Court Opinion

ID: 9699464
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 20:25:47.920529+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:50.800157
License: Public Domain

Toor, Supr. J.,
concurring. I agree with the resolution of this case, but I do not agree that the only basis for this Court’s jurisdiction is under V.R.AP. 2.1 believe the decision below was a final judgment.
I agree with the majority that a judgment is final if “it makes a final disposition of the subject matter before the Court.” Woodard v. Porter Hospital, Inc., 125 Vt. 264, 265, 214 A.2d 67, 69 (1965). I also agree that a decision that “adjudicates fewer than all the claims . . . shall not terminate the action.” V.R.C.P. 54(b). However, I believe that the trial court’s decision here satisfies these parameters.
*334As the majority notes, it is clear that the ruling was intended to be a final order. The fact that the decision did not reach every issue raised by the parties does not, in my view, make it nonfinal. Trial judges routinely resolve cases without reaching every issue raised by the parties. This occurs, for example, because the case can be resolved based on one or more issues without the need to reach other issues, or because some issues raised are frivolous. The failure to rule on every issue does not make the decision nonfinal.
If a trial court is correct that it does not need to reach all issues because those it does reach dispose of the case, an appeal should still lie from the issues the court does resolve. If the court is incorrect, as we hold here, in deciding it does not need to reach certain issues, then exactly what we do here should always be done: an appeal should lie and this Court can reverse and remand for resolution of those additional issues. Rather than saying that such appeals are only available on a discretionary basis under V.R.AP. 2,1 would hold that they are always available when the trial court clearly intended its decision to be final.
I do not believe the cases cited by the majority require a different result. Despite its broad language, the Morissette case actually held only that two separate orders which together disposed of all the issues in the case created a final judgment, and did not need to be combined in one document. Morissette v. Morissette, 143 Vt. 52, 58, 463 A.2d 1384, 1388 (1983) (“The fact that the final judgment was not embodied in a single document is irrelevant.”). The Hospitality Inns case merely restated the final judgment rule and then adopted an exception to it for interlocutory orders requiring a transfer in the ownership of real property. Hospitality Inns v. South Burlington R.I., 149 Vt. 653, 656-57, 547 A.2d 1355, 1358 (1988). The Woodard case, although it does contain language about the trial judge failing to settle all of the issues, was actually a case in which the defendant appealed from a decision denying its motion to dismiss. Thus, although it is somewhat unclear what the trial court did next in Woodard, that case can be seen as merely stating the usual rule that an appeal does not lie from the denial of a motion to dismiss.
I believe the language of the cases requiring that all issues be disposed of means not that the trial court must address each issue raised, but that no issues can remain pending before the trial court. See In re Newton Enterprises, 167 Vt. 459, 462, 708 A.2d 914, 916 (1998) (finding that “there is not yet a final judgment” because “the enforcement action is still pending before the environmental court.”). *335Accord Peterson v. Peterson, 715 So. 2d 977, 979 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1998) (noting that final judgment below is reversed and that the trial court must address on remand issues it did not address before); Belyeu v. Coosa County Bd. of Educ., 998 F.2d 925, 927-28 (11th Cir. 1993) (trial court “rendered final judgment” even though it “did not reach” an issue presented by the parties); Eastpointe Property Owners’Ass’n v. Cohen, 505 So. 2d 518, 521 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1987) (reversing final judgment below because the court erred in not reaching an issue).
I would hold that where the intent of the trial court to enter final judgment is clear, and nothing remains open in that court, the final judgment rule is satisfied.