Court Opinion

ID: 9592914
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:17:57.298952+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:12:24.763219
License: Public Domain

CHIEF JUSTICE CARRICO, with whom SENIOR JUSTICE POFF joins,
dissenting.
I would grant Harbaugh’s motion to dismiss and not reach the merits of this appeal. The majority declines to dismiss because, it says, Snead would have undertaken a futile act had he sought to amend his motion for judgment. I disagree with the majority’s rationale. Seeking amendment would not have been futile for it would have saved the point in the event of remand on appeal.
But there can be no remand. Even if Snead can get over the hurdle of his failure to seek amendment, he faces an insurmountable problem the majority has not addressed: Snead has failed to assign error to the trial court’s dismissal of his case on the separate ground that the motion for judgment does not state a cause of action.
For Snead’s failure to assign error to the separate basis for the dismissal of his motion for judgment, the dismissal has become *530final. Hence, Snead’s motion for judgment is a nullity, and it cannot be salvaged except by ignoring a major jurisdictional requirement of this State’s appellate procedure.
Rule 5:17(c) provides that “[o]nly errors assigned in the petition for appeal will be noticed by this Court.” We enforce this Rule against other defaulting litigants on a regular basis. I see absolutely no reason for declining to enforce it in this case. Indeed, to ignore the Rule would create what, in my opinion, would be an absurd result. The case would be remanded for further proceedings on a pleading which has been declared in an unappealed final judgment to be insufficient as a matter of law to support any relief. This would turn Rule 5:17(c) on its head.