Court Opinion

ID: 9582331
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:25:25.273381+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:37:40.252546
License: Public Domain

WOLFE, Justice
(concurring).
I concur in the opinion of District Judge COWLEY that the lower court did not err in finding that the decedent was not acting as agent for his wife. In reality, the decedent was the owner of the property in question and contracted with the plaintiff in reference to the property on his own behalf.
But I think this should dispose of the case and judgment should be affirmed. I have sympathy for the result arrived at by Mr. Justice WADE, but I regret that I cannot concur with him even though he reaches a just result. The situation is as follows:
The plaintiff, looking at the record of the county recorder, found that the wife was the record owner of the property for which it had furnished materials. It thereupon filed its notice of intention to claim a materialman’s lien naming the wife as the owner, whereas the notice could have named both the husband, who ordered the materials, and the wife as owners. Parenthetically, I doubt if such mistake in the notice of claim is necessarily fatal. But I hasten to remark *462that I do not think, as does Mr. Justice WADE, that this is a case of an unknown owner as meant by Section 52-1-7, U. C. A. 1943. This point being unimportant to the discussion I am now making, I will dismiss it by saying that where one or the other of two known persons is the owner and the materialman has assumed that one of them is the owner and furnished materials to him as such and he really is the owner, then it is a matter not of not knowing the owner, but of being misled because one, not the owner, appears on the record as such. I think the real owner could be estopped from claiming he was not the owner, but whether the wife could be estopped from claiming she was not the owner is doubtful.
Be that as it may, I resume a recital of the happenings in the lower court. The plaintiff started foreclosure against only the wife as the record owner whom it believed to be the true and sole owner. She was put on the stand by the plaintiff as its witness. She testified that she had no interest in the property but that it belonged to her husband solely. In legal parlance she, was a dry trustee — a mere container into which the title was placed for record purposes. The plaintiff, probably taken by surprise, might at this point have asked for leave to amend to plead an estoppel against her but better still perhaps, as Mr. Justice WADE suggests, obtained leave to amend to plead an estoppel against her deceased husband, which estoppel, it is said, could be used against his successors. But this was not done and judgment was rendered against the plaintiff on the only issue raised — that of agency of the husband for his wife. The case was appealed to this court solely on the theory that in fact the wife was the owner and the husband was her agent to procure the materials. We find then a situation where the materialman (plaintiff) has benefited the property at the instance of the owner. This court finds unanimously that the lower court was correct in holding that the wrong party was sued and hence right in dismissing the action for the reason that there was no evi*463dence that the husband was the agent of the wife, but that he, himself, was the owner, and that there was nothing to estop the wife from disclosing the true situation. But because the plaintiff was misled into foreclosing only against the wife, the wrong party, and because the statute of limitations has now probably run against foreclosing the lien so that a new action may be defeated, Mr. Justice WADE desires to reverse the judgment, not for error, but to send the case down with instructions to set the judgment aside, join other parties, permit amendments to the pleadings to present the theory devised by him, and re-try the case with the new parties on such freshly introduced theory.
Under our old code procedure, this certainly could not be done. I do not think it can be done under the new Utah Rules of Civil Procedure. Rule 21 dealing with Misjoinder and Non-Joinder of Parties reads as follows:
“Misjoinder of parties is not ground for dismissal of an action. Parties may be dropped or added by order of the court on motion of any party or of its own initiative at any stage of the action and on such terms as are just. Any claim against a party may be severed and proceeded with separately.”
I do not think that the phrase “any stage of the action” means any stage of the action even when it has reached the review court, although the action may pend until judgment has been rendered in the Supreme Court on appeal and until a re-trial has been had on instructions issuing from the Supreme Court. See Sec. 104-54-13, U. C. A. 1943.
The vice of this proceeding is that we are asked virtually to affirm the lower court’s judgment on the only theory on which the case was there tried, but instead of actually affirming it on that issue when we find the court’s conclusion correct, Mr. Justice WADE would reverse it for the purpose of permitting pleadings to be recast so as to comport with the theory devised by our ingenuity and to permit the court, in effect, to drop the only party sued as a defendant, bring in new parties and try the case over *464again on the theory devised by him, which theory not only involves a different legal aspect of the same fact situation, but embraces a new and controlling fact, to-wit, the ownership of another party, the husband instead of the wife.
In the case of Loos v. Mountain Fuel Supply Company, 99 Utah 496, 108 P. 254, we allowed a recasting of the pleadings to make more certain the issue of res ipsa loqui-tur. But in that case we reversed the judgment because of error in instructing on the issues raised by allegations of specific negligence and refusal to instruct on the issue of res ipso loquitur when there was no evidence to support such allegations of specific negligence, but there was evidence to support an issue of res ipsa loquitur. In short, when we reversed for error we permitted a new trial and allowed amendments, but I have never known of a case under the old rules where we held the lower court was correct on its judgment on the issues raised and on the theory presented, and yet reversed the case with instructions to permit amendments, drop old parties, bring in new parties and re-try it on a theory devised by us, even though such theory would apparently bring the results we thought would do justice. Neither under the old code of civil procedure, title 104, Utah Code Annotated 1943, nor under the newly adopted Utah Rules of Civil Procedure, can a plaintiff who has tried his case and lost, amend his pleadings, try his case over again on a different theory reflecting different facts and against different defendants, instead of commencing a new action.
I have consistently endeavored to follow the admonition of Sec. 88-2-2, U. C. A. 1943, which enjoins us to construe statutes and proceedings under them liberally with a view to effectuate the objects of the statutes and promote justice. Perhaps the best evidence of that is furnished by the case, of Loos v. Mountain Fuel Supply Company, supra. It appears to me that Mr. Justice WADE’S solution, although perhaps bringing a just result, would require us to adopt a new theory, conceived out of the ingenuity of our minds, *465applicable to different facts from those alleged, and not advanced in the court below. Not only would we have to send the case down for the application of the newly found theory, but it would require the case to be opened up for the admission of new parties and for necessary pleadings on their part, and for amendment which would introduce a new fact situation. What Mr. Justice WADE suggests is really trying a new suit within the shell of the old one.
I intend to decide matters in the spirit of the new rules but there is a limit beyond which I cannot go. I cannot agree to the creation of a new rule to meet the exigencies of each case in order to reach a desired result. We cannot tailor the rules to fit each case. Perhaps we could fashion a rule which would permit this court to reverse a case even though it had been correctly decided below on the issues tendered if the dictates of justice required a different decision and we could think up a theory which the evidence would support, but it would need to be closely guarded to apply to certain limited situations or we would be changing the fun-tions of this court from one of review of alleged errors with power to order proceedings to correct error into a court of legal aid and assistance. We would then accentuate what tendency there is on the part of a portion of the bar to make this court not only one of review, but one which will seek out and think up ways and means to bring about a result we may think justice demands, despite inadequate preparations or a thorough thinking through by counsel. In the long run, a judicial policy which looks to the overall ultimate effect of the method of the functioning of this court cannot be sacrificed to the immediate desirable results which may be obtained by the application of an ingenious but esoteric or special procedure to accomplish a rectification we think desirable to meet the ends of justice of the peculiar situation in a particular case. Such policy would be revolutionary and it is doubtful whether in the long view it would be beneficial to our system of jurisprudence. Now and then we may take liberties with prescribed *466procedure if they come within what is called interpretation. There is some leeway in the realm of construction and interpretation.
Had the plaintiff, after discovering at the trial below that the decedent and not the defendant was the owner of the property in question at the time the plaintiff expended labor and materials upon the property, commenced an action within a reasonable time to foreclose its lien against the defendant’s successors in interest, and had the latters relied upon a statute of limitations as a bar to the plaintiff’s action, it is arguable that the decedent’s successors in interest could be estopped from seeking repose in any statute of limitations barring the plaintiff’s new action, because of the misleading act of the decedent in placing on record that his wife owned the property in question when in fact she did not. However, the plaintiff did not choose to commence an action against decedent’s successors in interest, but chose instead to prosecute this appeal. Whether in prosecuting this appeal, the plaintiff has allowed to elapse more than a reasonable period of time within which the defendant’s successors in interest could have been estopped from pleading a statute of limitations in bar, of course is not before us for determination, and I express no opinion on it.