Court Opinion

ID: 9631623
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 10:45:01.462651+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:30:36.931797
License: Public Domain

*3RICHARDSON, P. J.
At the May, 1990, primary election, the voters of Josephine County approved an initiative measure that amended the county charter in a way that would reduce the present salaries of the county commissioners. The next month, plaintiff, the county official who has overall administrative responsibility for payment of the salaries, brought this declaratory judgment action, contending, inter alia, that the amendment is in conflict with ORS 204.126, and seeking to have it declared invalid.1 The only defendant named is Feder, who was the chief petitioner for the measure. He filed a third-party action against the county and its three commissioners, asserting a declaratory claim that the amendment is valid, along with other claims that are not relevant here. The trial court dismissed the third-party claim on an ORCP 21 motion, granted plaintiffs motion for summary judgment on his claim and entered a declaratory judgment on that claim holding the “measure” to be invalid. See n 1, supra. Defendant appeals, and we reverse and remand with instructions to dismiss for lack of a justiciable controversy.
Defendant makes two assignments. The second ascribes error to the trial court’s ruling on the merits. In the first, he asserts that the court erred in allowing plaintiff “to challenge the new provision by filing suit naming Feder as the only defendant.”2 He explains:
“Feder has no power to grant the relief ordered by the [court], and the County lacked power to seek a court ruling by naming Feder as a defendant simply because he probably supports the amendment he initiated.”
Therefore, he reasons, in effect if not in terms, no justiciable controversy was stated. See n 3, infra.
*4Plaintiffs response is devoted, in the main, to demonstrating that defendant was a proper party under applicable provisions of ORS chapter 28. We have no doubt of that, but it is not the issue. The question is whether the contentions could be adjudicated with defendant as the only party adverse to plaintiff. By the time the action was brought, the measure had been enacted by the voters and, in August, would become part of the county charter by operation of law. Defendant initiated the measure but, after its passage, he had no more authority over and responsibility for its implementation than any other citizen of the county who is not employed in its government. Indeed, according to plaintiffs contentions, he is the person with that authority and responsibility.
The requirements for justiciability include that there be a “controversy on which [a] judgment may effectively operate,” State Farm Fire & Cas. v. Reuter, 294 Or 446, 449, 657 P2d 1231 (1983), and one which can result “in specific relief through a binding decree as opposed to an advisory opinion which is binding on no one.” Brown v. Oregon State Bar, 293 Or 446, 449, 648 P2d 1289 (1982). No relief that could have been directed at defendant could accomplish those essential conditions of justiciability. Although it could be argued that plaintiff is bound by the judgment and does have authority over the implementation of the charter amendment, that argument would fail, because he was not entitled to seek the relief that he obtained. The declaratory judgment procedure is not available for “friendly” or academic controversies. See Gortmaker v. Seaton, 252 Or 440, 450 P2d 547 (1969). In essence, what plaintiff effectively seeks is an injunction against himself, through the contrivance of naming a strawman defendant against whom no meaningful or enforceable relief could be given.
We do not suggest that defendant did not appear and vigorously defend the amendment or that he was not a proper party to the action. The problem is not that defendant is a party, but that there is no defendant in the case whose presence might make a meaningful judicial remedy possible. Plaintiff states in his brief:
“Defendant Feder has not even suggested who would be a (more) appropriate party to be made a defendant in the complaint for declaratory judgment.”
*5The response to that, of course, is that the defendant in a declaratory judgment action has no duty to make it — or to suggest how to make it — justiciable. We suspect, however, that it would not be inordinately difficult for plaintiff to find an answer on his own to his question.
Plaintiff also argues:
“[I]t is curious that [defendant] considers that he (at least alone) is not a proper party defendant in the declaratory judgment action to determine the validity of Measure 17.2 yet did consider himself a proper (lone) third-party plaintiff to seek (a) declaratory relief, (b) injunctive relief, (c) attorney fees, and (d) monetary damages, (for infliction of emotional distress) stemming from the same initial lawsuit.”
It is correct that defendant brought a third-party claim that, in some respects, was the mirror image of plaintiffs claim. However, the third-party claim was dismissed on the third-party defendants’ motion, and no declaratory judgment on it was entered.3 There is no justiciable controversy.
 We are unable to agree with the dissent that the appropriate disposition is a remand to allow plaintiff to replead rather than a dismissal of the action. The absence of a justiciable controversy in a declaratory judgment action is a jurisdictional defect. Brown v. Oregon State Bar, supra, 293 Or at 449-50. Wright v. Hazen Investments, Inc., 293 Or 259, 648 P2d 360 (1982), and Eddy v. Eddy, 95 Or App 733, 770 P2d 969, rev den 308 Or 158 (1989), the most nearly apposite cases on which the dissent relies, differ from the present case in two critical respects: First, the defect in those cases consisted of a failure to join, as defendants, certain identified indispensable parties, whose presence would have enabled the courts to give complete relief; second, there were actual controversies between the existing parties to those cases, independently of the interests of the unjoined parties.
Conversely, here there is no justiciable controversy between these parties, and we cannot say on this record that *6the addition of any particular party or parties would suffice to create one. The dissent simply speculates about various approaches that plaintiff might follow that might or might not succeed. In the dissent’s words, “[i]t is at least conceivable that plaintiff could plead a justiciable controversy with defendant or others.” 115 Or App at 9. As things stand, however, he has not pleaded a justiciable controversy, and nothing that the trial court or we can do, such as allowing the joinder of a party, would necessarily give rise to one.
Perhaps plaintiff (or someone else) can find an approach for making the substantive issues he raises judicially cognizable, but not against this defendant alone. There is also no doubt that he can bring a new action. We do not decide this case on its merits and, in the abstract, the legality of the charter amendment remains a viable question. However, there is no reason why this action over which the trial court lacks jurisdiction should be on its docket while plaintiff attempts to find an appropriate way to present that question and to bring his action within the court’s jurisdiction. Unlike in Wright and Eddy, where the decisive problem was simply one of joinder of additional known parties, the situation in this case is that the only party whom plaintiff has found is the wrong one, and his eventual success in stating a justiciable controversy against appropriate parties is only a hypothesis on the dissent’s part.4 Stated summarily, unlike the cases on which the dissent relies, the problem here is not one of joinder; it is that there is nothing to join anything to.
We do not reach defendant’s second assignment.
Reversed and remanded with instructions to dismiss.

 The complaint asks that the measure, rather than the enactment, be declared invalid, and the trial court’s judgment also declares that it is the measure that is invalid. Because the measure had no remaining independent vitality after the voters enacted it, we have the option of treating the judgment as resolving a moot question or of construing it to apply to the enactment rather than the measure. We make the latter choice but note that both choices lead to the same result.

 The stated ground for the motion was that the complaint failed to state a claim.

 In a memorandum of additional authorities, defendant attempts to reformulate his assignments of error. That attempt is untimely. Whether there is ajusticiable controversy is a jurisdictional question that we must address, whether or not it has been raised.

 Assuming that the term “municipality” in ORS 28.110 includes counties, we might agree with the dissent that plaintiffs failure to name the county as a defendant would require a remand rather than a dismissal, if that were the only problem. In the absence of a pleading that does so, however, it is only another speculation that plaintiff could or will state a justiciable controversy against the county. ORS 28.110 may make the county a necessary party; it does not suggest that the presence of a county as a party automatically establishes justiciability without reference to the allegations that are made concerning it in a particular declaratory judgment action. The dissent’s discussion of the county’s necessary party status provides only one more hypothesis about a potential controversy that has not been stated in fact