Court Opinion

ID: 9612142
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:05:26.865093+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:39:44.850266
License: Public Domain

Submitted on Respondent's Petition for Rehearing
Before Wabneb, Chief Justice, and Tooze, Rossman and Lusk, Justices.
LUSK, J.
In a petition for rehearing the defendants again press upon us for consideration the case of Lane v. Beveridge, 135 Or 559, 296 P 872, contending that the clerk of the court had the right to rely on that decision and that we erred in overruling it.
As appears from the analysis of the case in our former opinion, Lane v. Beveridge involves two questions : First, whether the foreclosure decree provided for judgments for the amounts of the indebtedness owing to the holders of the first and second mortgages, respectively; and, second, whether it provided for a judgment for the deficiency arising after the sheriff’s *372sale. As to the first question, the apparent basis of the decision was that satisfaction of the amounts found due and owing by the court was limited to the proceeds of sale of the mortgaged premises; while as to the second, the court ruled that, because the sheriff in his return had not followed the direction of the decree to specify the amount of the deficiency, no duty of the clerk to docket sueh amount as a judgment arose. Its mere statement shows that the decision of the second question can have no possible bearing on this case. As to the first question the court said:
“The decree in the foreclosure suit did not provide for judgment against J. E. Shears and Mary Shears; therefore it did not constitute a lien against the property. The only provision we find is that the property be sold and if the sheriff’s return showed a deficiency in favor of Josephine Evans that a deficiency judgment be docketed.” 135 Or 564.
While some of the language of the opinion is obscure, the court evidently concluded, upon a consideration of the entire decree, that its provisions • meant no more than that an amount of money found to be due and owing to the mortgagees should be satisfied out of the proceeds of the sale of the mortgaged premises. For that reason, it was not a judgment for money, but, rather, the mere judicial impression of a lien on land. We are not concerned with any such provisions here. Lane v. Beveridge does not control the present question, which (apart from the contention respecting the powers of a divorce court) is simply whether a provision in a decree that the defendant shall pay to the plaintiff a sum of money constitutes a judgment. Nevertheless, in view of the possibility that the rule of law as announced in Lane v. Beveridge may have affected *373property rights and guided the conduct of public officials, we deem it our duty, under the doctrine of stare decisis, to withdraw the statement in our former opinion overruling this decision.
Much of the able brief filed by the petitioner is devoted to reargument of propositions heretofore fully argued and to which the court gave careful consideration. The only matters which we think call for comment now are the following:
 It is contended that our holding that the circuit court, sitting as a divorce court, has authority to enter a judgment for money as a part of a settlement of property rights is inconsistent with what we said in State ex rel v. Tolls, 160 Or 317, 85 P2d 366, 119 ALR 1370 (a case not heretofore cited), on the subject of limited powers of a divorce court. In the Tolls case we held, following numerous precedents, that an order in a divorce suit, made before decree, for the payment by the husband to the wife of suit money and temporary alimony, was not a judgment entitled to be docketed. The authority to make such an order was at that time provided for by Oregon Code 1930 § 6-913, now OES 107.090 (1) (a). As the opinion points out, such an order is not a judgment because it is interlocutory, not final, and subject to modification at any time. In view of the fact that the only statute which authorized an award of this kind during the pendency of the divorce suit was the one above cited, we called attention to the rule that the court in a divorce suit exercises purely statutory powers. It followed that the order could not be regarded as a judgment even though the court which made it so intended. But here we are dealing with power of quite a different sort. The award of property in the final decree of divorce has finality, and, where the award is of money, as in this case, a reasonable *374construction of the statute, as we attempted to demonstrate in our former opinion, leads to the conclusion that the court may exercise the discretion and authority vested in it by the entry of a judgment. In addition to what we have already said on the subject, we may add that Oregon Laws 1947, ch 557, the statute in question, grants the power to the court to make an award of real and personal property in a final decree, and it is always appropriate in a decree in a suit in equity to provide for a money judgment which may be warranted under the issues and the evidence. In our opinion, it would be an unjustifiably narrow construction of this statute to say that it was intended to withhold this power from the court where the award is of money. There is here no inconsistency with the Tolls case. In each case we have merely given effect to a statute properly construed in the light of the rule that the powers involved are purely statutory.
It is argued that the court has assumed that the complaint in the divorce suit out of which this litigation arises was sufficiently broad to justify the entry of a personal judgment against the defendant therein, and that, since this assumption may be erroneous, we should determine now what the ruling would be if that complaint is inadequate for such a purpose. The court can only decide questions that are before it. The case is here on a demurrer to a complaint which sets up the decree in the divorce suit as an exhibit. Counsel for the defendants could have raised the question now suggested by filing an answer to the complaint in the case at bar which disclosed the allegations of the complaint in the divorce suit. They did not choose to do so, and the decision of what is now purely a hypothetical question will have to await future developments.
The petition for rehearing is denied.