St. Louis & North Arkansas Railroad v. Bratton

124 S.W. 752, 93 Ark. 234, 1910 Ark. LEXIS 292
CourtSupreme Court of Arkansas
DecidedJanuary 17, 1910
StatusPublished
Cited by21 cases

This text of 124 S.W. 752 (St. Louis & North Arkansas Railroad v. Bratton) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Arkansas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
St. Louis & North Arkansas Railroad v. Bratton, 124 S.W. 752, 93 Ark. 234, 1910 Ark. LEXIS 292 (Ark. 1910).

Opinion

Frauenthal, J.

This is an appeal from a judgment of the Searcy Circuit Court correcting or amending by nunc pro tunc order a former judgment of that court entered at a former term. At the February, 1909, term of the Searcy Circuit Court, the plaintiff below, Benjamin Bratton, administrator, filed his motion for a nunc pro tunc order, in which he stated that on January 10, 1906, he filed a complaint against the defendant to recover damages for the wrongful killing of one Benjamin Bratton, Sr., and that on March 16, 1907, said cause was tried in said court, and a verdict returned by the jury in favor of the plaintiff for $2,500. That a judgment was entered upon said verdict at that term of said court, but that by oversight it failed to mention the lien which goes with such a judgment. He asked that the judgment, as entered at said former term of court, “be corrected by a nunc pro tunc order, so as to mention the fact that a lien goes with the judgment as against the property of the defendant which it owned at the time the cause of action accrued.” Upon the trial of the original action the jury returned the following verdict: “We, the jury, find for the plaintiff, Benjamin Bratton, administrator of the estate of Benjamin Bratton, Sr., deceased, the sum of twenty-five hundred dollars;” and the following judgment was entered thereon: “It is therefore considered, ordered and adjudged by the court that the plaintiff, Benjamin Bratton, Jr., as the administrator of the estate of Benjamin Bratton, Sr., deceased, have and recover of and from said defendant said sum o'f twenty-five hundred dollars and all his costs in this suit laid out and expended, and in default of payment let execution go therefor.”

The motion for the nunc pro tunc order was submitted to the court upon an agreed statement of facts. This statement includes the complaint and answer in the original suit, the verdict of the jury upon the trial of the action, and the former judgment entered therein, and also the following:

“2. That from the record of the case it does not appear that the plaintiff made any request to have granted it the lien mentioned in sections 6661 and 6663 of Kirby’s Digest.
“3. It is further agreed that the judge of the circuit court, in accordance with his custom, left the form of the judgment to be drawn by the clerk of the court, intending that said judgment would be drawn to conform with the law and the facts; that his attention was never called to the lien mentioned in the above sections of Kirby’s Digest, and that his mind never passed upon it.”

The circuit court granted said motion, and entered in full a judgment nunc pro tunc, in which it stated in substance that “the judgment being a lien” on the property of the defendant which belonged to it at the time the cause of action upon which the verdict was rendered accrued. From this judgment, thus correcting or amending the judgment entered at the former term of the Searcy Circuit Court, the defendant prosecutes this appeal.

The plaintiff bases his right to the above lien by virtue of section 6661 of Kirby’s Digest, which, in substance, provides that every person who shall sustain loss or damage to person or property from any railroad for which a liability may exist at law shall have a lien for said damage on said railroad and its property. And he contends that he is entitled to have said lien mentioned as a matter of right and of course in the judgment for the recovery of the damages by virtue of section 6663 of Kirby’s Digest, which provides that “said lien shall be mentioned in the judgment rendered for the claimant in the ordinary suit for the claim, * * * and may be enforced by ordinary levy and sale under final or other process of law or equity.” The plaintiff urges that he is entitled to have the former judgment of the court which failed to mention said lien amended in that regard, either because of the clerical misprision of the clerk in entering the judgment, pr because the mention of the lien is necessarily and properly a part of the judgment by reason of the fact that he was entitled to it as a matter of course.

The question that is thus presented for determination by this appeal is in what regard and to what extent can a court amend or correct its judgment after the expiration of the term at which the judgment was rendered and entered.

In order to give to the record of a court the utmost sanctity and an absolute verity, the common law declared that no judgment could be amended after the term at which it was rendered. But where the entry through some plain error fails to correspond with the judgment that was actually rendered, the principles of justice obviously require that it should be corrected; and therefore this rule of the common law has been modified in modern practice to that end. The record should speak the truth; and, as was said by Chief Justice Cockrirr in the case of Hershy v. Baer, 45 Ark. 240, “the power of a circuit court to amend its record so as to cause it to speak the truth is one inherent in the idea of justice.” The entry in the record should correspond with the judgment which was actually pronounced, and the court has the power, and it is its duty, even at a subsequent term, to make such changes in the entry as to make it conform to the truth. But where the judgment expresses the entire judicial action taken at the time of its rendition, the court has no authority, after the expiration of the term, to enlarge or to diminish it in matter of substance or in any matter affecting the merits. Under the guise of an amendment, there is no authority to revise a judgment, or to correct a judicial mistake, or to adjudicate a matter which might have been considered at the time of the trial, or to grant an additional relief which was not in the contemplation of the court at the time the judgment was rendered. “The authority of a court to amend its record by a nunc pro tunc order is to make it speak the truth, but not to make it speak what it did not speak, but ought'to have spoken.” Malpas v. Lowenstine, 46 Ark. 552; Cox v. Gress, 51 Ark. 224; Gregory v. Bartlett, 55 Ark. 30; Tucker v. Hawkins, 72 Ark. 21; Liddell v. Landau, 87 Ark. 438; Bouldin v. Jennings, 92 Ark. 299.

If there was some issue on which the court should have passed and pronounced judgment, but did not actually do so, such omission cannot be supplied by an amendment at a subsequent term of the court. The entry should correspond only with the judgment actually intended and pronounced by the court; and if the entry does not do this because of any clerical mistake, or because some matter actually adjudicated has been inadvertently omitted, then it can be corrected so as to conform to what was actually done. “In regard to the power of amending judgments by supplying omissions, it is necessary not to lose sight of the principle that amendments can only be allowed for the purpose of making the record conform to the truth, not for the purpose of revising and changing the judgment. Hence, if anything has been omitted from the judgment which is necessarily or properly a part of it, but failed to be incorporated in it through the negligence or inadvertence of the court or the clerk, then the omission may be supplied by an amendment after the term. If, on the other hand, the proposed addition is a mere afterthought, and formed no .part of the judgment- as originally intended and pronounced, it cannot be brought in by way of amendment.” 1 Black on Judgments (2 Ed.), § 156; 23 Cyc. 873.

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Bluebook (online)
124 S.W. 752, 93 Ark. 234, 1910 Ark. LEXIS 292, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/st-louis-north-arkansas-railroad-v-bratton-ark-1910.