Court Opinion

ID: 9614502
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:26:03.100744+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:03:36.563974
License: Public Domain

BISTLINE, Justice,
specially concurring.
June 17, 1982. The district court signed a document entitled Judgment and Order. Therein was the declaration that it and preceding documents would constitute the “final judgment” other than for an injunc-tive order and a judgment for the costs.
While time for appeal was running, but had not expired, another document entitled “Final Judgment” was submitted to the trial court, apparently on the premise that it was believed that the final judgment of June 17 had failed to encompass some of the litigated issues. The trial court, wholly ex parte — meaning without any requirement of notice to the adverse party, signed this second Final Judgment. Nothing in the record explains why the trial court did so. Inferentially, that the trial court did do so must have caused counsel to believe that the trial court was of the view that this second Final Judgment was required to close the file. If that assumption was sound, then the Judgment of June 17 was not the final judgment in the case. Now, counsel learns, to his misfortune, that his reliance on what he thought to be the experienced trial court’s view of the state of the matter was misplaced. Time to appeal from the June 17 Judgment ran out before an appeal was taken from the second Final Judgment.
It is a hard case, but I am compelled to vote with the majority. Similarly, just this very week, the Court, on a 4-1 vote, denied a Petition for Rehearing in Rojas v. Lindsay Manufacturing Co., 108 Idaho 590, 701 P.2d 210 (1985), on the grounds that the petition did not timely reach the clerk’s office because, although the street address for the Supreme Court (451W. State Street) was correct, two numbers in the zip code were inadvertently transposed, and caused the fatal delay. A copy of the Petition for Rehearing, which was addressed correctly, reached opposing counsel in Boise prior to the deadline. Presumably, the Court, in sublime obeisance to its own rules, would have done the same had it been conclusively established that the notice of appeal, although correctly addressed, after reaching Boise was simply misplaced by the Postal Department while time ran out. Perhaps this Court could be urged to do as other courts have reasonably done — provide a rule which allows for relaxation of temporal rules on showing of good cause.