Court Opinion

ID: 9673048
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:05:12.509675+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:19.942617
License: Public Domain

TATE, Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent. The majority’s holding is contrary to Delahoussaye v. Ackal, 261 La. 200, 259 So.2d 63 (1972), and numerous other decisions of this court.
On May 13, 1968, the trial court awarded a default judgment in favor of the plaintiff. The judgment recited that such judgment was entered only after the plaintiff had produced “duo proof in support of plaintiff’s demands”. The trial court further recited that the judgment was entered confirming the earlier preliminary default, “the law and the evidence being in favor of the plaintiff and against the defendants”.
Now, four years later, this court sets aside such default judgment because it cannot find in the record certain documents. There is no written transcript of the evidence and no indication in the record that such documents were not introduced, if indeed necessary (under the best evidence rule) in the absence of objection to oral testimony proving them.
The majority thus ignores the settled jurisprudence of this court, just recently reaffirmed in Delahoussaye v. Ackal, 261 La. 200, 259 So.2d 63 (1972), that these judicial recitations in a judgment rendered upon confirmation of a default are presumed to be correct and that the judgment so entered must be presumed to be based upon legal and sufficient evidence. Such *533presumption that the judicial proceedings were proper only obtains, of course, “when the contrary does not appear in the record”, Baker Finance Co. v. Hines, 255 La. 971, 233 So.2d 902, 903 (1970); but the contrary does not appear in this record.
The majority ignores these well settled principles, and ignores the strong presumption that the conscientious district court only entered the judgment after receiving due proof, because, in the physical record before us on appeal, we do not find the written building contract and lien affidavit forming part of the basis for the demand.1 I should here note that the defendants nowhere allege that, in fact, the building contract was not introduced, nor that the lien was not timely recorded and then introduced at the trial. The defendants simply argue that the absence of these documents from the appellate record (no matter if through inadvertence of the Clerk, or if through loss during the 2i/¿ years the Clerk took to prepare the record — see below) justifies this appellate court in setting aside this default judgment entered four years ago, after the defendants had full opportunity (see below) to defend and failed to do so.
Our civil procedure is designed to permit prompt determination of our litigation on the merits, after full and fair opportunity to defend. In processing the mass of civil litigation before our courts, the default judgment is a recognized and valuable part of determining a considerable volume of litigation finally, when in fact there is no defense or when, in fact, the defendant has had a fair and full opportunity to defend but fails to do so. To introduce such technicalities in the review of default judgments — in the absence of any real showing that the defendants were deprived of their day in court or that, actually, they really have any defense on the merits — is to justify appellate review directed toward technicalities, not substance.
The majority assumes that, because these documents are not physically in the record before us on appeal, they were not introduced when the default was confirmed. I know of no authority justifying this assumption. Quite the contrary, the uniform jurisprudence is otherwise.
From my own period of practice, I know that in many judicial districts of our State the practice in confirmation of defaults is to introduce, when a necessary element of proof, original documents from the clerk’s office. Sometimes the theory is that the court can take judicial notice of documents filed in its own clerk’s office, or sometimes this is done “with leave to substitute a certified copy”; but in any case the trial *535judge has the original documents before him when the default confirmation judgment is granted. (The clerk’s office naturally returns the original documents to its own files.)
I see no harm in this practice. I cannot justify this appellate court now requiring more than this, for the first time in our history, and thus encumbering the records and adding to the expense of the thousands of default confirmations which are not appealed, simply in order to present a more complete record for the few default judgments which are appealed.
To cause the plaintiff-appellee to lose his judgment because of this deficiency in the appellate record is particularly unfair under the present facts.
The plaintiff filed his suit on November 17, 1967, four and a half years ago. On December 4, 1967, the defendants filed a “Motion for Extension of Time to Anszver”; they were given a delay of 20 days to do so. When they failed to answer after this delay, two months later the plaintiff entered its first preliminary default on March 29, 1968.
On April 2, 1968, the defendants obtained an additional 40 days, or until May 6, 1968. The defendants also moved to set aside the default on April 5, 1968, stating that “it previously being understood as between counsel for both parties that the movers herein intended to file exceptions and motions prior to filing an answer”. When this additional 40-day period expired on May 6, 1968, the defendant still had filed no responsive pleadings.
The plaintiff therefore moved for and obtained a preliminary default on May 8, 1968. At this time, to recapitulate, the defendants had never filed an exception or an answer to the suit filed six months earlier, although the defendants had twice secured delays in order to permit them to answer or file pleadings.
On May 13, 1968, five days later, on the plaintiff’s motion the district judge confirmed the default, reciting that due proof had been made before him and that the law and the evidence justified such default j udgment.
The defendants then on May 15, 1968 filed an answer. (This denied the allegations of the petition and set forth a reconventional demand alleging that the construction work was defective.)
The defendants then also filed a motion for a new trial. The motion for the new trial assigns as reasons various frivolous objections to the petition (properly raised by exceptions of vagueness, etc.). It further makes certain allegations to the effect that the plaintiff should not have moved for and obtained a preliminary default and confirmed it because it knew the defend*537ants were represented by counsel.2 It is significant that at no place in this motion for a new trial do the defendants allege that insufficient evidence was introduced to justify the preliminary default.
When this motion for a new trial was denied, the defendants appealed on May 29, 1968, the record being returnable to the court of appeal on July 25 of that year. This record is 29 pages in length, including the four pages of the motion for appeal and the appeal bond.
Following this, the clerk of court obtained 34 extensions of time within which to prepare and lodge this 29-page record, the last expiring on December 12, 1970, some three years after the suit had been filed, and some two and a half years after the trial court judgment had been obtained. The record was then lodged in the court of appeal on December 7, 1970.
I respectfully suggest that this sad history demonstrates determined delaying tactics on the part of the defendants-appellants. The plaintiff-appellee should not be penalized and his property right in the judgment destroyed simply because we do not find in this long-delayed appellate record any documentary proof or its equivalent, which the trial court must have had before it (under its recitations) at the time it rendered judgment.
I must further note, in the strongest possible terms, that the defendants-appellants never allege there was no building contract or no timely-recorded lien — their motion for a new trial indicates only that they claim they had a defense on the merits based upon the alleged poor workmanship of the construction performed for them (now) years ago.
For these reasons, perhaps too lengthily stated, I must respectfully dissent from our failure, in this lone instance in our jurisprudence, to apply the well settled principle that, unless the contrary be shown by the record, the appellate courts will not set aside a default judgment where the trial court, presumed to be (and, in fact) conscientious and learned, recites that due proof and sufficient evidence were presented to it to justify, in law, the confirmation of the default.

. The majority does not mention that at least $5,716.32 of the demand can be regarded as recoverable by monied judgment upon an open account, needing no proof of the building contract or of the timely lien recordation.

. The appeal to equitable reasons is, it seems to me, peculiarly inappropriate in view of the six-month delay of defendants’ counsel to file pleadings, despite the great delays given to them to do so — the effect of their failure to file such pleadings was to deny the plaintiff its day in court. The plaintiff’s only recourse loas to move for a preliminary default and then confirm it.