Court Opinion

ID: 9448041
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 23:21:13.696867+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:16.037576
License: Public Domain

On Petition for Rehearing
HARTIGAN, Circuit Judge.
Plaintiff's petition for rehearing seeks to read into our opinion much broader principles than are justified or were intended. In holding that the second notice of appeal did not bring before us the propriety of the judgment of dismissal we did not intend to overrule or qualify our earlier cases, of which Creedon v. Loring, 1 Cir., 1957, 249 F.2d 714, 716, cited by plaintiff, is an example. In Creedon v. Loring, following the entry of judgment for the defendants upon verdicts of the jury, plaintiffs filed a motion for a new trial. After that motion had been denied, plaintiffs appealed “ ‘from the order * * * denying plaintiff’s motion for a new trial.’ ” The defendants moved to dismiss the appeal as not having been taken from the final judgment. We denied this motion as “founded on a pure technicality.” We pointed out, however, that plaintiffs were limited in their appeal to those alleged errors “on which the motion for the new trial was based; it is not open to appellant to urge other alleged errors at the trial which might have been presented on an appeal from the original judgment itself.” Id., at page 717.
Similarly, other circuits have recognized that an appeal from the denial of a new trial may carry back to the judgment in which the errors sought to be rectified by the motion occurred. See, e. g., Cheney v. Moler, 10 Cir., 1960, 285 F.2d 116, 118; Holz v. Smullan, 7 Cir., 1960, 277 F.2d 58. In Donovan v. Esso Shipping Company, 3 Cir., 1958, 259 F.2d 65, 68, certiorari denied 1959, 359 U.S. 907, 79 S.Ct. 583, 3 L.Ed.2d 572, the court said: “A defective notice of appeal should not warrant dismissal for want of jurisdiction where the intention to appeal from a specific judgment may be reasonably inferred from the text of the notice and where the defect has not materially misled the appellee. * * * For example, an appeal from the denial of a new trial may under exceptional circumstances be treated as an inept attempt to appeal from the judgment which preceded that denial.” However, the court went on to say: “While mere technical omissions in the notice of appeal should not deprive appellant of his right of review, where the appeal is taken specifically only from one part of the-judgment the appellate court has no jurisdiction to review the portion not appealed from.” Id., 259 F.2d at page 68.. The notice of appeal in that case specifically sought review of the dismissal of all causes of action “other than that cause-of complaint on maintenance and cure.”' The court held it was without jurisdiction to consider the maintenance and cure-question. All of these cases, however,, indicate that the determinative element, is one of intent, i. e., whether the intent' to appeal from the judgment may be reasonably inferred from the notice of appeal.
In the case at bar, following the original judgment of dismissal, plaintiff did. not move for review or reconsideration,, comparable to a motion for a new trial,, but moved for leave to amend the complaint by adding a self-styled “Second! Cause of Action,” by which she sought, substantially less damages, upon a different theory, predicated on the assumption-that the dismissal of the first cause of action was in fact correct. This was, by hypothesis, an independent matter. Any error involved in the denial of this motion for leave to amend could relate-back in no way to errors which entered into and infected the original judgment. Also, militating against plaintiff’s position that the second notice of appeal' was intended to be an appeal from the original judgment of dismissal is the factor that plaintiff plainly thought she appealed from that judgment by her first notice of appeal. Now that that notice of appeal has been held premature, plaintiff contends that the second notice of" appeal is sufficient. We believe, however, that under the principles of the above-cited cases, plaintiff’s second notice of." *89.appeal cannot be said to indicate an indention to appeal from the original judgment of dismissal.
If plaintiff’s second appeal was in her mind intended to encompass the old cause ■of action rather than, or in addition to, the proposed new one, it was deficient not technically, but in substance.
The petition for rehearing is denied.