Court Opinion

ID: 9624428
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 07:02:38.534735+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:49:52.818532
License: Public Domain

MR. JUSTICE ANGSTMAN:
(concurring in the result).
I agree with the result reached in the foregoing opinion but not with all that is said in it.
I do not agree that the dismissal of the attempted appeal in the ease of In re Blankenbaker’s Estate, 108 Mont. 383, 91 Pac. (2d) 401, had the effect of affirming the order attempted to be appealed from. I think R. C. M. 1947, sec. 93-8020, providing that the dismissal of an appeal has the effect of an affirmance of the judgment or order appealed from has application to a situation where there was an appeal from an appealable order or judgment but which appeal for some one of the reasons specified in R. C. M. 1947, sec. 93-8019, had to be dismissed. *513It is my view that the dismissal of an attempted appeal from a non-appealable order or judgment, such as that in the Blenkenbaker ease, supra, does not have the effect of an affirmance of the order or judgment attempted to be appealed from. In such a ease the court acquires no jurisdiction to do anything except to dismiss the attempted appeal. It acquires no jurisdiction to affirm or otherwise affect the order attempted to be appealed from.
Neither do I agree that the case of State ex rel. Blankenbaker v. District Court, 109 Mont. 331, 96 Pac. (2d) 936, should be overruled. The reason given for the conclusion may not be sound but I think the result was correct. The statute involved in that case was what is now R. C. M. 1947, sec. 91-4438, reading: “The attorney general, state board of equalization, public administrator, county attorney, or any person dissatisfied with the appraisement or assessment and determination of such tax may apply for a rehearing thereof before the district court within sixty (60) days from the fixing, assessing and determination of the tax by the district court as herein provided on filing a written notice which shall state the grounds , of the application for a rehearing. The rehearing shall be upon the records, proceedings, and proofs had and taken on the hearing as herein provided unless additional or newly discovered evidence be alleged therefor, and a new trial shall not be had or granted unless specially ordered by the district court.”
This section, it will be noted, speaks both of rehearings and new trials. Fair interpretation of the section contemplates two things: First, a rehearing, upon the records, proceedings and proofs had and taken on the hearing. Second: A new trial upon additional or newly discovered evidence. A rehearing upon the records, proceedings and proof had on the hearing follows as a matter of course upon application. That is not dependent upon the discretion of the court and requires no court order. The new trial on additional or newly discovered evidence must be ordered by the court before it is available to petitioner.
It therefore follows that when the application for rehearing *514was filed in the last cited case it had the effect of wiping out the order fixing the inheritance tax and leaving the case as if no order for inheritance tax had been made. There was then no occasion to appeal from that order. The filing of the application for rehearing left no order to appeal from. The order made after rehearing might have been entirely different from the one previously made.
I think the conclusion reached in the Blankenbaker case, 109 Mont. 331, 96 Pac. (2d) 936, was correct, but I think it is entirely different from the instant case and is no authority for the granting of the writ of supervisory control in this case.
MR. JUSTICE ANDERSON not having been a member of the court at the time of the original opinion did not take part in the decision.