Court Opinion

ID: 9545494
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:13:25.244268+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:14:53.102373
License: Public Domain

OP ALA, Justice,
dissenting:
The court holds that a January 5, 1972 judgment — modified, on debtor’s application, by a $815.88 reduction effected on August 23, 1976 — became unenforceable by operation of the dormancy statute, 12 O.S. 1971 § 735,1 five years from January 17, 1972 — the date initial execution was issued on the judgment’s original version. I cannot join in the court’s pronouncement.
I.
This appeal is being prosecuted from the trial court’s decision which denies the debt- or’s motion to quash an order requiring him to appear and answer as to assets and his “plea to the jurisdiction”. The post-judgment action sought to be reviewed here is clearly interlocutory. Because it lacks an immediately injurious impact on his property, it is not deemed to affect a debtor’s “substantial rights” within the meaning of 12 O.S.1971 § 953. The decision is hence regarded as not appealable “prior to a determination and final order in the proceeding”. We so held in Weaver v. Fourth National Bank of Tulsa, Okl., 263 P.2d 194 [1953]. Tendered for our review in Weaver was a denial of the debtor’s “motion to vacate” an order requiring him to appear and disclose assets. The order before us denies a “motion to quash” like process. It disposes of a procedural variant that, in the context presented, is clearly but the functional equivalent of the Weaver “motion to vacate”. The debtor’s added “plea to the jurisdiction” has no independent significance here since both the motion and the plea were anchored on the very same ground — the passage of five years from the issuance of the last execution in the case. I would dismiss the appeal.
II.
The August 23 modification, which was debtor-generated and did not amount to a nunc pro tunc amendment, must be treated in law as a new judgment. As such it operates to trigger another five-year time span, running from August 23, 1976, which had not expired when the order sought to be reviewed was made by the trial court.
In legal contemplation there can be but one judgment in every action although it is possible to have several successive appeala-ble decisions. Multiple judgments cannot co-exist in the same cause.2 When, as here, following its rendition a judgment is modified in amount, as distinguished from being amended nunc pro tunc, the later version replaces the earlier without the interposition of a relation-back doctrine that would make the succession retroactive.3 Although in some instances interest may indeed be allowed to run from the date of original rendition on a judgment that is later modified in amount either on appeal or in a *1292§ 1031 proceeding before the trial court, the modification is nonetheless treated as a distinctly separate juristic act which draws its life and takes effect from the date of its pronouncement and not nunc pro tunc from the time of the original judgment.4 If a judgment is facially unmodified but there are duplicative and inconsistent record memorials of its entry, the earlier memorial will be taken as effective and the later shall be treated as a nullity.5
With respect to a judgment modified in amount otherwise than by a nunc pro tunc amendment the five-year dormancy period must be deemed to commence running, not from the date of original rendition but from the date modification was effected. This rule seems especially fitting in application to a case like this in which the act of modification was debtor-generated and inured to his benefit.
III.
In my view the § 735 five-year time limit came to be interrupted when the judgment creditor caused to be issued successive garnishments on March 15, 1972, May 13, 1974 and August 14, 1978. Post-judgment garnishment in aid of execution does meet all the necessary attributes of an “execution” within the meaning of § 735.6 It should be treated as having the very same tolling effect on dormancy status. The common-law distinction between “lands, tenements, goods and chattels” — property subject to levy by execution — and choses in action — i. e. “nonleviable” assets reachable by garnishment only7• — is no longer a viable legal concept in Oklahoma.8 We should therefore treat post-garnishment process as being included in the definition of “execution” within the meaning of § 735. Issuance of such garnishment should interrupt the dormancy period as effectively as does a sued-out execution. I would overrule our decision in Charles Banfield Company v. State ex rel. Fallis, Okl., 525 P.2d 638, 640 [1974] in which garnishment was held not to constitute an “execution” in the § 735 sense.
Banfield's status as a legal precedent rests on a most fragile foundation. The court’s opinion in that case utterly failed to consider and hence overlooked that, as a result of 1965 legislation, post-judgment garnishment in aid of execution ceased being ancillary or secondary to a prior unsuccessful attempt at a levy by execution, to become legal enforcement process with a fully independent and self-contained efficacy.9 This metamorphosis occurred when the terms of Ch. 297, Okl.Sess.Law 1965, either repealed or excised all the then-remaining provisions in our statutory law which still required that a post-judgment garnishment in aid of execution be preceded by a sheriff’s nulla bona return of execution.10
I would not disturb the trial court’s denial of the debtor’s motion to quash and plea to the jurisdiction.

. The terms of 12 O.S.1971 § 735 provide in pertinent part: “If execution shall not be sued out within five years after the date of any judgment ..., or if five years shall have intervened between the date of the last execution issued on such judgment and the time of suing out another writ of execution thereon, such judgment shall become dormant, and shall cease to operate as a lien on the estate of the judgment debtor ...”

. State ex rel. Board of Affairs v. Neff, 205 Okl. 205, 236 P.2d 681, 683 [1951]; Stubblefield v. General Motors Acceptance Corp., Okl., 619 P.2d 620, 624 [1980].

.Our law clearly distinguishes between “modification" and “amendment” of a judgment. See Cartwright v. Atlas Chemical Industries, Inc., Okl., 623 P.2d 606, 610 [1981]. As commonly used in our legal parlance, a judgment is “modified” when the action of a trial or appellate court has the immediate or ultimate effect of changing the amount originally awarded. See Annotation in 4 A.L.R.3rd 1221, 1222-1223 on Date from which interest on judgment starts running, as affected by modification of amount of judgment on appeal.

. Todd v. Orr, 44 Okl. 459, 145 P. 393 [1914]; Mason v. Slonecker, 92 Okl. 227, 219 P. 357, 362 [1923]; Vilbig Const. Co. et al. v. Whitham, 201 Okl. 86, 201 P.2d 922 [1949]; Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad Co. v. Edwards, Okl., 401 P.2d 303, 304-306 [1961],

. Aishman v. Taylor, Okl., 516 P.2d 244, 245 [1973]; J. A. Tobin Construction Co. v. Grandview Bank, Okl., 424 P.2d 81, 84 [1967].

. First Nat. Bank of Cordell v. City Guaranty Bank of Hobart, 174 Okl. 545, 51 P.2d 573, 576 [1935].

. “At common law, choses in action were not subject to seizure and sale under final process of execution, and the principle still prevails except and to the extent that the same has been modified or changed by statute.” Mcln-tosh Grocery Co. v. Newman, 184 N.C. 370, 114 S.E. 535, 536 [1922],

. The essence of the common-law distinction and the reasons for its demise are explained in Johnson v. Dahlquist, 130 Wash. 29, 225 P. 817, 818 [1924],

. H.B. 877, Okl.Sess.Law 1965, Ch. 297, pgs. 529-534.

. 12 O.S.1961 §§ 847 and 863; London & Lancashire Indemnity Co. of America v. Courtney, 106 F.2d 277 (10th Cir. 1939); First Nat. Bank v. City Guaranty Bank of Hobart, 174 Okl. 545, 51 P.2d 573 (1935); Scott v. Waples-Painter Co., 74 Okl. 52, 176 P. 754 (1918).