Court Opinion

ID: 9863809
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 05:54:24.894717+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:04:20.344797
License: Public Domain

McCOMB, J., Concurring and Dissenting.
I concur in the affirmance of the order setting aside the order granting a new trial, but I dissent from the order reversing the order of the trial court in setting aside its previous order amending its judgment. In my opinion the error in the original judgment which the trial court attempted to amend was a “judicial error” and not a “clerical error” and therefore, as stated in the majority opinion, not subject to correction by a subsequent amendment by the trial court. (14 Cal. Jur. 999, sec. 74.)
The foregoing conclusion is supported by Schattinger v. Schattinger, 80 Colo. 261 [250 Pac. 851], in which case the Supreme Court of Colorado in holding that a mistake in a decree is not a clerical error but a judicial error, which may *65be rectified only in the ordinary way for reviewing judicial errors, says at page 852, “The court, in making these findings and decree, was exercising a judicial discretion and performing a judicial function, and, if it made a mistake therein, either through inadvertence or otherwise, such mistake cannot be rectified in a motion or in an equitable action brought for the purpose of making the decree speak the truth. In such an action as this, the court may not correct such judicial mistakes or errors. ... It may be that the court improperly found that the source of supply was the wastage from a ditch not then in existence, but the court in doing so was exercising a judicial function and its mistake may be corrected, if at all, not in an action like this, but in the ordinary way for reviewing judicial error committed by a trial court.”
A petition by respondent to have the cause heard in the Supreme Court, after judgment in the District Court of Appeal, was denied by the Supreme Court on February 10, 1938.