Court Opinion

ID: 9861708
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 00:20:52.50655+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:28:50.584563
License: Public Domain

LEVINE, Justice,
dissenting.
When there is an appeal from an order denying a motion to vacate a judgment, we review the trial court’s order under an abuse-of-discretion standard. The majority here holds, in effect, that the trial court abused its discretion when it denied the motion to vacate because it failed to consider “whether Leidholm voluntarily, knowingly and intelligently waived his due-process rights to pre-judgment notice and a hearing when he signed the confession of judgment.” The majority remands for a hearing to determine whether there was a waiver. I rather like the result. My problem is that Leidholm did not raise the issue of waiver to the trial court and did not ask for a hearing on his Rule 3.2 motion to vacate the judgment.
I share the majority’s aversion to cogno-vit notes and confessions of judgment but I wonder what this case does to our bedrock principle of appellate law that an issue not *716raised below is not reviewable on appeal. See, e.g., Federal Land Bank of St. Paul v. Wallace, 366 N.W.2d 444 (N.D.1985). The majority seems to be holding that in every case involving a confession of judgment, the trial court must consider the waiver issue whether or not that issue has been raised. That sounds like good public policy but, at the same time, it is incompatible with the equally compelling policy of orderly appellate process. I, therefore, reluctantly dissent.