Court Opinion

ID: 9658970
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 21:24:26.48274+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:02.543555
License: Public Domain

On Rehearing
SIMPSON, Justice.
The rehearing brief of appellant questions the soundness of the statement in the original opinion that the “judgment by default with leave to prove damages” was interlocutory.
As we read the cases, this is a correct statement of the law. It is inconceivable that there could be two final judgments in a single action at law. “It is not the practice of courts of law to dispose of causes piecemeal by rendering separate final judgments, at different times.” Ex parte Mason, 213 Ala. 279, 104 So. 523, 524.
As we said in Ex parte Overton, 174 Ala. 256, 258, 57 So. 434:
“But the limitation of 30 days is placed upon the power of the court to interfere with judgments which are final. Interlocutory judgments are as much under the control of the court as they ever were. The judgment by default was an interlocutory judgment. It is generally held that a final judgment cannot be entered where the damages are, as in this case, unliquidated, or the amount of plaintiff’s claim uncertain or indeterminate. There must first be an interlocutory judgment by default, and the final judgment is entered after the damages have been assessed by a writ of inquiry or otherwise determined according to law.”
The following cases either directly or by analogy support the conclusion that a judgment by default with writ of inquiry to ascertain the amount of plaintiff’s damages is interlocutory until the writ of inquiry is executed and the damages assessed: Ex parte Richerzhagen, 216 Ala. 262, 113 So. 85, citing Ex parte Overton, 174 Ala. 256, 57 So. 434; Ex parte Bozeman, 213 Ala. 223, 104 So. 402; Blankenship v. Hail, 214 Ala. 95, 106 So. 594.
Opinion extended and application for rehearing overruled.
LIVINGSTON, C. J., and LAWSON and STAKELY, JJ., concur.