Court Opinion

ID: 9604051
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 02:13:33.485809+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:02:18.415987
License: Public Domain

MAUGHAN, Justice
(dissenting).
*477For the following reasons, I dissent. The judgment here is based on what is called a stipulation of the parties.
The power of the court to render a judgment by consent is dependent on the existence of the consent of the parties at the time the agreement receives the sanction of the court or is rendered and promulgated as a judgment.1
This general rule, in my view, is disposi-tive of the matter before us. There was no stipulation, because one of the parties withdrew consent prior to judgment. The withdrawal was seasonable, and prior to any change of position by the parties, in reliance on the terms of the proposed agreement.
Two well-reasoned cases2 deal specifically with this general rule. In Burnaman it was said:
A valid consent judgment cannot be rendered by a court when consent of one of the parties thereto is wanting. It is not sufficient to support the judgment that a party’s consent thereto may at one time have been given; consent must exist at the very moment the court undertakes to make the agreement the judgment of the court.
In Van Donselaar, it was the court’s opinion that:
If no agreement was in fact made, or equally if one of the parties had refused to be bound by it, to the knowledge of the court, then the court had no right to enter a consent judgment.
For the same reason, I think the court had no right to refuse to allow plaintiff’s trial counsel to withdraw, until after the judgment had been rendered.

. 49 C.J.S. Judgments § 174b, page 311.

. Burnaman v. Heaton, 150 Texas 333, 240 S.W.2d 288, 291 (1951) ; and Van Donselaar v. Van Donselaar, 249 Iowa 504, 87 N.W.2d 311, 313 (1958).