Court Opinion

ID: 9760641
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 01:06:31.096269+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:15.309604
License: Public Domain

On Motions for Rehearing or to Transfer
PER CURIAM.
Appellant has filed its motion for rehearing or to transfer this cause to the Supreme Court. Its counsel have ably restated and amplified its contention that the principle of res judicata was not available in this case. As in its briefs, so in its mo*730tion, appellant does not dispute the fact that its first injunction suit, terminated by the permanent writ of prohibition from this court, was against the same parties, upon the same allegation of facts, based upon the same transactions, requiring the same proof, and seeking the same remedy and relief. Nor does the appellant deny that all this appears in the records of this court.
Appellant reasserts its position that this court cannot, in the present case, consider its judgment in the prior case because such former judgment was not pleaded and proved in the trial court in the present action. It concedes that this court may take judicial notice of its own records in lieu of evidence thereof, but insists that the court may not consider such records because they have not been “invoked” by the pleadings in the trial court and that such consideration has been waived by the respondents. In other words, appellant denies the right of this court in the present case to consider, of its own motion, its own record of its own judgment in the prior case.
Respondents were not compelled by the Civil Code to raise the issue of res judicata by motion to dismiss in the trial court, although it would have been permissible to do so. Section 509.290, RSMo 1949, V.A.M.S. They could also have pleaded it by answer. Section 509.400. It has been so held. Hamilton v. Linn, 355 Mo. 1178, 200 S.W.2d 69, 71. Having rightfully filed their motion to dismiss in the trial court for failure of the petition to state a cause of action, respondents had fhe right to reserve for their answer, if and when an answer would become due, the defense of res judicata. However, the trial court sustained the motion to dismiss this action for failure to state a cause of action, whereupon the appellant brought the case to this court on appeal. Here, by their motion to dismiss the appeal and by their briefs, respondents raise the defense of res judicata where the prior judgment relied on was rendered, in an original proceeding of which the court had actual and judicial knowledge.
Whether or not, under the record, respondents can be held to have waived res judicata as a defense, it is our opinion, as stated, that it was not only the right but the duty of this court, of its own motion, to •take judicial notice of and to consider its own recent judgment in an action to prohibit a prior suit between the same parties on the same facts and seeking the same injunctive relief. Sabol v. St. Louis Cooperage Co., Mo., 31 S.W.2d 1041, 1043; Custer v. Kroeger, 313 Mo. 130, 280 S.W. 1035, 1037, 44 A.L.R. 1328; Keaton v. Jorndt, 259 Mo. 179, 168 S.W. 734, 736; Bienville Water Supply Co. v. Mobile, 186 U.S. 212, 217, 22 S.Ct. 820, 46 L.Ed. 1132, 1134; Freshman v. Atkins, 269 U.S. 121, 124, 46 S.Ct. 41, 70 L.Ed. 193, 195; Id., 5 Cir., 294 F. 867, 868.
The appellant further takes exception to the reference in the opinion to the failure of the appellant to move to amend or to dismiss in the prior case, and the suggestion that such failure could have contributed to make the ensuing judgment against it in that case a final and conclusive judgment against it on the merits. It cites the rule that after service of the preliminary writ in prohibition a trial court has no authority to allow amendments or to permit dismissal of the action. Such is the general rule. State ex rel. Pettibone v. Mulloy, 330 Mo. 1084, 52 S.W.2d 402. This does not mean, however, that the permanent writ of prohibition may not contain such modifications and provisions as to permit and to direct the trial court to take such future action in the proceeding as may be necessary to meet the demands of equity and justice. 42 Am.Jur., Prohibition, § 47, loc. cit. 183. The court is “not completely circumscribed” in a prohibition proceeding by the relator’s petition. State ex rel. Boll v. Weinstein, 365 Mo. 1179, 295 S.W.2d 62, 67.
In the opinion of this court in the prior case it was stated that the petition in the first injunction suit did not state a cause of action; that it had not been suggested how such petition could be amended to do *731so without proceeding on a different theory and a different cause of action; that in determining whether a cause of action could be stated the petition must be given the benefit of the doubt, since the writ of prohibition must be used with forbearance, and that “However, if it is not apparent to us from our examination of the whole record that a cause of action could be stated, then the failure by the respondent, relying on the possibility of such amendment, to suggest how or in what manner amendment might be made to state a legal cause of action would incline us to the belief that no such cause of action could be stated.” Such language of our opinion in the prior case should suffice to justify the disallowance of the point here made.
The appellant’s motions for a rehearing or to transfer the cause to the Supreme Court are overruled.