Court Opinion

ID: 9444898
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:15:33.753307+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:03.530770
License: Public Domain

MAGRUDER, Chief Judge
(dissenting).
I am not prepared at present to join in dismissing the first appeal for lack of jurisdiction.
The judicial act of pronouncing judgment and the entry of the judgment are two different things. See In re Forstner Chain Corp., 1 Cir., 1949, 177 F.2d 572, 576. The time for taking an appeal runs from the date of “entry” of the judgment.
*361Of course, it is conceivable that the clerk might receive a judgment from the court on June 9, and yet not get around to entering it, that is, noting the judgment on the civil docket, until June 14. In such a case, in strict accuracy, the docket entry should show that the judgment was entered on June 14. If the clerk should make a nunc pro tunc entry as of June 9, this would cut several days off the appeal time, unless the litigant was entitled to challenge in some appropriate way the accuracy of the entry.
I do not say that such a nunc pro tunc entry was made in this case, and no doubt the docket entries, as certified by the clerk of the district court, showing entry of judgment on June 9, have a presumption of regularity and correctness. Yet appellant here has challenged the accuracy of the notation, by filing in this court an affidavit averring that he personally examined the records in the office of the clerk of the district court on June 14, and that at that time there was no record on the docket of the entry of the order of June 9. I think this presents an issue of fact, determining our jurisdiction, which this court is bound to resolve before disposing of the case. It does not seem to me that we can coldly assume that the fact asserted in the affidavit is untrue. It may be that the appeal is in time and that we should dispose of the case on the merits.
Just what our procedure should be in such a situation I am not sure. Perhaps the first thing that we ought to do is to request the clerk of the district court to file a further certificate dealing with the fact asserted in appellant’s affidavit. If this certificate should recite that sometimes such entries are made nunc pro tunc, but that it is impossible for the clerk, or his deputies, to say whether that occurred in the present case, then I should be inclined to accept as true the statement in appellant’s affidavit and proceed to the merits of the appeal. On the other hand, if the clerk should certify that such entries are invariably made on the date that the judgment or order is pronounced, and that June 9 is unquestionably the true date of entry, then maybe we should have some kind of hearing on the issue of fact and make the necessary finding bearing on our jurisdiction.