Court Opinion

ID: 9546307
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:27:19.055586+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:16:15.543629
License: Public Domain

On Petition eor Rehearing
Before Tooze, A.C.J., and Rossman, Lusk, Brand, Latourette and Perry, Justices.
TOOZE, A.C.J.
The plaintiffs have filed a petition for rehearing directed solely to that portion of our original opinion which imposed conditions upon the allowance of *37equitable relief to them. We allowed the petition of defendants for a clarification of these conditions, and did clarify them.
Plaintiffs complain that the court did not consider their contentions submitted in writing when the petition for clarification was pending respecting the conditions imposed by us in our original opinion. In that supposition, plaintiffs are mistaken. We did consider them, but deemed it unnecessary to mention them in our opinion of clarification.
Plaintiffs then maintained, and in their petition for rehearing insist, that there is no factual basis in the record of this case upon which to base the subject matter of the conditions imposed. They argue that every case must be decided upon the record in that particular case, and that the court is without authority to go outside the record and base its decision upon evidence aliunde. That rule is elementary as it applies to the merits of a controversy. We did not violate the rule in this litigation.
It is apparent that plaintiffs overlook the real basis and purpose of the conditions imposed. On the merits, we decided that plaintiffs did not come into court with clean hands. That conclusion was based strictly upon the record before us in this case. We also decided from the record that plaintiffs had not in their pleadings, or at any other time, offered to do equity. Had we stopped there, and under well-recognized principles of equity jurisprudence, we would have been compelled to close the doors of the court to plaintiffs, leaving the parties exactly where we found them.
However, despite plaintiffs’ wrongdoing and unclean hands, we were of the opinion that under all the facts and circumstances of this ease it would be unjust to further penalize plaintiffs for their fraud by *38depriving them entirely of the remaining funds. This being an equitable proceeding, and the arms of equity being long and far-reaching, we were of the opinion that we were justified in recognizing a limitation upon the application of the “clean hands” doctrine and had the authority to do that which equity and justice seemed to demand. It must be kept in mind that we tried this case de novo.
Enough was brought to our attention by the record in this case to show that justice demanded that certain conditions should be imposed upon plaintiffs before they were permitted to escape the usual consequences of the application of the doctrine of “unclean hands.” Our determination that conditions should be imposed was based entirely upon the record before us.
However, the nature and extent of the conditions to be imposed had nothing whatever to do with a decision on the actual merits of the controversy. In this ease we sought to impose conditions that had some direct relation to the controversy between the parties, although, in doing equity, we were in no sense limited by such a consideration. We are of the opinion that we had the authority to impose any reasonable conditions that might appear to us to be equitable and proper under the circumstances.
It must be remembered that there was pending before us an original proceeding in mandamus, in which proceedings in the conservatorship matter were at issue, as well as proceedings in the instant litigation. We have treated the mandamus proceeding as an incident of the principal case. We were not required to go outside the records of our own court to secure the information necessary to impose the conditions which we did impose.
The petition for rehearing is denied.