Court Opinion

ID: 9550762
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:41:58.325158+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:22:19.618491
License: Public Domain

Wright, J.
(dissenting) — I dissent. The very nature of the judicial process is designed to settle disagreements and disputes with finality and certainty. If there be no point when a litigant can be definitely assured that the controversy is laid to rest, to rise no more, then the system has lost much of its value to litigants and to the entire public.
There was a time when the process of perfecting an appeal was wrought with many hazards and pitfalls. Many *264requirements were deemed jurisdictional and the unwary was in constant danger of a dismissal of his appeal for failure to comply with each and every provision. To further complicate the task of the attorney who only infrequently sought to appeal to the Supreme Court, there were several places to look for the requirements, as some were found in statutes and some in court rules.
All of that has changed, and no one can say other than that it is a change for the better..The one mandatory requirement of timely filing of the notice of appeal gave the needed certainty without seriously complicating the process.
Now, however, the majority would discard the one remaining jurisdictional requirement, and all certainty will disappear. With the necessity of a timely notice of appeal, all parties and others who may be interested in the outcome in various ways know either that all further proceedings have been cut off or that there may be further steps to perfect an appeal. Thus, a reasonable degree of certainty is achieved.
This was a stockholder’s suit instituted by Thomas Malott, owner of 2,000 shares of stock in the Hecla Mining Company, a Washington corporation. Emil Heber, owner of 156 shares, a plaintiff in intervention, is appellant here. At the relevant time there were 6,205,771 shares of stock outstanding in Hecla Mining Company. The purpose of the suit was to challenge the action of the board of directors in authorizing the investment of company funds in silver futures contracts.
After a trial upon the merits, the court found the board acted in good faith and lawfully. The matter of signing findings of fact, conclusions of law, and judgment of dismissal was noted for July 5, 1972. On that day the matter regularly came before the court, and all counsel were present, including Mr. Robert A. Southwell, then counsel for plaintiff and plaintiff-intervenor.
After discussion by court and counsel, changes were *265made in the findings of fact by interlineation, and then the following took place:
The Court: . . .
Anything further, Mr. Southwell?
Mr. Southwell: No sir.
The Court: The Court will then sign the Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law and the form of Judgment.
Exceptions to the form?
Mr. Southwell: Well, I have signed on that, your Honor, and a copy was received. Notice of Presentation waived. I will let the record go for that.
The Court: All right. The Judgment will be signed.
Mr. Southwell: And the same with the Findings of Fact?
The Court: All right, The judgment is made.
Mr. Connelly: May I ask that your Honor date the Findings. I notice that when it was typed up a slot for the date wasn’t included.
Thank you.
(The Court adjourned.)
The court upon saying “The judgment is made,” signed the same and handed all the documents to the deputy clerk, who was present in the courtroom. All of this occurred after 5 p.m., the closing time of the clerk’s office. The deputy clerk put the judgment with the findings of fact and conclusions of law in a drawer of his desk in the courtroom. For some reason, the documents were left in the desk until August 8, 1972, when they were found. The clerk did enter in the civil journal a minute entry showing that the signing of the findings of fact and conclusions of law had taken place on July 5, 1972. No mention was made of the judgment. The documents were not placed in the case file nor entered in the civil appearance docket until August 8, 1972.
An associate in the office of Malott & Southwell, Mr. Daniel P. O’Rourke, made trips to the courthouse to compare the interlineations on the original findings of fact with the office copy. He was told by a deputy clerk the documents were not in the case file and he made further inquiry, but did not then find the documents. He checked again about *266the middle of August 1972 and found the documents in the file, marked as filed August 8,1972.
On September 7, 1972, notice of appeal was filed. A motion to correct the record was filed on September 12, 1972, and the motion was heard on September 19, 1972. The Court of Appeals held in Malott v. Randall, 7 Wn. App. 753, 502 P.2d 1249 (1972) that the superior court had lost jurisdiction upon the filing of the notice of appeal, but remanded the matter with leave to conduct a hearing for correction of the record. After further hearings, the record was corrected to show the true filing date as July 5, 1972.
The timely filing of a notice of appeal is jurisdictional. CAROA 51, 52; In re Estate of Yand, 23 Wn.2d 831, 838, 162 P.2d 434 (1945); Heroux v. Phare, 35 Wn.2d 213, 210 P.2d 1021 (1949). In re Estate of Yand, supra, states at page 838:
Where rule of court prescribes the time of filing of the notice of appeal, such is a jurisdictional step; and neither stipulation nor other act of the parties can confer the right of appeal, once lost by expiration of the time prescribed by the rule for filing of the notice. In other words, an appeal must be perfected in the manner and time required by the rule in the court where judgment or order from which appeal is taken is entered to give appellate court jurisdiction of the appeal for purpose other than dismissal of the appeal.
In dismissing plaintiff’s appeal, Munson, J., speaking for the majority of Division Three of the Court of Appeals, in Malott v. Randall, 8 Wn. App. 418, 506 P.2d 1296 (1973) stated at page 423:
The retention of this one mandatory act does not appear to this court to be unreasonable. Were it otherwise, the number of reasons for the untimely filing of a notice of appeal is incalculable and the resultant inequities unascertainable. Furthermore, the rationale of Glass v. Windsor Nav. Co., 81 Wn.2d 726, 504 P.2d 1135 (1973), dealing with the premature filing of a notice of appeal, appears to us to be equally persuasive here where the notice was belatedly filed. The notice, not having been *267timely filed, does not vest this court with jurisdiction to hear this appeal.
The pertinent parts of CR 58 provide:
(a) . . . all judgments shall be entered immediately after they are signed by the judge.
(b) Effective Time. Judgments shall be deemed entered for all procedural purposes from the time of delivery to the clerk for filing, . . .
(Italics mine.) The language is plain and unambiguous. The words “for all procedural purposes” clearly include the computation of time for the notice of appeal. The 30 days start to run July 5, 1972, with delivery of the signed judgment to the clerk for filing. ROA 1-33; Canzler v. Mammoliti, 40 Wn.2d 631, 633, 245 P.2d 215 (1952), citing Cinebar Coal & Coke Co. v. Robinson, 1 Wn.2d 620, 97 P.2d 128 (1939) and Quareles v. Seattle, 26 Wash. 226, 66 P. 389 (1901).
The case of State ex rel. Bird v. Superior Court, 30 Wn.2d 110, 190 P.2d 762 (1948) is a very different situation. In that case we started the discussion by saying at page 114, “We have repeatedly held that the filing of a notice of appeal ... is jurisdictional.” That, however, was a capital case. The appellant was confined in the penitentiary at Walla Walla and the warden denied him the right to prepare or mail out a notice of appeal in time. Bird was under the exclusive control and custody of the state and was prevented by state officers from perfecting his appeal. Even with those unusual and quite compelling facts the Bird case was decided by a bare majority of the court, and was severely criticized by the bench and bar of that day, as well as in dissents by Millard, J., and Jeffers, J.
The words “delivery to the clerk” include delivery to a deputy clerk. RCW 36.16.070 provides:
A deputy may perform any act which his principal is authorized to perform. The officer appointing a deputy or other employee shall be responsible for the acts of his appointees upon his official bond and may revoke each appointment at pleasure.
*268If any person be injured by failure of a clerk or deputy clerk to perform a duty, he is not without remedy. RCW 36.16.070 provides that the officer shall be responsible for the acts of his deputies upon his official bond. RCW 36.16.050 provides the official bond, among other things, contain the condition “that he will faithfully perform the duties of his office.”
I would, therefore, affirm the Court of Appeals in the dismissal of the appeal.
Hunter and Stafford, JJ., concur with Wright, J.
Petition for rehearing denied March 5, 1974.