Court Opinion

ID: 9572326
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:40:50.698358+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:32:29.029034
License: Public Domain

Justice EXUM
concurring in result.
I agree with the Court’s holding that a consent judgment may be enforceable by contempt even though it is not modifiable. I cannot concur, however, with some of the language in the opinion which seems to say that once an agreement of the parties has been made a judgment of the court, ie., has become a consent judgment, it loses the attributes accorded it as a contract, or as the majority puts it, it loses “its identity as a contract.” As I have tried to show in my dissenting opinion in Walter v. Walters, filed this date, a parties’ agreement made a judgment of the court is both a contract and a judgment. It is not either a contract or a judgment. The majority here and in Walters seems to think that consent judgments must be either contracts or judgments; and, having to choose, it prefers to treat them as judgments. Until these cases today, however, this Court has always recognized the dual nature of consent judgments. See my dissenting opinion in Walters, and cases therein cited. It is neither necessary, advisable nor in accordance with our precedents to choose judgment over contract or contract over judgment in order properly to *411resolve these cases. In the instant case, therefore, I would hold that this consent judgment, albeit not modifiable because it is in part a contract, is nevertheless enforceable by contempt because it is also in part a judgment.