Court Opinion

ID: 9744520
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 22:05:07.37858+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:49.819785
License: Public Domain

BISHOP, J. pro tem.*
I dissent. “It is, of course, an elementary rule of appellate procedure that a judgment or order will not be disturbed on an appeal prosecuted by a party who consented to it. ’ ’ So stated the Court of Appeal in Atchison, T. & S.F. Ry. Co. v. Hildebrand (1965) 238 Cal.App.2d 859, 861 [48 Cal.Rptr. 339, 341], as it dismissed the appeal citing six of the many cases that it could have selected, beginning as far back as Imley v. Beard (1856) 6 Cal. 666. So far as I am aware, given the premise “who consented to it,” no exception has been made in a “ hard case. ’ ’
It seems clear to me that our appealing plaintiff “consented” to the judgment from which it appealed. The judgment’s opening words were: “It appearing to the Court that *377plaintiff above-named and defendant Investors Diversified Services, Inc., a corporation, . . . have stipulated to judgment in condemnation herein between said parties with respect to the real property . . . and other than the Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law dated July 1, 1965, on file herein, have waived further Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law.
There were two stipulations in the files at the time the judgment was entered. Whatever the effect of the first stipulation, the second cannot be misunderstood. It was executed January 6, 1966, and provides, without uncertainty or equivocation, “that judgment in Condemnation . . . may be entered in the sum and containing the terms and conditions of the attached proposed judgment, marked 1 Exhibit A’ and by this reference made a part of this stipulation. ...” The judgment entered January 17, 1966, from which plaintiff’s appeal was taken, is word for word, Exhibit A, which the plaintiff, by the same counsel that executed his notice of appeal, had consented the judgment was to be. The January 6 stipulation was somewhat lengthy, but it contained no weasel words, nothing that can be construed as a condition upon the consent given that Exhibit A may be the judgment. It became the judgment. Plaintiff may not appeal from it. I would dismiss its appeal.
A petition for a rehearing was denied June 19, 1968, and respondent’s petition for a hearing by the Supreme Court was denied July 17,1968.

Retired judge of the superior court sitting under assignment by the Chairman of the Judicial Council.