Court Opinion

ID: 9442269
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 18:41:46.228812+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:02.151871
License: Public Domain

CLARK, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
My disagreement with my colleagues is on so narrow a point that I should hardly venture to express it, did it not concern a matter of procedure about which dispute appears to develop naturally and as to which I fear the opinion herewith will create new doubts. I would reverse here instead of dismissing the appeal. The salutary federal rule allowing appeals only from final judgments (save for the few statutory exceptions) has tended to stimulate controversy as to details. I would not minimize the difficulties ; but I do think they are increased by a trend of appellate decision to go behind the records to carry out policies — for or against such appeals as the case may be —which do not appear on the surface. The solution has seemed to be that the rule should be made as objective, indeed as formal, as possible, so that it may be understood and applied by lawyers and litigants more or less automatically and without search for hidden variations or distinctions. Consequently the new amendment to Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, rule 54(b), 28 U.S.C.A. (which suggests a general appellate purpose, even if it is not directly applicable in admiralty) has already shown its workability by its clarity and simplicity. It allows the district judge to make his intent — which is generally controlling, Forstner Chain Corp. v. Marvel Jewelry Mfg. Co., 1 Cir., 177 F.2d 572, 576 — quite clear if he chooses and, where he does not, it enables the parties to rely upon a convenient rule of thumb in line with the general federal principle.1
It is because the opinion and decision herewith searches for a supposed intent contrary to the formal record that I think it represents an unfortunate retreat into a subjective approach to the question of appealability. Up until the last decree below, it was quite clear that the judge was holding open this issue as to the ultimate liability of the impleading defendant; the fact that he says so thus emphatically earlier lends further point to the contrast of the final decree. For that not only left nothing at all open for further decision so far as its formal statement is concerned, but, in addition, constituted a definite rejection of a decree submitted by one of the parties which would specifically have retained this issue for further consideration. I do not see how we can go behind this on what is no more than a guess or a conclusion as to what we think the judge should have thought — based, in turn, upon his failure to make formal findings .and write a formal *532opinion. The contrast with such cases as the Audi-Vision case is so striking as to point the moral. Thus in the cited case the judgment appealed from assumed to pass upon the complaint and the second counterclaim, but not the first counterclaim'; and, if further clarification were needed, the district judge’s opinion pointed out that the issue made on the first counterclaim would be determined by a trial. Here there seems to me no room for interpretation, and our opinion only guesswork as to the judge’s mental processes.
Since the judge failed to make findings, I am perfectly willing to return the case for this purpose, though our attempts to obtain such perfecting of a record in the past have never been successful enough to make me regard such a course as invariably essential. Nevertheless I am willing to try once more, but am convinced our order should be a reversal of the decision below and a remand for findings, with authority to the district judge to receive further evidence if he so desires.

. The suggestion that this new rule may be invalid (cf. Kaufman & Ruderman, Inc., v. Cohen & Rosenberger, Inc., 2 Cir., 177 F.2d 849, 850 n. 1) thus seems to me not capable of being sustained, so far at least as increasing appellate 'jurisdiction, over matters unsettled below is concerned. For a district judge has obvious power, exercised over and over, to treat all and sundry matters as interlocutory when he so desires, holding them for further hearing, for the receipt of further evidence, ■ even for the presentation to him of findings or a form of final decree. The new rule does no more than hold this to be his purpose unless he makes clear and precise his contrary intent. The only possible question as. to validity would seem limited to the case where a judge tries to make a clearly interlocutory order — sáy, a grant of permission to amplify a complaint— final; but district judges show ho proneness to such judicial fooleries, and that question is probably academic.