Court Opinion

ID: 9685943
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 15:10:16.588673+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:11.728065
License: Public Domain

McCORMICK, Justice
(concurring specially).
I concur in division I and the result.
The question in division II is one of issue preclusion rather than merely one of subject matter jurisdiction. The court’s holding that the mootness dismissal of defendants’ appeal from plaintiffs’ 1975 summary judgment did not validate the judgment does not answer this question. If issue preclusion applies, the validity of the judgment cannot be challenged.
The doctrine that a void judgment remains subject to collateral attack is not without exception. See Lincoln Joint Stock Land Bank v. Brown, 224 Iowa 1256, 1260, 278 N.W. 294, 296 (1938) (holding that an exercise of appellate jurisdiction in a prior appeal was conclusive on the issue of subject matter jurisdiction in the case); Restatement of Judgments § 10(1) (1942) (“Where a court has jurisdiction of the parties and determines that it has jurisdiction over the subject matter, the parties cannot collaterally attack the judgment on the ground that the court did not have jurisdiction over the subject matter, unless the policy underlying the doctrine of res judica-ta is outweighed by the policy against permitting the court to act beyond its jurisdiction.”).
An exercise of jurisdiction is an implicit finding of subject matter jurisdiction. See 20 Am.Jur.2d Courts § 93 (1965); 21 C.J.S. Courts § 113 at 174-75 (1940) (“The court necessarily decides that it has jurisdiction by proceeding in the cause.”). Because a dismissal of an appeal on mootness grounds plainly involves an exercise of jurisdiction, this court implicitly found it had subject matter jurisdiction of the prior case. Defendants’ right to attack the 1975 judgment depends on whether the tension between principles of finality and subject matter jurisdiction should be resolved in their favor in these circumstances.
Defendants did assert the lack of subject matter jurisdiction in the prior appeal. Therefore the failure of this court to address the issue in the majority and dissenting opinions cannot be attributed to them. They demonstrated that the trial court had clearly acted without jurisdiction. Moreover, plaintiffs cannot claim surprise that defendants still assert this contention. I agree with the result in the present case because the policy favoring finality is plainly outweighed by the policy against permitting a court to act beyond its jurisdiction in these circumstances. This result is also consistent with the recent statement of applicable principles in Restatement (Second) of Judgments § 15(1) (Tent.Draft No. 5,1978), § 117 (TentDraft No. 6, 1979).