Court Opinion

ID: 9646486
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 13:00:54.34887+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:38.523998
License: Public Domain

YEAGLEY, Associate Judge,
dissenting:
Appellee Woods did not cross-appeal. The majority’s disposition of this case, making it possible for the appellee to improve her position, vitiates the cross-appeal rule in this jurisdiction and remands the case under circumstances in which we should finally and equitably resolve this complex litigation.
Not having appealed, appellee Woods must be held to have accepted the trial court’s resolution of the matter, pursuant to which she was held to be a joint owner of the disputed property. As such, and as the majority recognizes with convincing citation (see page 783, supra), she cannot attack the judgment rendered below, but can only defend it against appellant Edwards’ attacks. In her defense of the judgment, however, appellee can urge any rationale or justification “as long as [her] attack will, if upheld result merely in af-firmance of the judgment.” Jaffke v. Dunham, 352 U.S. 280, 281, 77 S.Ct. 307, 1 L.Ed.2d 314 (1957).
Of the cases cited by the majority, only one permitted affirmative relief for the ap-pellee and that was a case in admiralty. Langnes v. Green, 282 U.S. 531, 51 S.Ct. 243, 75 L.Ed. 520 (1931). Although the Court approached the question of appellee’s rights as being in a case brought up on certiorari from the circuit rather than a pure admiralty appeal, it observed, “[o]n appeal in admiralty, there is a trial de novo.” Id. at 536, 51 S.Ct. at 245.
Six years later in 1937, a somewhat new Supreme Court in considering the question began, “[t]he power of an appellate court to modify a decree in equity for the benefit of an appellee in the absence of a cross-appeal is here to be admeasured.” In resolving the issue against the appellee, the Court said:
Without a cross-appeal, an appellee may “urge in support of a decree any matter appearing in the record although his argument may involve an attack upon the reasoning of the lower court or an insistence upon matter overlooked or ignored by it” United States v. American Railway Express Co., 265 U.S. 425, 435, [44 S.Ct. 560, 68 L.Ed. 1087], What he may not do in the absence of a cross-appeal is to “attack the decree with a view either to enlarging his own rights thereunder or of lessening the rights of his adversary, whether what he seeks is to correct an error or to supplement the decree with respect to a matter not dealt with below.” Ibid. The rule is inveterate and certain. . Findings may be revised at the instance of an appellant, if they are against the weight of evidence, where the case is one in equity. This does not mean that they are subject to like revision in behalf of appellees, at all events in circumstances where a revision of the findings carries with it as an incident a revision of the judgment. There is no need at this time to fix the limits of the rule more sharply. “Where each party appeals each may assign error, but where only one party appeals the other is bound by the decree in the court below, and he cannot assign error in the appellate court, nor can he be heard if the proceedings in the appeal are correct, except in support of the decree from which the appeal of the other party is taken.” [Morley Construction Co. v. Maryland Casualty Co., 300 U.S. 185,191-92, 57 S.Ct. 325, 327, 81 L.Ed. 593 (1937) (citations omitted).]
More recently, in a case cited by the majority, the Second Circuit refused to reverse an erroneous judgment of the district court in an action to compel arbitration. The court said:
Were the issue before us we would have no difficulty holding that the district court erred in declaring Article XXVIII void since the validity of Article XXVIII under section 8(e) is an issue lying initially in the exclusive province of the arbitrator. However, we have no power to pass on this question because of the failure of the Union to appeal. [United Optical Workers Union Local 408 v. Sterling Optical Co., Inc., 500 F.2d 220, 223-24 (2d Cir. 1974).]
*786After a brief discussion, the court concluded:
It may well be that the cross-appeal rule is a rule of practice, see Langnes v. Green, 282 U.S. 531, 538, 51 S.Ct. 243, 75 L.Ed. 520 (1931), which we .may dispense with in an appropriate case. But the present case is not one calling for an exception to a rule so well-established and of such long usage. [Id. at 224 (citation omitted.]
The command of the majority here in remanding, that there be “further findings and a new conclusion,” based on the dollar contribution made by each party, requires a full reconsideration in which the appellee may enlarge her half interest in the property and thereby obtain more than a mere affirmance. She can emerge in a much better position as a result of her adversary’s appeal.
The majority justifies this by deeming the cross-appeal rule “a rule of practice which may be dispensed with under appropriate circumstances,” citing Langnes v. Green, supra. I believe that we should follow the current majority view that the rule is a jurisdictional requirement, under which the question of enlarging appellee’s rights is not properly before this court. See also, e. g., Gomez v. Wilson, 155 U.S.App. D.C. 242, 245 n.10, 477 F.2d 411, 414 n.10 (1973); Third National Bank in Nashville v. United States, 454 F.2d 689, 690-91 (6th Cir. 1972); Jamesbury Corp. v. Worcester Valve Co., 443 F.2d 205, 208 n.3 (1st Cir. 1971).
Accordingly, if there is to be a remand, we should specify that appellant can be awarded no less upon reconsideration than was allocated to him after the matter was first tried; as to appellee, the judgment is final and her share cannot be enlarged because she did not appeal.
Although the trial court believed, erroneously, that it could not impose a partial resulting trust, the effect of its disposition was to do just that. The only stumbling block to accepting its decision is that the parties were held to be joint tenants instead of tenants in common. I would simply correct that conclusion here and affirm the trial court’s determination of a one-half interest for each party, but as tenants in common.