Court Opinion

ID: 9444412
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:00:01.490514+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:51.596684
License: Public Domain

PRETTYMAN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting) .
I would affirm this judgment.
Mrs. Turberville filed two civil actions in 1951, one in January against her husband and the other in March against Mrs. Barber. The action against her *38husband proceeded through motions, answers and depositions to judgment. Mrs. Barber did not appear in response to the summons served on her and filed no response to the action against her. Her answer was due twenty days after the service of the summons, which would have been about the 9th of April. The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Rule 55, provide for entry of judgment by default. Mrs. Turberville’s counsel waited from March 19th to August 29th and on the latter date applied for judgment by default. Default judgment was entered. Nothing then happened until May, 1952, almost nine months after entry of the default judgment. The matter then came on for trial before the District Court, evidence was taken, and the court made findings of fact and conclusions of law and entered a judgment for damages. No appeal was noted from that judgment, but a month later a motion to vacate the default judgment was filed and an answer was proffered. The District Court denied the motion to vacate. No ■ appeal was taken by Mrs. Barber from that denial. Thus the sum of the situation is that in perfectly orderly process, without haste, a plaintiff filed her action and judgment was entered for her.
The court is relieving defendant from the judgment against her principally on the ground that her counsel was negligent. I think the court should hold lawyers responsible for inexcusable neglect. If courts say that counsel for defendants can neglect without excuse their clients’ business but no ill effects to the clients will be permitted to result from this negligence, complete chaos in judicial proceedings will surely result. The negligence of her lawyer may have damaged Mrs. Barber in the sum of $10,000.1 But, where damages, in the form of an award to a third party, are inflicted upon a business man, a doctor, or a hospital by the negligence of his or its duly authorized agent, the courts do not relieve the principal from such damages. If a patient secures a judgment against a doctor because of the negligence of the doctor’s assistant, we do not relieve the doctor because the negligence was that of his employee. I see no reason why we should protect a person against a judgment against him resulting from the negligence of his duly authorized attorney. In all such cases the principal may have a right of action against his agent, but that is a different problem. Doctors are liable for malpractice; I see no reason why lawyers should not be.
I think that the right to jury trial which a defendant would have in a civil action does not survive his failure to appear in any manner in the action. In the case before us the plaintiff, in accordance with the usual custom, demanded a jury trial in her complaint. The defendant named in the complaint did not even appear. Civil Rule 38(d) says: “A demand for trial by jury made as herein provided may not be withdrawn without the consent of the parties.” I think “parties” in this Rule means people who have appeared. Otherwise every case in which the plaintiff follows the customary form and includes in his complaint a demand for jury trial would have to take its place on the jury docket and await jury trial.
Rule 5(a) of the Civil Rules provides that orders, pleadings subsequent to the complaint, notices, appearances, demands, etc., shall be served upon every party affected, “but no service need be made on parties in default for failure to appear” except service of pleadings asserting new claims against him. Rule 55(b) (2) provides in part: “If the party against whom judgment by default is sought has appeared in the action, he (or, if appearing by representative, his representative) shall be served with written notice of the application for judgment at least 3 days prior to the hearing on such application.” Those provisions make it perfectly clear that a *39named defendant who does not appear is not entitled to notice of anything that goes on in the lawsuit, not even to a notice of an application for default judgment. How, then, can it be said that he is a “party” for any other procedural purposes? I think a named defendant must make an appearance before he has a right to require that the case against him be submitted to a jury. His failure to respond to the summons ought to be construed as a waiver of whatever procedural rights he has; it ought not to be treated as an impregnable insistence upon such rights. I believe such to be the purpose, intent and meaning of the Rule. As everybody knows, if every civil action in which no appearance was entered for the defendant were set down on the jury docket, the courts would be hopelessly overwhelmed. I think defendants ought not be permitted to delay and confuse proceedings against them by merely ignoring the court’s summons.
The court says that the defendant did not knowingly consent to the abandonment of her right to jury trial. But surely it cannot be held that an act inexcusably negligent was not “knowingly” done. This defendant through inexcusable neglect failed to appear in the lawsuit. It seems to me that that failure constituted a knowing abandonment. The court cites Bass v. Hoagland2 and Cinque v. Langton.3 In the Bass case the defendant appeared but failed te answer. I have no quarrel with a rule that a defendant who has appeared is thereafter a “party”; indeed the Rules seem to me to be clear on that proposition. In the Cinque case the facts were odd, but the sum of it was that the defendant, without an attorney, sent his answer to the plaintiff’s counsel, who did not actually file it but moved to strike it. The court did strike it. Obviously the court treated the defendant as being in the case. It ruled upon the basis that he had failed to answer, not that he failed to appear.
Furthermore, I think this court ought not in its discretion at this late date in these proceedings require another trial of this civil action before a jury. Trial before the court, where evidence is received and findings made, is as valid a judicial proceeding as is a jury trial, unless a jury has been validly demanded. A jury trial must be demanded, despite the constitutional provision. Such is the provision of the Civil Rules, Rule 38(a) and (d).4

. I do not make the positive statement that she was damaged by the negligence of the lawyer, because it might be shown that the judgment would have gone against her in any event.

. 5 Cir., 1949, 172 F.2d 205, certiorari denied, 1949, 338 U.S. 816, 70 S.Ct. 57, 94 L.Ed. 494.

. 8 Fed.Rules Serv. 55b.224, Case 1 (E.D.N.Y.1944).

. See discussion in 5 Moore, Federal Practice § 38.19 [3] (2d ed. 1951).