Court Opinion

ID: 5454344
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-01-08 19:53:28.689616+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:32:34.685473
License: Public Domain

VAN FLEET, J.
I concur in the judgment and generally in the views expressed by Mr. Justice Temple upon which it is based. Were the question of the correctness of the court’s finding as to plaintiff’s capacity to maintain the action open to inquiry upon this appeal, I should strongly incline to the view that it was not supported by the evidence. But I am unable to perceive wherein either the reasoning or conclusion of the main opinion upon that question can be successfully upset. As conclusively shown by Judge Temple, and as is indeed obvious, that finding was and is primarily essential to the validity of the judgment of the court below to any extent. Its correctness was in no manner attacked or questioned upon the former appeal. Upon that appeal the cause was remanded for a new trial solely as to the single issue of the alleged imperfect and fraudulent milling of the ore; and thereby, in all other respects, the findings and conclusions of the court below were manifestly as effectually sustained and affirmed as if so ordered in terms, since the lower court was left no power or discretion to reopen or disturb its findings or judgment in any other respect. In other words, our former judgment was equivalent to an express and final adjudication of the correctness of the proceedings of the court below in all respects other than the one particular as to which its action was reversed. Since this court has no power, under the constitution, to review its own final judgments (Fox v. Mining Co., 112 Cal. 568, 571, 44 Pac. 1022), upon the going down of the remittitur upon that appeal the question as to the plaintiff’s right to maintain the action was definitely and finally concluded.