Court Opinion

ID: 9637417
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 15:06:48.034251+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:56.109853
License: Public Domain

RUTLEDGE, Associate Justice
(concurring in the result).
*502I think the record shows, as a matter of law, that appellee encouraged appellant to procure the Virginia divorce, entered into the marriage and lived with her as his wife for ten years, all with full knowledge of all the facts which operate to make the divorce invalid. He further acknowledged the validity of the marriage by procuring a divorce in Florida and by the manner in which his defense in this cause was conducted up to the time of the motion for a new trial. Then he filed an affidavit which in my opinion merely denies that he knew the legal effect of these facts, not that he was ignorant of the facts themselves, prior to the time appellant testified at the first trial.
That apparently was true also of appellant, who undoubtedly followed advice of counsel in the Virginia proceedings. She too knew the facts which invailidate the divorce, but there is nothing to show she knew they had this effect until the matter was raised in the motion for a new trial. The inference is rather to the contrary, since it is hardly to be presumed she would incur knowingly the double risks of perjury and bigamy. The inference derives further support from the fact that appellee took appellant and a copy of the Virginia decree, which he admits having read and which recited her residence in Virginia, to a priest who procured dispensation for their marriage.
Regarding the facts of record in this light, I think both appellant and appellee were more the victims of a legal system of divorce at war with social convention than intentional and deliberate criminals or violators of law. Whether therefore they be regarded so or as in pari delicto, I think the doctrine of laches and estoppel as announced in Goodloe v. Hawk, 1940, 72 App.D.C. 287, 113 F.2d 753, and followed in Saul v. Saul, 1941, 74 App.D.C. 287, 122 F.2d 64, are applicable in these facts. It is not necessary now to determine whether the same result is required by D.C.Code (1940) § 30 — 104, though obviously the policy there declared is in the same direction.
Since however Judge Stephens does not agree that the case should be decided here in the absence of further findings and conclusions by the trial court, I concur in reversing and remanding it to that court for further, proceedings in accordance with the requirements stated in his opinion.