Court Opinion

ID: 9858521
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 16:26:25.520844+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:54:40.780660
License: Public Domain

CARTER, Justice
(dissenting in part).
Although the majority’s decision on the jurisdictional aspects of this appeal may be warranted, I must voice my disapproval of the court’s statements concerning the requirements for obtaining a continuance under Iowa Rule of Civil Procedure 215.1. In Anderson v. National By-Products, Inc., 257 Iowa 921, 135 N.W.2d 602 (1965), we uttered a clear and unambiguous holding that, in order to avoid the automatic dismissal of “strike list” cases under rule 215.1, the court is “not compelled to enter its order for continuance at the dismissal term.” Id. -at 923, 135 N.W.2d at 603. We amplified this conclusion by stating:
[S]ince the motion for continuance was filed, ordered set for hearing and notice of the hearing given, all during the dismissal term, the court retained jurisdiction to hear and rule on the motion for continuance....
*877It may be physically impossible for a busy trial judge to hear and finally dispose of all pending matters before the close of a term.... We are not disposed to hold under the circumstances shown here that the power of the court to continue the case and to decline to dismiss it under rule 215.1 must be exercised at the dismissal term. We do not think the language of the rule or any previous decision of ours compels such a holding.

Id.

I believe the Anderson holding was wise and that we should continue to apply it without embellishment. I see no advantage in imposing an additional requirement, which the majority establishes today, that there must be a formal submission of the motion for continuance in order for the court to retain jurisdiction after the rule 215.1 trial deadline. The language from Schimerowski v. Iowa Beef Packers, Inc., 196 N.W.2d 551, 554 (Iowa 1972), in which the majority finds support for this added requirement, is, I submit, only descriptive of the facts of the ease then before the court. It does not suggest any alteration of the Anderson holding. It is significant that the court in Schimerowski supports its decision with the observation that “[djefendant is unable to indicate what further these claimants could have done to obtain the required ruling.” Schimerow-ski, 196 N.W.2d at 554. A plaintiff facing dismissal of a case under rule 215.1 has done all that is within that person’s power to obtain a required ruling when the motion for continuance has been filed and the matter set for hearing. Neither the plaintiff nor the plaintiffs lawyer has any control over the court’s availability for a hearing date. To suggest that in the present case there was something more than plaintiff’s counsel could have done, is simply incorrect.
The majority suggests that its position promotes the purposes of rule 215.1. I suggest that precisely the opposite is true. Just as it is the purpose of that rule to dismiss those cases on file for the prescribed period of time when “satisfactory reasons for want of prosecution” are not shown, it is also the purpose of the rule not to dismiss those cases in which satisfactory reasons for want of prosecution can be shown. A plaintiff wishing to establish that a case is not subject to dismissal under the rule can do no more than file a motion for continuance and ask the court to issue a ruling thereon. Until such ruling is forthcoming, it is impossible to tell whether a particular case falls in the category for which the rule favors a dismissal.
I find no merit in the suggestion of the majority that the court’s power to decide a motion for continuance under the rule after the try-or-dismiss period has expired, may now safely be curtailed because of the availability of reinstatement under the last paragraph of rule 215.1 which was added in 1965. That amendment to rule 215.1 is designed as an avenue of relief for those parties who have failed to invoke the regular continuance procedures of the rule as a result of oversight, mistake or other reasonable cause. It is not intended to apply as a substitute for a motion for continuance filed and determined in the regular manner. I would hold that the district court was incorrect in finding that the plaintiff's case was automatically dismissed on January 1, 1984, and should have determined the merits of plaintiff’s motion for continuance.
WOLLE, J., joins this dissent.