Court Opinion

ID: 9761669
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 01:49:30.009534+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:25.378294
License: Public Domain

HOGAN, Judge
(concurring):
I fully concur in all that is said in the principal opinion except the statement that the trial court’s judgment must be deferred to unless it is “clearly erroneous”. I do not believe we can read the phrase “the judgment shall not be set aside unless clearly erroneous” back into the rule after it has been revised out, presumably deliberately. I realize that the words “clearly erroneous” were considered ambiguous by some judges, *479but the phrase had a respectable history and a definite purpose, Lundgren v. Freeman, 307 F.2d 104, 113-114[15-17] (9th Cir. 1962), and in providing that the judgment was subject to deference, the drafters of the former rule recognized the futility of attempting to distinguish between “findings of fact” and “conclusions of law”. See S. Weiner, the Civil Nonjury Trial and the Law-Fact Distinction, 55 Cal.L.Rev. 1020, 1021 — 1024 (1967). Moreover, former Rule 73.01(d) recognized the utter impracticality of literal “de novo” findings of fact in bench-tried cases. See United States v. Aluminum Co. of America, 148 F.2d 416, 433[18-21] (2d Cir. 1945). In my view, present Rule 73.01, read literally, leaves us perfectly free to second-guess the trial court on any matter, and will probably encourage appeals in the hope we shall do so. See Morris v. Holland, 529 S.W.2d 948 (Mo.App.1975).