Court Opinion

ID: 9846063
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 03:33:56.470424+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:16:32.735069
License: Public Domain

SADLER, Justice (specially concurring). Unless the judgment of the district court of Santa Fe County rendered following a remand of the cause on the appeal disposed of in the case reported as Primus v. Clark, 48 N.M. 240, 149 P.2d 535, be res adjudicata of the issue presented in the complaint which resulted in the judgment for review .on this appeal, the defendant (appellee) is not foreclosed by such judgment. It was my first reaction that she was so debarred. An analysis of the pleadings in the cause remanded reported at 58 N.M. 588, 273 P.2d 963, read in the light of our opinion, reported as last above, satisfies me, however, that such is not the case. Just why the present defendant let the earlier case drag along in the courts so interminably after we remanded it following our decision in 48 N.M. 240, 149 P.2d 535, and then when she did get to trial, completely abandon the sole issue the cause was remanded to determine, it is difficult to say. The net result of such delay, however, has found the chief actor on one side of the controversy, Allan B. Clark, dead, and almost two decades of time elapsed since the present defendant, then a plaintiff, first invoked the aid of the courts. Despite the lapse of time, however, and the tortuous trail trod by the little lady with the blindfold and scales since first given this controversy, we find her arriving at this point in the long journey holding the scales at an even balance as between the parties. The judgment now reviewed says that is where they belong. It thus accords with defendant’s share in the real estate as a partner in the community and, at the same time, recognizes the share she was to receive under the contract in the event Allan Clark died, as he did, without having sold it — an undivided one-half interest. The conclusions announced, above, lead inevitably to a willingness on my part to concur in the result declared in the opinion prepared for the Court by Mr. Justice Compton.