State, Department of Law Enforcement v. One 1955 Willys Jeep, V.I.N. 573481691

595 P.2d 299, 100 Idaho 150, 1979 Ida. LEXIS 415

• Court: Idaho Supreme Court
• Decided: May 2, 1979
• Docket: 12739
• Status: Published

Opinions

BAKES, Justice.

This is an appeal by the State of Idaho from the dismissal of a forfeiture proceeding under the Uniform Controlled Substances Act, I.C. §§ 37-2701 to -2751, against a vehicle owned by Dan and Karen Rauch. We reverse and remand.

On August 13, 1976, the state filed a complaint seeking the forfeiture of the Rauches’ vehicle pursuant to I.C. § 37-2744(a)(4). The defendant filed a verified answer on September 8, 1976. The case was later set for trial in the magistrate division on November 19, 1976, seventy-two days after the filing of the verified answer. The case was apparently set for trial as the number four priority behind three criminal cases set for trial on the same day. This trial date was later vacated on motion by the defendant.

The defendant moved for summary judgment on the ground that the case had not been tried within thirty days of the filing of the verified answer and that the case had not been given priority over other civil cases as required by I.C. § 37-2744(d)(3)(D). That section provides:

“(D) If a verified answer is filed, the forfeiture proceeding shall be set for hearing on a day not less than.thirty (30) days therefrom; and the proceeding shall have priority over other civil cases.”

The magistrate denied the motion on December 14, 1976, ruling that the section did not require forfeiture hearings to be heard within thirty days of the filing of a verified answer but on the contrary required that the proceedings be heard “on a day not less than thirty (30) days” from the filing of the verified answer. The magistrate further ruled that the case was given “priority over other civil cases” since the other cases given the same trial date were all criminal cases.

The defendant appealed to the district court from the magistrate’s order denying the motion for summary judgment. Ruling on the merits of the appeal, the district court on April 11, 1977, reversed the magistrate and concluded that despite its literal language subsection (d)(3)(D) must be read as requiring commencement of the trial within thirty days of the filing of a verified answer. The district court ruled that if the delay was caused by the court the matter should be dismissed. The court therefore remanded the case to the magistrate for a determination of the cause of the delay. The district court did not decide whether the magistrate had also failed to give the case priority over other civil cases.’

On remand the magistrate found that the delay was caused by the court and the court clerk’s office and therefore dismissed the case on April 13, 1977. The state appealed to the district court from the magistrate’s dismissal arguing (1) that since the magistrate’s order denying the defendant’s motion for summary judgment was not a final judgment the district court had not had jurisdiction over the matter in the first appeal and the resulting order was therefore void, and (2) that the district court had erred in its original interpretation of subsection (d)(3)(D).

On August 17, 1977, the district court dismissed the second appeal, concluding that it had had jurisdiction to hear the original appeal, even though the order appealed from was not a final judgment, since the jurisdiction of the district court in this matter “is concurrent with the jurisdiction of a magistrate [and] the district court jurisdictionally can adjudicate upon any matter before any magistrate where the hearings or proceedings have not been segmented.” The district court reaffirmed its original construction of the thirty day provision and affirmed the dismissal by the magistrate. The district court also awarded the defendant, apparently pursuant to I.C. § 12 — 121, $519.50 as reasonable attorney fees and costs incurred as a result of the state’s second appeal. The state then brought this appeal.

The power of the district court when acting as an appellate court is limited to reviewing “final judgments of the magistrate’s division . . . .” I.C. § 1— 2213(1); I.R.C.P. 83(a)(1), (b) and (u)(l). It is well established that an order denying a motion for summary judgment is not a final judgment for purposes of appeal. Twin Falls County v. Knievel, 98 Idaho 321, 563 P.2d 45 (1977); Wilson v. DeBoard, 94 Idaho 562, 494 P.2d 566 (1972); see also Pichon v. L. J. Broekemeier, Inc., 99 Idaho 598, 586 P.2d 1042 (1978). The district court therefore lacked jurisdiction to hear the first appeal from the magistrate’s order denying the motion for summary judgment.¹ Since all subsequent orders entered by the district court were based upon the law as established in that proceeding in which the district court acted without jurisdiction, we reverse all orders entered subsequent to the magistrate’s order denying the motion for summary judgment, including the two district court orders and the magistrate’s dismissal of the case.

The statements in the dissent concerning the effect of the district court’s first order and the state’s failure to attempt an appeal to this Court from that order warrant some comment from a procedural standpoint. When the district court entered its first order, which reversed the magistrate’s order denying the motion to summary judgment and remanded the case to the magistrate for further proceedings, there was not a final judgment from which an appeal could have been taken to this Court as was required by I.C. § 13-201 which was then in effect. The magistrate’s order denying the motion for summary judgment and the district court’s reversal and remand of that order were at best interlocutory orders and clearly neither met the requirements of a final judgment necessary for an appeal to this Court. See I.C. § 13-201(1) (now repealed); Oneida v. Oneida, 95 Idaho 105, 503 P.2d 305 (1972); State ex rel. State Board of Medicine v. Smith, 80 Idaho 267, 328 P.2d 581 (1958). The fact that the district court did not acknowledge the basic limitation on its appellate jurisdiction, i. e., the necessity of a final judgment, and permitted a piecemeal appeal from the magistrate to the district court does not, of course, require this Court to disregard that same rule and permit a piecemeal appeal from the district court to this Court. The dissent’s suggestion that the state could have and should have appealed from the district court’s first order to this Court is simply incorrect. Indeed, in light of our burgeoning caseload, the state should be commended, not penalized, for not burdening this Court with a premature appeal which obviously would have had to have been dismissed. Oneida v. Oneida, supra.

In support of its position, the dissent refers to Estate of Irwin (Russell v. Butler), 99 Idaho 543, 585 P.2d 953 (1978) (per curiam). That case involved an appeal from the magistrate’s dismissal of objections to a final account filed by an estate’s personal representative. The appeal was taken first to the district court and then to this Court. The appealability of the magistrate’s order in Irwin was not raised at any level by either the parties, the district court or this Court, probably because the magistrate’s order in Irwin was an order approving the final account and petition for settlement filed by the personal representative and as such was clearly appealable to the district court pursuant to the special rules concerning appeals of probate orders in I.C. § 17-201(6). The district court’s decision was arguably appealable to this Court under 1.A.R. 11(b), which went into effect while that case was pending on appeal before this Court. See I.A.R. 1. As a result, none of the parties in Irwin raised the non-appealability issue, nor did this Court.

The procedural course taken by the state in this case was the proper one. It accepted the remand to the magistrate and there obtained a final judgment, the dismissal of the action, the only final judgment entered to that date. With this final judgment the case was then procedurally ripe for an appeal to this Court, although that appeal had to be taken by way of a second appeal to the district court. Once properly before this Court, the state of course is entitled to challenge not only the final judgment entered in this case, but also all the interlocutory orders entered by the magistrate and the district court. The dissent’s suggestion that the state’s challenge to the district court’s first order was an improper “collateral attack” misconceives the basic principles of res judicata. The district court order was not a final judgment entered by a court with jurisdiction in a separate proceeding but was only an interlocutory order entered by the same court in the same proceeding which is now before this Court on direct appeal from the only final judgment entered in the proceeding. The state’s attack of that order is a direct attack on appeal, not a collateral attack.

The California decision, Gore v. Bingaman, 20 Cal.2d 118, 124 P.2d 17 (1942), which the dissent discusses at length, is not in point. As the dissent admits, the original decision of the trial court in that case, which was then appealed to the Court of Appeals, was a final appealable judgment, not an interlocutory non-appealable order as in the instant case. The California Supreme Court in Gore decided that a question of whether an earlier appeal should have been heard by the Supreme Court or an appellate court was conclusively decided by the appellate court’s decision and the Supreme Court’s denial of a hearing from that appellate court decision. However, in the case at bar the district court order was not a final determination but merely an interlocutory order which was properly subject to attack on appeal once a final judgment had been entered. The state’s understandable failure to attempt an appeal from an unappealable order certainly does not bar a challenge to that order on appeal once the case became appealable.

Because the issue of the proper construction of I.C. § 37 — 2744(d)(3)(D) will certainly arise again on remand, judicial economy will be served by our resolution of that issue at this time. I.C. § 1 — 205. The defendant argues that although subsection (d)(3)(D) requires a hearing to be set on “a day not less than thirty (30) days” from the filing of the verified answer, the context and purposes of that subsection require that it be read as mandating a hearing on a day “not more than thirty (30) days” from the filing of the answer.

The most fundamental premise underlying judicial review of the legislature’s enactments is that, unless the result is palpably absurd, the courts must assume that the legislature meant what it said. Where a statute is clear and unambiguous the expressed intent of the legislature must be given effect. Worley Highway Dist. v. Kootenai County, 98 Idaho 925, 576 P.2d 206 (1978); Moon v. Investment Board, 97 Idaho 595, 548 P.2d 861 (1976); Herndon v. West, 87 Idaho 335, 393 P.2d 35 (1964). Referring to a virtually identical Arizona statute, the Arizona court stated that the purpose of the statute was to provide “the law enforcement agencies with 30 days in which to prepare prosecution of their case.” State ex rel. Berger v. McCarthy, 113 Ariz. 161, 164, 548 P.2d 1158, 1161 (1976).² Likewise, the Idaho legislature may have intended to provide the state with a thirty day period in which to prepare its case. A literal reading of the statute is not necessarily irrational or absurd. Therefore, the statute must be interpreted as written.

The respondent also argued before the magistrate that subsection (d)(3)(D) required a dismissal of the case because the case had not been given “priority over other civil cases.” The respondent alleged that between October 1 — the date the magistrate set the case for trial — and November 19 — the trial date — twenty-seven civil'cases were set on the calendar of the magistrate. The respondent argues therefore that the case was not given the required priority. Because of its disposition of the issue concerning the thirty day provision, the district court did not reach this issue. Nevertheless, it is certain to rise again on remand and we address it at this time.

Generally, procedural statutes are construed liberally to promote a disposition of the case on the merits. Northwest Health Care, Inc. v. Idaho Dept. of Health & Welfare, 99 Idaho 843, 590 P.2d 99 (1979); Bunn v. Bunn, 99 Idaho 710, 587 P.2d 1245 (1978). Where the prescribed procedure is not the essence of the thing to be accomplished the statute is generally considered directory and not mandatory. State ex rel. Arcudi v. Iassogna, 165 Conn. 203, 332 A.2d 90 (1973); State ex rel. Raitt v. Peterson, 156 Neb. 678, 57 N.W.2d 280 (1953); see generally 3 C. Sands, Sutherland Statutory Construction § 67.02 (4th ed. 1974). Moreover, in Idaho it is well established that “whether a statute is mandatory or directory [is] to be ascertained from a consideration of the entire act, its nature, its object, and the consequences that would result from construing it one way or the other.” Summers v. Dooley, 94 Idaho 87, 89, 481 P.2d 318, 320 (1971). See Craig H. Hisaw, Inc. v. Bishop, 95 Idaho 145, 504 P.2d 818 (1972). Here, the legislature was prescribing the circumstances in which a vehicle may be seized and forfeited and was setting forth an orderly and expeditious method for initiating and conducting such forfeiture proceedings. In this context we conclude that the provision that a forfeiture proceeding be given priority over other civil cases was intended to be directory and not mandatory. A contrary conclusion would be disruptive to an orderly administration of justice and would impair the flexibility the trial courts must have in setting cases for trial. In the absence of a showing of substantial prejudice the complaint should not be dismissed merely because it was not given priority over other civil cases, if in fact such priority was not given. We need not reach the state’s other assignment of error regarding costs and attorney fees since those awards are vacated by our reversal of the judgment below.

Reversed and remanded.

SHEPARD, C. J., DONALDSON, J., and SCOGGIN, J. pro tem., concur.

1 . The district court, of course, does have subject matter jurisdiction over appeals from the magistrate’s division. See I.C. § 1-2213(1); I.R.C.P. 83(a), (b) and (u); Sierra Life Ins. Co. v. Granata, 99 Idaho 624, 586 P.2d 1068 (1978). However, with reference to the particular order appealed from in this case, the district court lacked jurisdiction over the appeal in that it was improper for the district court to proceed to hear the appeal absent a final judgment. Where an appeal is taken from a non-appealable order, the appeal should be dismissed, even by the court sua sponte, for lack of jurisdiction over the particular appeal. See Soderman v. Kackley, 97 Idaho 850, 555 P.2d 390 (1976); Oneida v. Oneida, 95 Idaho 105, 503 P.2d 305 (1972).

2 . Ariz.Rev.Stat. § 36-1045(B) provides: “B. If a verified answer is filed, the forfeiture proceedings shall be set for hearing on a day not less than thirty days after the answer is filed. and the proceeding shall have priority over other civil cases. Notice of the hearing shall be given in the manner provided for service of notice of seizure.”