Court Opinion

ID: 9735970
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 18:38:07.508183+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:27:03.136460
License: Public Domain

CARTER, Justice
(dissenting).
I dissent.
However commendable the purposes of Iowa Rule of Civil Procedure 215.1 may be, the facts of this case do not justify the court’s insidious transformation of plaintiffs live lawsuit into a dead one. Just as cases properly subject to dismissal under rule 215.1 should not escape that fate, cases to which the sanctions of the rule do not extend should not share that fate. Secret and silent dismissals should only be tolerated when demanded by a paramount policy.
When a court enters an order continuing a case under the rule on condition that the case be tried on a date selected by the court, and, as a result of overscheduling, the case cannot be reached, I submit that it is the court’s responsibility rather than the litigant’s, to take the next step in the assignment process. The ball remains in the court’s court. The majority identifies the correct principles of law but misapplies them. The opinion confuses the concept of a continuance, which is a litigant’s request to the court to reassign a case, with the responsibility of the court to reschedule assigned cases that it is unable to reach.
We stated in Brown v. Iowa District Court, 272 N.W.2d 457, 458 (Iowa 1978).
[w]hen a case is continued, it is not removed from the operation of the rule except that the date of trial is changed.... If the order continuing the case is not complied with, the case stands dismissed.
... The fact that other matters, such as motions, are pending and undisposed of does not operate as an automatic continuance. Even then the obligation to obtain a continuance persists if dismissal is to be avoided.
(Citations omitted.) In the present case, plaintiff complied with the court’s order continuing the case under rule 215.1. Plaintiff was ready, willing and able to *156proceed to trial. Consequently, the basis for dismissal recognized in Brown did not exist.
The cases which most nearly present the situation now before the court are Dolezal Commodities v. City of Cedar Rapids Airport Commission, 387 N.W.2d 572, 575-76 (Iowa 1986), and Laffoon v. McCombs, 261 Iowa 341, 154 N.W.2d 68 (1967). The only distinction between Dolezal Commodities and the present case is that the court administrator did reassign that case for trial when it could not be reached for trial on the date specified in the continuance order. No order was entered, however, removing the case from the operation of rule 215.1. We held that such an order was not required.
The effort of the majority to distinguish Dolezal Commodities is unpersuasive. The fact that a case is actually tried subsequent to the date established in a rule 215.1 continuance order would not alone save the case from automatic dismissal under the theory of our cases. Such dismissals, in situations where the plaintiff has failed to comply with the court’s directive in the continuance order, are beyond the power of the court to avoid. See Koss v. City of Cedar Rapids, 300 N.W.2d 153, 157 (Iowa 1981). Dolezal Commodities was not excepted from the rule because the case was eventually tried but because the court recognized that, where a case cannot be reached for trial on the date assigned because of docket congestion, no responsibility to reassign the case falls to plaintiff.
This interpretation of Dolezal Commodities is consistent with our earlier decision in Laffoon v. McCombs. There the plaintiff had caused the case to be assigned for trial within the try-or-dismiss period and a hung jury resulted. The case was not reassigned for trial until the second term following the expiration of the try-or-dismiss period, and no order of continuance was obtained. We held the case was not subject to rule 215.1 because the court has a responsibility to reassign a case where a hung jury has resulted. Dolezal Commodities recognized a similar responsibility where a case, continued to a date certain under rule 215.1, cannot be reached because of docket congestion. In sanctioning the dismissal of plaintiff’s action, this court abandons the principles which were settled in Laffoon and Dolezal Commodities. In so doing, it retroactively changes the impact of rule 215.1 in a manner which works great prejudice on plaintiff.
LARSON and SCHULTZ, JJ., join this dissent.