Court Opinion

ID: 9779263
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 21:41:48.24489+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:33:24.431968
License: Public Domain

HENLEY, Judge
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent.
In my opinion Rule 81.06 (and its predecessors, Rules 82.06 and 3.29) was never intended and was not designed to apply to a case involving a single claim or cause of action against more than one defendant. That is what we are presented with in this case — one claim against multiple defendants. To paraphrase what the court said in State ex rel. Thompson v. Terte, 357 Mo. 229, 207 S.W.2d 487, 489 [1, 2] (Banc 1948) : this case simply does not present the situation contemplated by this Rule, it being applicable only to a suit in which are joined two or more different claims against different parties. The subsequent amendments of what was then Rule 3.29 have not made any change which would make the successors to Rule 3.29 applicable to a single claim against multiple defendants.
Of the seven cases cited in the majority opinion in support of the proposition that the appeal is not premature, five involve more than one claim. The two which do not are State ex rel. Schweitzer v. Greene, 438 S.W.2d 229 (Mo.banc 1969) and Beezley v. National Life & Accident Ins. Co., 464 S.W.2d 535 (Mo.App.1971). The Greene case involved a single claim against two defendants, but what the court said there (l.c. 438 S.W.2d at 231) to the effect that the trial court could have designated the order of dismissal as a final judgment for purposes of appeal was not necessary to the decision and therefore was dictum.
The Beezley case involved a single claim against multiple defendants and an order of dismissal as to one. The court of appeals held that the order of dismissal from which plaintiff had appealed was not a final appealable judgment and dismissed the appeal as premature. In doing so, the court said that upon remand the trial court could in its discretion designate the judgment as final for purposes of appeal, citing the Greene case and Woods v. Juvenile Shoe Corp., 361 S.W.2d 694, 695 [1] (Mo. 1962) and Dotson v. Bacharach, 325 S.W. 2d 737, 739 [4] (Mo.1959). In saying that the trial court could under what was then Rule 82.06 designate the judgment of dismissal as final for purposes of appeal, the court of appeals was, I respectfully submit, in error. The cases cited in support of that statement are not authority for that holding. What was said in the Greene case on this proposition was, as indicated, dictum. Both the Woods and the Dotson cases involved more than one claim or *381cause of action against different defendants, the situation to which Rule 82.06 (now 81.06) on separate trials of claims and their finality is applicable; they did not involve one claim against multiple defendants, the situation we have here.
At the expense of being verbose, I repeat: this case involves one claim, a single, indivisible claim; not two; it involves a separate trial of a claim against one of the two defendants, the same single claim stated against both; not a separate trial of a single claim which has been divided into two. If Rule 81.06 is to be made applicable to this situation I would hope that it would be done, not by interpretation and the resultant overruling of Terte, supra, a decision upon which at least 15 others have relied, but by amendment of the Rule.
Because the issues as to all parties have not been disposed of, the appeal is premature and I would dismiss it.