Court Opinion

ID: 9722757
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 09:49:11.789154+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:39.738235
License: Public Domain

NEWSOM, J.
I respectfully dissent.
I agree with appellant’s contention that the procedure approved in the majority opinion effectively deprives him of his right to a jury trial on the underlying “open book account” litigation.
Appellant was not a party to the lawsuit against Communimark, which terminated in summary judgment; had he been so, undeniably he had a right to jury trial. How, then, can we say, in the absence of evidence from ap*152pellant, that summary judgment would have foreclosed his constitutional right to trial by jury? Or that, because Communimark presented no cognizable defense, a fortiori appellant had none because of later proof that for some purposes Communimark and appellant were alter egos?
Moreover, I read Code of Civil Procedure section 187 as a mere affirmation of the general principle that courts may do what is necessary to implementing judgments rendered where jurisdiction obtains. Certainly, I think, it cannot be read as investing a court with jurisdiction it never possessed, or permitting, in the supposed interests of judicial economy or convenience, amendment of a judgment to embrace persons over whom jurisdiction never existed, thus to deprive them of property without benefit of jury or, in fact, any trial, merely because probably judgment would have been entered against them personally had they ever gone to trial.
Principally for this reason, but also because I do not believe the subject procedure comports with the dictates of due process, I would reverse the judgment.