Court Opinion

ID: 9537546
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 07:19:45.719635+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:56:46.150263
License: Public Domain

THOMAS, Justice,
specially concurring.
I am in complete agreement with the result reached in this case by the majority opinion. In light of the dissenting opinion I felt compelled to articulate my position with respect to this rather unusual situation.
Initially I must protest the suggestion of the dissenting justice that the trial court did nothing more than adjust the decree distributing property between the parties. The trial court did not purport to do that in its remarks at the close of the hearing when it announced its decision, even though it certainly had the power at that time to modify the decree in other respects than striking the two cows and the calf. Obviously the trial court knew how to modify the decree if that is what was intended.
Once the court modified the decree as it did by striking the two cows and the calf from the property awarded to the appellee the appellant could not be found to have violated the terms of the decree. Since they were not awarded to the appellee under the decree as modified, the sale of the livestock by the appellant was not improper. This simple fact for me would resolve the question of any possible civil contempt because there was no court order than extant with which the appellant had not complied, and consequently there was no potential for either coercive or remedial effect with respect to the court’s finding of contempt. Even in its pronouncement of its decision the trial court first modified the decree and then proceeded to discuss contempt.
Referring again to the remarks of the court at the time that it announced its *665decision, as quoted in the majority opinion, it is clear that the district judge was distressed with the appellant because the judge felt she had misled the court. That situation perhaps has potential for a finding of criminal contempt, but the teaching of Horn v. District Court, Ninth Judicial District, Wyo., 647 P.2d 1368 (1982), is that the court was without any jurisdiction to punish the appellant for criminal contempt by awarding monies to the appellee.
For these reasons I am satisfied that the judgment of the district court with respect to the matter of contempt must be reversed.