority opinion is not founded on either a proper interpretation or any reason.
*419The cases of this court which the majority cite in support of their decision, namely, Transamerica Cash Reserve, Inc. v. Hafen, 723 P.2d 425 (Utah 1986), Baily v. Sound Lab, Inc., 694 P.2d 1043 (Utah 1984), and U-M Invs. v. Ray, 658 P.2d 1186 (Utah 1982), do not deal with the issue which we have in the instant case, where a trial judge announced by a signed minute entry the denial of the post-trial motions and plaintiffs filed their notice of appeal thereafter but before the formal order denying the motions was actually signed and entered. In all of the cited cases, the post-trial motions had not been disposed of by the trial judges. That is not the case here.
II
I also dissent from the second part of the majority opinion where they hold that the signed minute entry denying the post-trial motions is not a final order upon which a notice of appeal may be based. The opinion does acknowledge that this court has recognized a signed minute entry as a final order for purposes of appeal but states that “such treatment is appropriate only where ‘the ruling specifies with certainty a final determination of the rights of the party and is susceptible of enforcement.’ ” (Quoting Cannon v. Keller, 692 P.2d 740, 741 n. 1 (Utah 1984).) That is exactly what we have in the instant case. The trial judge’s signed minute entry completely and clearly disposed of plaintiffs’ post-trial motions by denying all of them. There was nothing equivocal about it. Had no formal order been entered thereafter by the trial court, we would have recognized it as an order disposing of the post-trial motions and would have permitted an appeal to be based thereon. In Dove v. Cude, 710 P.2d 170, 171 n. 1 (Utah 1985), Justice Durham, writing for the court, upheld the jurisdiction of this court in an appeal which was taken from a signed minute entry. In doing so, we relied on a statement made in Cannon v. Keller:
Although not designated an “Order” or “Judgment,” the ruling specifies with certainty a final determination of the rights of the parties and is susceptible of enforcement.
Dove, 710 P.2d at 171 n. 1 (quoting Cannon, 692 P.2d at 741 n. 1). In Cannon, we took jurisdiction of an appeal from a memorandum decision signed by the court and ordering a writ of mandamus to issue.
The minute entry signed by the trial judge in the instant case specified with certainty a final determination of the rights of the parties, even though it was contemplated that counsel for defendants was to prepare a formal order denying the motions. The formal order submitted by prevailing counsel did nothing more than parrot the language of the signed minute entry and was thus consistent with the announced disposition.
STEWART, Associate C.J., concurs in the dissenting opinion of HOWE, J.