Court Opinion

ID: 9776502
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 19:38:05.142425+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:39.312458
License: Public Domain

WELLIVER, Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent from the principal opinion for the reasons stated in my dissent in Sprung v. Negwer Materials, Inc., 727 S.W.2d 883, 894 (Welliver, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). (,Sprung I). I concur in the separate dissenting opinions of Blackmar, G.J., and Robertson, J. I disagree with the Concurring Opinion of Covington, J.
Arriving at a fair and just method for the handling of defaults has never been easy, perhaps because of the difficulty of separating the rights and the acts of the parties and their lawyers. Responding to the growing dissatisfaction of the Bar with the line of decisions strictly and technically enforcing defaults, Missouri Bar, this Court, and the Finch and Ross standing rules committees unsuccessfully struggled for ten years with laying to revise our Rule 74 relating to defaults. Nanette Laughrey’s publication of her serial law review articles1 discussing Rule 74 triggered this Court to appoint one more committee, a Special Ad Hoc Committee charged with revising Rule 74. This committee, like our prior Rules committee, was composed of the finest trial lawyers, judges and scholars in the Bar. This committee recommended that we abandon the concept embodied in our growing line of cases that any negligence of the attorney precludes the setting aside of the default, and, that in its place we adopt the concept that excusable neglect is a ground for setting aside a default. The Court, as then constituted, being the same Court that heard Sprung I, adopted the recommended revised rule effective January 1, 1988.
There are two ways that this Court may effectively overrule cases. The first is by an opinion so stating. The second, pursuant to the rulemaking power granted the Court by the constitution, Mo. Const, art. V, § 5, is to adopt a rule contrary to the existing case law. One is as effective as the other. It follows that by a subsequent case we may as effectively emasculate or repeal a rule. We were right in adopting revised Rule 74, and there should be consistency in the cases that follow.
It might be well to note that the problem of dealing with defaults has been as difficult for the Court as it was for our committees, our opinions in Suggs, Sprung I, and now Sprung II all coming from a court *115divided 4 to 3. Those who have remained and who have traversed the full course of Sprung and the adoption of revised Rule 74, based upon prior votes appear to stand evenly divided on this case.
The revision of Rule 74 has been well received by the Bar of the state, and in my opinion, is considered by the Bar to be one of this Court’s major accomplishments in the improvement of the administration of justice during the last decade.
I share Judge Covington’s concern for the precedent that may be set by this case, but not for the same reason. The prece-dential effect which I fear is that the combination of the principal opinion and the concurring opinion which harks back to and re-embraces the “teachings” of Suggs, op. at 103 (Covington, J. concurring), sets us back ten years into the quagmire of defaults.
I do not find the great difficulties found by Judge Covington in dealing with the definition and application of the concept of “excusable neglect”, it simply being that inadvertence or neglect which was not intended to and did not thwart the orderly administration of justice and did not deprive the other party of a full, fair and timely trial of his cause on its merits. Never in the full course of Sprung has it been alleged or asserted that the setting aside of this default judgment would deprive the plaintiff of a fair trial of his cause on its merits.
The real issue in this case is not for us “to decide whether sending a request for an extension of time to plead to a client instead of the Court is a mistake unmixed with neglect”, op. at 102 (Covington, J. concurring). The real issue is whether we as a Court embrace the concept that excusable neglect is a ground for setting aside defaults as we said by our approval and adoption of Revised Rule 74. If we do, then courts sitting in equity should do no less.
Free of legalese and in the plainest language at my command, “the teachings” by which I believe we should be guided are; “that the law and especially equity abhors defaults”; that as lawyers and judges our primary duty and obligation is to see that all parties to litigation are accorded a fair and just trial on the merits of their causes; and, that we as judges of the highest Court of our state have a special obligation to both inspire and to hold lawyers to the highest possible standard of conduct. I would be less than honest if I did not express my concern and disappointment about the direction taken by the newly constituted Court, and, I would be shirking what I believe to be my responsibilities if I failed to alert the lawyers to the potential impact of this opinion.
The default should be vacated and a trial on the merits ordered.

. Laughrey, Default Judgments in Missouri, 50 Mo.L.Rev. 841 (1985), and Laughrey, Balancing Finality, Efficiency, and Truth: A Proposed Reform of the Missouri Default Judgment Provisions, 51 Mo.L.Rev. 63 (1986).