Court Opinion

ID: 9540438
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:15:59.238058+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:57:21.160335
License: Public Domain

UDALL, Justice
(dissenting).
I dissent, for I consider the trial court, on the record before it at the close of plaintiff’s case, properly dismissed the complaint. It is my view that the complaint not only failed to state a cause of action but that the matters attempted to be pleaded and proved in the second action were res judicata by reason of the judgment entered in the first suit.
*128I readily concede that had plaintiff brought an appropriate action to enforce the terms of the original judgment, the end sought, i. e., to prevent defendants from using the 16-foot strip in any manner other than for roadway purposes could easily have been obtained. No such issue has been presented in this complaint (hereinafter set forth haec verba), for in 'the body thereof no mention is made of the prior action or of any right of plaintiff determined therein.
In order to keep plaintiff in court, the majority, as I see it, have gone to extreme lengths in attempting to find a basis for reversal. They have virtually rewritten the judgment entered in the first suit and have read into the complaint in the instant action matters which nowise appear therein. It is in protest of these liberties unjustifiably taken that I am dissenting.
To determine whether a claim for relief was stated, let us examine the very short complaint in the present suit — which even the majority admits was “inartfully drawn.” Plaintiff first alleges ownership of the strip in question and then states: “That on or about the 29th day of May, 1947, and ever since said date, the defendants unlawfully, wrongfully trespassed on said strip of land, and have maintained a fence along and across said strip of land; the said defendants have used said strip of land for the purpose of parking and storing vehicles and other personal property, and do continue to wrongfully trespass on said strip of land as aforesaid though requested not to do so by this plaintiff; that plaintiff has been damaged in the sum of Five Hundred Dollars ($500.00) by his wrongful exclusion from said strip of land by the aforesaid acts of the defendants.” It will be noted that the complaint fails to contain the vital allegation that plaintiff had the right to immediate possession of the strip in question. The allegation of ownership, in ata action of trespass, is sufficient where the’ law presumes that the owner has constructive possession, but in the instant case plaintiff has negatived any such presumption by pleading facts in his complaint conclusively showing that defendants are in actual and exclusive possession of the land.
“Constructive possession is that possession which the law presumes the owner has, in the absence of evidence of exclusive possession in another. If defendant is in actual possession, constructive possession in plaintiff is excluded. * * * ” 63 C.J. 905-6.
The question of plaintiff’s ownership of the strip in question was litigated in the first action and determined against him, for that judgment restrained plaintiff from “claiming any right, title or interest in said real property, other than the right to use said property with others for a roadway.” Thus, in the present suit we have this situation: plaintiff, under the prior judgment, is not the owner of the strip in question, and he does not allege that he *129is entitled to the right of immediate possession, hut yet he brings an action in trespass. Under these circumstances can he maintain the present action? I think it is indisputable that he cannot. Even under our liberal rules of civil procedure the complaint must still state a “cause of action” in the sense that it must show that the pleader is entitled to relief. It is not enough to indicate, that the plaintiff has a grievance, but there must be some legal basis upon which to sustain his claim. Here there is none, for the gist of the action in trespass is injury to possession.
“As a general rule, to recover for trespass, plaintiff must either have title to, or possession of, the land, depending on whether it is vacant or occupied. One having neither title nor possession, or having neither possession nor right of possession cannot maintain trespass. * * ” 63 C.J. 902.
From the foregoing it is evident that plaintiff’s complaint did not state a claim upon which relief could be granted and that it was fatally defective. Therefore, defendant’s motion to dismiss, urged prior to trial, should have been granted.
As to the matter of res judicata, from the face of the two complaints it manifestly appears: (1) that these two suits (the first in ejectment and the second in trespass) are actions involving possessory rights, (2) were brought in the same court, (3) involved the same parties or their privies, and (4) concern the same 16-foot strip of land. Furthermore, both actions are predicated upon a specific allegation that plaintiff was the owner of the strip in question and that defendants trespassed thereon to plaintiff’s damage. They differ -only in that in the first case the right to immediate possession was asserted and in the instant case omitted, plus the allegation in the latter suit that the trespass occurred subsequent to the date of the former judgment. As I interpret the second complaint plaintiff is seeking to relitigate issues theretofore determined in the first action.
Certainly, the matter of ownership, as heretofore pointed out, was determined adversely to the plaintiff under the terms of the first judgment — -unless one indulges, as did the majority, in some mental legerdemain by reading into the judgment that which is not there. Hence, it is my view the doctrine of res judicata was properly held applicable in the trial court’s dismissal of the action. Stewart v. Phoenix Nat. Bank, 49 Ariz. 34, 64 P.2d 101; Manor v. Stevens, 61 Ariz. 511, 152 P.2d 133. In virtually rewriting the decree entered in the first suit, the majority have, upon their own motion, made a collateral attack upon a valid judgment that has become final. This is the very thing prohibited by the application of the doctrine of res judicata. See 30 Am.Jur., Judgments, Sec. 165. In Lewis v. Palmer, 67 Ariz. 189, 193 P.2d 456, 460, it is stated: “* * * The judgment in that cause, over which the court unquestionably had jurisdiction, having be*130come final, it is final for all purposes and the attempted present collateral attack can not be entertained.”
Furthermore there are certain statements appearing in the majority opinion that I believe are wholly unjustified and unwarranted. First, it is stated that defendants are now claiming that they have been adjudged th'e right to use the strip for a storage yard, to construct fences across it and to erect buildings thereon. This statement is incorrect, for all that the defendants have contended is that plaintiff failed to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. Second, it is claimed that without objection the case was tried upon the theory that plaintiff claimed only that interest in the strip of land which was fixed by the previous judgment of the court and that hence under rule 15 (b), sec. 21-449, supra, the matter should be treated as having been raised by the pleadings. The only basis in fact for the above statement is that defendants — who needed the complaint and judgment in the first action in evidence to prove their plea of res judicata — stipulated that the court might take judicial notice of the entire file. There was no abandonment of their contention that a claim had not been stated and their theory as to res judicata was adhered to throughout. It is my view that the rule invoked by the majority has no application under a fair interpretation of the record presented in this case. Last, the majority opinion in- ' jects into the picture the matter of a continuing nuisance. Such a theory was not alleged in the complaint or argued in any of the briefs; it has arisen only in the fertile minds of the majority. The leap across the broad gulf between a complaint which defectively alleges trespass to one which only by imagination states a claim for a mandatory injunction on the theory of a continuing nuisance is a perilous one which this court should not make merely to keep this plaintiff in court. As a matter of fact, it is only in the prayer, which is no part of the complaint, Jones v. Stanley, 27 Ariz. 381, 233 P. 598, that plaintiff even mentions the matter of an injunction to restrain the defendants from trespassing upon the strip in question.
I subscribe to the liberal rules of pleading adopted by this; court and have endeavored to give full effect to same. However, I feel that the majority in reversing this judgment and ordering the issuance of a mandatory injunction, the most drastic remedy known to the law, have stretched the rules beyond recognizable limits. It seems to me that it would be more reasonable and much safer for us to require the plaintiff to start over again with a proper action than to keep him in court at the expense of establishing; a precedent that will later rise up to embarrass us. It is for these reasons that I voice this dissent.