Court Opinion

ID: 9637562
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 15:10:25.628808+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:57.796346
License: Public Domain

BELSON, Associate Judge,
dissenting:
The holding of the majority construes our rules in such a way as to deprive Howard University of any opportunity to appeal an adverse judgment. Not only is the result unjust, but the majority’s reading of the rules is, I think, incorrect. The same reading leads the majority to dismiss the cross-appeal. Therefore, I dissent.
It is true, as the majority points out, that our Rule 4-II(a)(2) provided that the filing of a motion for new trial terminates the running of the time for filing an appeal as to all parties “and the full time for appeal ... commences to run and is to be computed from the entry in the civil docket of an order with respect to such motion.”
That rule language, however, must be read in harmony with other applicable law. An order granting a motion for new trial does not commence the running of the time for appeal, since it is interlocutory and unappealable. Desmond v. Robertson, 211 A.2d 775 (D.C.1965). On July 2, 1982, the trial court granted defendant Howard University’s motion for new trial, subject only to denial of the motion if plaintiffs accepted a remittitur. Howard University could not have appealed that granting of a new trial unless and until plaintiffs converted the grant into a denial by accepting the remitti-tur. When plaintiffs did so on July 30, 1982, and this acceptance was docketed on August 5, 1982, the order became an ap-pealable order, and Howard University filed a timely notice of appeal on August 6, 1982. The plaintiffs’ cross-appeal on August 31, 1982, was within 30 days of the docketing of the acceptance, and therefore also was timely.
It is reasonable, I think, to hold that the acceptance of the remittitur, when entered on the docket, constitutes “an order with respect to such motion,” for it merges with the trial court’s inchoate order and has the effect of an order of the court denying the motion for new trial.
This court recently has adopted a clarifying amendment to Rule 4-II(a)(2) that in the future will prevent a deprivation of the right of appeal under circumstances like those present here. This comes too late for the parties before us.
I respectfully dissent.