Court Opinion

ID: 9562907
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 18:34:56.187808+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:17:35.744678
License: Public Domain

ROONEY, Justice,
concurring in part and dissenting in part, with whom BROWN, Justice, joins.
I agree that there was a clerical error in the original judgment. I do not agree that there was any ambiguity in it. If there is ambiguity with the resulting necessity to determine intent, the error would not be clerical. To this extent, the majority opinion is inconsistent. I would reverse and correct the clerical error in the original judgment by inserting the words “as of January 28, 1982” after the figures “$207,-110.55” — all without the need for remand.
There is no ambiguity in the original judgment. It was rendered upon a stipulation and confession of judgment. There was. no hearing. Evidence was not presented. To go backward, have a hearing, and receive evidence concerning the plain and unambiguous language of the stipulation and confession of the judgment upon which the original judgment was predicated would be improper.
Our concern here should not be with any possible ambiguity in the original judgment. It was based entirely on the stipulation and confession of judgment. We need only to look to the stipulation and confession of judgment to analyze and understand the original judgment. Evidence might be necessary to determine intent if there were ambiguity in the stipulation and confession of judgment. The original judgment itself was not ambiguous. It simply contained a clerical mistake. The majority opinion acknowledges that the language of the stipulation “supports their [appellants’] claim that they owed the bank $207,110.55 as of January 28,1982.” Then, later, the opinion considers affidavits filed by the bank reflecting an intent contrary to the plain language of the stipulation. Still later, the opinion switches to a consideration of ambiguity in the original judgment and concludes that “[i]n order for the original judgment to be clarified, evidence of the parties’ intent when they entered into the stipulation must be taken.” (Emphasis added.) And the stipulation is recognized as not being ambiguous.
The original judgment plainly says that it is entered against the defendants “pursuant to the Stipulation and Confession of Judgment filed herein.” It then sets forth the amount of the judgment, but mistakenly omits the stipulated language “as of 28 January, 1982.”
This is a simple matter of a clerical mistake in the original judgment “arising from oversight or omission” which “may be corrected by the court at any time” pursuant
*236to Rule 60(a), W.R.C.P., which provides in pertinent part:
“Clerical mistakes in judgments * * * - arising from oversight or omission may be corrected by the court at any time * * *."
I would reverse and direct that if the original judgment was not sufficiently clear through its recitation that it was pursuant to the stipulation and confession of judgment in setting the stipulated obligation to be $207,110.55 as of January 28, 1982, the omission of that date was a clerical error and the judgment be corrected accordingly.