Court Opinion

ID: 9617921
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 05:03:49.596514+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:04:20.571292
License: Public Domain

OPALA, Justice,
concurring in the appeal’s dismissal; dissenting from the court’s comments about the dismissal’s effect.
The court dismisses this appeal from a postjudgment counsel-fee award and speculates about the legal effect of its decision. I concur in the dismissal but recede from all gratuitous commentary on the consequences of today’s action.
Every dismissal of an appeal operates to erase the clouded legal status of the trial court’s decision tendered for corrective relief. It always results in affirmance in the sense that every post-dismissal mandate leaves the nisi prius action undisturbed and retransfers the cause to stand below in the same posture as if no appeal had ever been taken1 . But the appellate affirmance does not ipso facto make the lower court’s decision impervious to any authorized and timely post-mandate challenges. The § 10312 vacation or modification process3, the § 655 4 delayed petitions for new trial5, common-law postjudgment nunc pro tunc correction proceedings6 as well as execution contests7 are but a few examples of attacks against which affir-mance is no bar.
In short, although today’s dismissal affirms the postjudgment counsel-fee award, in a post-mandate nisi prius execution proceeding the judgment debtor may raise any legally *999tenable objections to the creditor’s quest for the award’s enforcement. Today’s affir-manee is no bar to any such challenges.

. Thornburgh v. Ben Hur Coal Co., 203 Okla. 553, 224 P.2d 249, 250 (1950).

. 12 O.S.1991 §§ 1031 et seq.

. See Philip Carey Co. v. Vickers, 53 Okla. 569, 157 P. 299 (1916); syllabus 4 in Pippins v. Turben, 162 Okla. 136, 19 P.2d 605 (1933).

. 12 O.S.1991 § 655.

. Matter of Estate of Burkhart v. Wabaunsee, Okla., 594 P.2d 361, 363 (1979) (the § 655 petition was before nisi prius after dismissal of an earlier appeal).

. Cartwright v. Atlas Chemical Industries, Inc., Okla., 623 P.2d 606, 608 (1981) (nunc pro tunc amendment of judgment entertained by nisi prius after an earlier affirmance).

. Timmons v. Royal Globe Ins. Co., Okla., 713 P.2d 589, 591 (1986) (post-mandate nisi prius execution-related contest after an earlier affir-mance).