Court Opinion

ID: 9540998
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:21:30.352438+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:02:05.799316
License: Public Domain

CURTIS, J.
I dissent. I cannot agree with the majority opinion in its construction of the last paragraph of section 657 of the Code of Civil Procedure as amended in 1939, which requires that an order granting a new trial on the ground of the insufficiency of the evidence “shall so specify this in writing and shall be filed with the clerk within ten days after the motion is granted; otherwise, on appeal from such order it will be conclusively presumed that the order was not based on that ground. The court may direct a party to prepare the order.” There is nothing uncertain or ambiguous in the language of this section. It is a cardinal rule of statutory construction that, if possible, a statute or code section should be construed so as to give meaning and effect, not only to the statute or code section as a whole, but to each and every part thereof—i. e. to every word and clause, and certainly to every distinct or co-ordinate provision or section. (23 Cal.Jur., sec. 133, p. 758.)
Prior to 1919, section 657 of the Code of Civil Procedure set forth merely the “Grounds for New Trial.” In 1919, there was added to the section a new paragraph providing that “When a new trial is granted upon the ground of the insufficiency of the evidence to sustain the verdict, the order shall so specify; otherwise, on appeal from such order, it will be presumed that the order was not based upon that ground.” In 1929, the section was again amended, but only in a minor matter. By this amendment the words “on all or part of the issues” were inserted after the word “granted” appearing in the amendment added in 1929. In 1939, the section was amended again by rewriting the amendment of 1919 so as to read as follows: “When a new trial is granted, on all or part of the issues, upon the ground of the insufficiency of the evidence to sustain the verdict or decision, the order shall so specify this in writing and shall be filed with *118the clerk within ten days after the motion is grcmted; otherwise, on appeal from such order it will be conclusively presumed that the order was not based upon that ground. The court may direct a party to prepare the order.” The italicized words appearing above were added by the amendment in 1939 to the section as it formerly read.
Section 657 as thus amended was in force at the date the motion for a new trial was granted in the present action. It is conceded by the majority opinion that no written order was made by the trial court in granting plaintiff’s motion for a new trial, but the opinion holds that entry by the clerk in his minutes is a sufficient compliance with the requirement of' said section as amended in 1939.
Prior to the amendment of Í939, there was no requirement that the order should be in writing, but by the amendment of that year it was expressly provided that the order should not only be in writing, but that it should be fded with the clerk within the time presented. Undoubtedly prior to this last amendment the court could make a verbal order granting such a motion on the ground of insufficiency, of the evidence, and its entry in the minutes would be a sufficient compliance with the provisions of the section. That being so, then all that was accomplished by the 1939 amendment, according to the majority opinion, was to require that this order should be made within ten days after the motion was granted. Then why did the Legislature in its 1939 amendment, in providing for a limit to the time in which the order should be made, also expressly provide that the order should be in writing and filed with the clerk? It must have had some reason for making this change in the section, for it followed this express requirement by providing that for a failure to comply therewith, it should be conclusively presumed that the order was not based upon the ground of the insufficiency of the evidence. There is another provision of this amended section that tends to support the construction of the section now claimed for it, and that is the last sentence in the 1939 amendment which is not found in the section previous to its amendment in 1939, and which provides that ‘ The court may direct a party to prepare the order.” No one, it seems to me, can read the amendment of 1939 as a whole and reasonably conclude that the Legislature had in mind a verbal or oral order as a sufficient compliance with the terms of said section.
The majority opinion holds that a construction of the slat*119ute requiring a written order filed by the court might deprive a litigant of his day in court by a technicality, and that the section when so construed would serve as a pitfall into which some innocent and unsuspecting litigant might be entrapped. It must be conceded that the provision of the section in question is certain, definite and unambiguous, and that it expressly provides for a written order filed with the clerk within ten days after the motion for a new trial is granted. No person with ordinary intelligence after reading it, can have any doubt that the section so provides. How then can it be said that the requirement that a litigant observe a plain and unambiguous statute passed by the Legislature would operate to deprive him of his rights by a technicality? How could any litigant be misled or entrapped by such a requirement? The only person who might be misled or entrapped would be one who never read the section as amended in 1939. The respondents surely have no ground on which to base such a complaint. The order granting a new trial in this case was made some two and a half years after the amendment was passed and some eight months after this court had, in the case of Whitley v. Superior Court, 18 Cal.2d 75 [113 P.2d 449],'construed the section as amended and held that a written order filed by the clerk was required by the section as it then stood. No one who had ever read the Whitley ease could have had any doubt as to the meaning of the section as there construed by the court. It is contended that the language of the court in the Whitley case is dictum, or if not dictum, that this court erroneously construed said section of the code in its decision of that case. Yet at the time the order here was appealed from, that case was the latest expression of this court as to the construction to be given that section of the code. It was signed by five members of this court without any dissent by any member of the court, and it at least served as a warning to the profession as well as to litigants, including those in the present action, against any possible pitfall that might by chance be lurking in the law.
Undoubtedly the intent of the Legislature in amending section 657 in 1939 was to make the procedure definite and certain, and it considered the change in the section to be of such importance that, for the first time, it provided that the presumption that the order granting a new trial was not *120based upon the ground of insufficiency of the evidence should be conclusive.
In my opinion the order granting the new trial should be reversed.
Edmonds, J., concurred.
Appellant’s petition for a rehearing was denied November 22, 1943. Curtis, J., and Edmonds, J., voted for a rehearing.