Court Opinion

ID: 9625533
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 07:43:47.270874+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:06:10.514441
License: Public Domain

HENRIOD, Chief Justice
(dissenting).
Reluctantly I dissent, not because of the result but for the reason assigned to it by the main opinion: That not having made a motion to vacate under Rule 60(b), within three months after the judgment, the defendant is foreclosed, by motion made in the same action, from asserting any reason, legal or equitable, in support of vacating the judgment.1
Right or wrong, this court decided to vacate a judgment in Ney v. Harrison,2 which to date has not been overruled, that based on an affidavit supporting a motion to vacate filed in the same case (not an independent one) eleven months after the judgment was entered, in which affidavit, according to the opinion in that case, “the major ground for relief3 was that she (defendant) had mistakenly4 believed . . .’’etc. (Emphasis added.)
The main opinion in the Ney case, determined it on a basis not prayed for by Mrs. Ney since (7) is “any other reason justifying relief from the operation of the statute.” Right or wrong, the Ney case, in my opinion, authorizes this court to emasculate the first four reasons of Rule 60(b), energize the last three, supply our own reasons, ignoring pleaded ones, and magically, maybe, to render impotent the Rule itself.
The Ney case either should be made dis-positive here, or reversed forthwith. I am of the opinion that the devices of fine distinction, labored efforts to reconcile, or even the use of Latin or Pidgin-English would bring no Justinian relief to 60(b), and the main opinion’s suggestion that this writer misunderstands the ruling in such case seems illogical and an approval of relief granted that would surprise counsel for a loser in such case, where he properly and successfully had defended a sole claim asserted only under one section of a statute, only to be met and defeated by an unauthorized defense manufactured by this court in favor of his adversary which he had no opportunity to meet under accepted rules of procedure.

MAUGHAN, Justice, concurs in the result of the views expressed in the dissenting opinion of Mr. Chief Justice HEN-RIOD.

. The three months limitation applies only to reasons (1), (2), (3) and (4) of the rule, one of which is the basis for the main opinion’s conclusion.

. 5 Utah 2d 217, 299 P.2d 1114 (1956).

.The minor ground, considered no ground at all by the trial court, had to do with “no notice of judgment,” — leaving one ground only, — that of mistake, which is reason No. (1), in the group in Rule 60(b) and footnote 1 supra.

.Rule 60(b) (1).