Court Opinion

ID: 9810857
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 22:01:52.216677+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:40:16.906562
License: Public Domain

Olaric, J.,
dissenting from the obiter dictum. The expression in the opinion “and without it (a seal) the process is void” is an obiter dictum, since the expression is not called for by the exception, and its omission (as will he seen at a glance) will not affect the reasoning in the opinion, or the result. As an obiter dictum it can have no weight as a precedent and its presence can *617serve no beneficial purpose. As is said by Faircloth, C. J., in bis concurring opinion in Williams v. Gill, at this term, £;The facts in this case do not authorize or call for such an expression. Too much dicta leads to confusion and requires too much subsequent explanation. The proposition would certainly require very serious consideration. ”
Besides, if the point arose in this case, the expression could not be sustained by reason and precedent and if held in this way would create serious and grave inconveniences, affecting the validity of judgments and titles, for if process issued to another county is in fact void it cannot be vitalized by amendment. On the contrary it has been too often held by this Court to be now questioned that ‘ ‘where a clerk has omitted to affix the seal of his court to writs out of the county, the court may at a subsequent term, order him to affix the seal nunc pro tunc.” Purcell v. McFarland, 23 N. C., 34; Clark v. Hellen, Id., 421; Henderson, C. J.; Seawell v. Bank, 14 N. C,, 279. In these cases the court says “The omission of the clerk to affix the seal was but a misprision in him” and “The writ is not defective. It only lacked authentication. The clerk knew whether he issued it, and if true, the court possessed the means of giving it authentication as to the rest of the world by stamping it with the seal of the court. The Revised Statutes (Chapter 58, Section 1) declare that the court in which an action shall be pending, shall have power to amend any process, pleading or proceeding in such action, either in form or substance, for the furtherance of justice, on such terms as shall be just, at any time before judgment. This act is very broad and we think covers this case.” The present Statute (The Code, Section 273) is in the same words as that above *618cited (except that it is broader by giving power to amend “before or after judgment”) and cannot be more narrowly construed. If under the Revised Statutes a seal could be affixed to process issued out of the county after its return, it can certainly be done now, and process that can be thus amended is not “void” for, as the opinion in the present case properly says, “void process cannot be vitalized”, a dead body cannot be galvanized into life. The above cases are cited as authority in Smith v. Spencer, 25 N. C., 256; Freeman v. Morris, 44 N. C., 287; Phillipse v Higdon, Ibid 380; Williams v. Weaver, 101 N. C., 1; Henderson v. Graham, 84 N. C., 496, and in other cases. In the last named case, the clerk had omitted to sign the summons and this court held that his signature could be added by amendment after return of summons as “served”, and say, in reference to cases in which it had been held that process issued to another county under seal was void, ‘ ‘but it is decided in those cases that they, may be rendered effective by amendment and attaching the seal when the rights of other persons are not affected” — thus conclusively showing that process issued to another county not under seal is not void, notwithstanding unguarded expressions, but merely voidable.
It is to be regretted that the necessity of comparing the above decisions, and showing that there is no real conflict between them, has arisen upon an obiter dictum, but it is proper to show that the court has not by the use of five words, by a wave of the hand, so to speak, overruled a line of decisions by some of the most eminent judges who have sat upon this bench, and jeopardized titles which rest upon the power of amendment to add the omitted seals to process issued to other counties *619‘ ‘before or after j udgment” as the amended statute now reads.
If in the present case the order to take depositions had issued to a commissioner out of the county (which it did not) and on its return, not being under seal, the Judge had amended by permitting the clerk to append his seal, as the above cases hold can be done after sale under execution or return of service of summons, then, if an exception had been made on that ground, the point would have been raised. As it is, the expression is purely obiter, and this dissent therefrom is in the interest of the integrity of titles and of our decisions which might well be shaken if attention were not called to the fact that the expression is only obiter and contrary to settled precedents and the statutes above cited.