Court Opinion

ID: 9762819
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 02:31:52.397308+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:37.766147
License: Public Domain

McAULIFFE, Judge,
dissenting.
I would apply the principle of the “law of the case” to avoid the harsh and inequitable result of dismissal of the appeal in this case. The relevant chronology of the case is as follows:
January 21 — Circuit court enters order granting defendants’ motion to dismiss Counts I and III (of a three count complaint).
January 23 — Circuit court enters on docket plaintiffs’ voluntary dismissal of Count II.
February 19 — Plaintiffs file order of appeal.
April 19 — Court of Special Appeals, acting on its own initiative, enters an order dismissing the appeal.
April 26 — Court of Special Appeals issues mandate finalizing dismissal of appeal.
May 1 — Circuit court enters order denominating dismissal of Counts I and III as a final judgment.
May 2 — Plaintiffs file second order of appeal.
The majority of this Court now dismisses the second appeal on the ground that the January 21 order effectively disposed of all claims generated by Counts I and III, and became final and appealable when the remaining claims *415were disposed of by the voluntary dismissal of the sole remaining count, so that any appeal filed more than 30 days after January 23 was not timely. Of course, this means appellants were entirely correct in taking their initial appeal when they did, and have lost that right of appeal because an appellate court mistakenly believed their action to have been premature.
I do not disagree with the majority’s holding that the circuit court’s order of January 21 became final and appeal-able when all remaining issues were settled by the dismissal entered on January 23. I therefore agree that the Court of Special Appeals erred in dismissing the first appeal. I disagree, however, with the majority’s conclusion that we cannot treat that earlier procedural determination by the Court of Special Appeals as the law of this case, and thereby find the current appeal to be timely.
The principle of the law of the case is not an inflexible rule of law. Justice Holmes, writing for the Supreme Court in Messenger v. Anderson, 225 U.S. 436, 444, 32 S.Ct. 739, 740, 56 L.Ed. 1152 (1912) said:
In the absence of statute the phrase, law of the case, as applied to the effect of previous orders on the later action of the court rendering them in the same case, merely expresses the practice of courts generally to refuse to reopen what has been decided, not a limit to their power.
It has been described as largely a matter of “good sense,” Petition of United States Steel Corporation, 479 F.2d 489, 494 (6th Cir.1973), cert. denied, 414 U.S. 859, 94 S.Ct. 71, 38 L.Ed.2d 110 (1973); as a doctrine addressed to the “good sense” of the court, Uniformed Sanitation Men Ass’n, Inc. v. Commissioner of Sanitation of New York, 426 F.2d 619 (2d Cir.1970), cert. denied, 406 U.S. 961, 92 S.Ct. 2055, 32 L.Ed.2d 349 (1972), quoting Higgins v. California Prune & Apricot Growers, Inc., 3 F.2d 896, 898 (2d Cir.1924); and, as “a rule of comity or convenience,” Walker v. Gerli, 257 A.D. 249, 12 N.Y.S.2d 942, 944 (1939).
*416In the usual application of the principle an appellate court will decline to consider in a second appeal of the same case issues decided by it in the first appeal, and courts of subordinate jurisdiction will consider themselves bound by the decision made by an appellate court that has remanded a case. This is so even though the decision is interlocutory and may subsequently be reversed by a court of superior jurisdiction. Exceptions have been recognized when an appellate court finds its earlier decision was clearly erroneous and would work a manifest injustice, White v. Murtha, 377 F.2d 428 (5th Cir.1967); Hammond v. Inloes, 4 Md. 138, 165 (1853); and when there has been an intervening change in the law having retrospective application, accomplished either by statute, Banco Nacional de Cuba v. Farr, 383 F.2d 166 (2d Cir.1967), cert. denied, 390 U.S. 956, 88 S.Ct. 1038, 19 L.Ed.2d 1151 (1968); or by a decision of a court to which the appellate court owes obedience, Delano v. Kitch, 663 F.2d 990 (10th Cir.1981), cert. denied, 456 U.S. 946, 102 S.Ct. 2012, 72 L.Ed.2d 468 (1982). And we held in Loveday v. State, 296 Md. 226, 462 A.2d 58 (1983) that the law of the case principle does not bind this Court to a decision of the Court of Special Appeals given in an earlier appeal in the same case.
I have no quarrel with the structure of the law of the case principle as it has developed and been interpreted in this State, and I agree that Loveday is entirely correct on its facts. I believe, however, that consistent with the common sense approach that underlies the rule we should approve a narrow application of the law of the case doctrine to bind the parties and the courts to the determination first made by the Court of Special Appeals with the respect to the finality and appealability of the circuit court’s entries of January 21 and 23.
In the usual case, as in Loveday, a party will ordinarily not suffer irreparable harm by the refusal of this Court to bind itself to an earlier decision of the Court of Special Appeals on a substantive matter. The decision in such case is interlocutory and may be changed until all avenues of *417direct appeal and discretionary review have been exhausted. Here, however, the dismissal of the first appeal as premature rendered impossible the correction of error, for if the appeal had not in fact been premature there could never again be a timely appeal. More than 30 days had passed from the entry of the order that gave finality to the proceedings, and if at some later date the Court of Special Appeals or this Court determined the original ruling had been in error, there could be no relief. In these limited circumstances, where the ruling that later proves erroneous has addressed the finality and appealability of an order, and the result of not applying the law of the case doctrine is that an innocent party will be deprived of the right of appeal, it seems entirely reasonable to allow the earlier ruling to control the case.
I attach no significance to the failure of appellants to request the issuance of a writ of certiorari following the dismissal of the first appeal by the Court of Special Appeals. The law of the case principle has been found applicable in those instances where certiorari has been requested and denied, as well as where certiorari has not been requested. To hold otherwise would be to ascribe precedential value to a denial of certiorari, and that would be at variance with established law. State of Maryland v. Baltimore Radio Show, 338 U.S. 912, 70 S.Ct. 252, 94 L.Ed. 562 (1950). Appellants should not be penalized for pursuing an alternative that was the least expensive and the least demanding of the resources of a busy court system.
The majority suggests that application of the law of the case doctrine may not be of benefit to appellant in this case because the failure to file a timely appeal deprives an appellate court of jurisdiction, and we cannot confer jurisdiction where none exists. That argument overlooks the effect of applying the law of the case to these facts. The law of the case established by the Court of Special Appeals on the initial appeal is that the order of January 21 did not dispose of the claims presented by Counts I and III because it did not employ the term “judgment”. It follows that *418when the circuit judge on remand again dismissed Counts I and III, and in so doing used the word “judgment” in the order, the law of this case is that all claims were finally disposed of, for the first time, by that order. An appeal taken within 30 days of that order is therefore timely, and there is simply no question of an untimely appeal or an attempt to confer jurisdiction.
I am aware that hard cases sometimes make bad law, and that we must avoid distortion of a rule simply to avoid a harsh result in a single case. In this instance, however, I believe the rule may be applied rationally and without distortion to achieve a logical and just result. I would consider the appeal on its merits.
Chief Judge MURPHY has authorized me to state that he concurs with the views expressed herein.