Wood's Pharmacy, Inc. v. Kenton

68 P.2d 705, 50 Ariz. 53, 1937 Ariz. LEXIS 153
CourtArizona Supreme Court
DecidedJune 7, 1937
DocketCivil No. 3818.
StatusPublished
Cited by6 cases

This text of 68 P.2d 705 (Wood's Pharmacy, Inc. v. Kenton) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Arizona Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Wood's Pharmacy, Inc. v. Kenton, 68 P.2d 705, 50 Ariz. 53, 1937 Ariz. LEXIS 153 (Ark. 1937).

Opinion

LOCKWOOD, J.

This is an appeal from an order of the superior court of Maricopa county entered nunc pro tunc July 20, 1936, for the purpose of correcting a minute entry of March 31st. The record shows that J. C. Kenton, hereinafter called plaintiff, filed a certain action in the superior court of Maricopa county against Wood’s Pharmacy, Inc., a corporation, and others, hereinafter called defendants. After various preliminary pleas were disposed of, a hearing was had on July 8, 1935, on a motion to show cause why an audit should not be made. After considerable evidence was introduced on this motion, the court took the matter under advisement, and no further proceedings were had until March 31, 1936, when the following order was made:

“Comes now the plaintiff appearing by counsel, Lynch & Herring by A. R. Lynch. Thereupon, it is ordered this cause is dismissed with prejudice on motion of counsel for the plaintiff.”

Thereafter, and on April 29th the plaintiff filed the following motion:

“That an order be issued amending according to truth and justice that order entered on the records of the clerk of the superior court on March 31, 1936, in the above entitled and numbered cause which now reads, ‘dismissed with prejudice on motion of the plaintiff,’ and that the said order be amended and changed nunc pro tunc to read, ‘dismissed without prejudice on motion of the plaintiff. ’
“In support of this motion your petitioner states, that on the 31st day of March 1936, A. R. Lynch, one of the attorneys for the plaintiff in the above entitled and numbered cause appeared before the court and *55 under section 3813, R. O. A. 1928, requested the court to enter an order dismissing the above entitled action. That through inadvertence or mistake the clerk of the said court caused the order to be entered as it now stands in the records of the clerk of the superior court as above set out. That the motion to dismiss is made under section 3813, R. C. A. 1928, and was not intended at that time or at any time to be a dismissal of the action prejudicing the plaintiff’s right to file over or to begin an action seeking relief ag'ainst the defendants at a later date.”

The court, on May 11th, took evidence on the motion to correct as above set forth, and on July 20th entered the following order:

“It is hereby ordered granting motion of plaintiff to correct the record so that the minute entry of March 31, 1936 shall read, ‘Order this cause dismissed without prejudice, on motion of plaintiff,’ instead of ‘with prejudice.’ ”

It is from this last order that the appeal is taken.

The question before us is the nature of a nunc pro tunc order, and whether the record shows that the order of July 20th was correct. We have had the question of nunc pro tunc orders before us in several cases, the first case being Southern Pac. Company v. Pender, 14 Ariz. 573, 134 Pac. 289. Therein we said:

“The office of a nunc pro tunc entry is not to make an order now for then, but to enter now for then an order previously made. Klein v. Southern Pac. Co., (C. C.) 140 Fed. 213; Lombard v. Wade, 37 Or. 426, 61 Pac. 856.”

The matter again came up in Rae v. Brunswick Tire Corp., 45 Ariz. 135, 40 Pac. (2d) 976, 979, under circumstances very similar to those involved in the present case, the particular issue involved therein also being the correction of an order of dismissal. In that case we said:

*56 “The purpose of such an order is to make the record speak the truth and the power to do so is inherent in the court, but in the exercise thereof the court may not do more than make its records correspond to the actual facts; it cannot under the guise of amending a minute entry correct any judicial error it may have made, or cause an order or judgment that was never in fact made to be placed of record. In other words, the office of a nunc pro tunc order is to record now for then what actually did occur.”

And we held that the record in that case showed 'sufficiently that the nunc pro tunc order was properly made. The matter again was under consideration in American Surety Co. of New York v. Mosher, 48 Ariz. 552, 64 Pac. (2d) 1025, 1030, and we said:

“The object of an order nunc pro tunc is not the rendering of a new judgment and the ascertainment and determination of new rights, but is only the placing in proper form on the record the judgment that had been previously actually rendered, in order that the record may speak the truth so as to make it show what the judicial action really was. Its office is not to supply omitted action by the court, but to furnish the record of an action really had, where its recording was omitted through inadvertence or mistake. ’ ’

In that case the question was raised as to whether a nunc pro tunc order could be based on the personal recollection of the court, or must be founded upon some written memorandum in the case and- among the files of the court, and we held that either was sufficient.

The question then is whether there is sufficient evidence in the record to show that the court, as a matter of fact, on March 31, 1936, did order the action “dismissed without prejudice,” whereas the clerk inadvertently, in entering the order on the minutes, made it to read, “dismissed with prejudice.” We think the reporter’s transcript of the hearing on the motion *57 is decisive on this point. Mr. A. R. Lynch, of counsel for plaintiff, the attorney who requested the dismissal, testified as follows, when asked as to what the original order made by the court actually was:

“I wanted the order to read what the order Avas Avhen it was made. The words ‘with prejudice’ or ‘without prejudice’ were not mentioned by the court, Avere not mentioned by me, and were not mentioned by the clerk, and where the clerk got them, I don’t know. ’ ’

The trial judge said:

“As far as the court is concerned, I am sure that T neither directed an order with or without prejudice. I most certainly would not have directed it without prejudice, or with prejudice, I should say, unless I thoroughly understood that to be the desire, because I realize the significance of that.”

The clerk who actually made the order had no independent recollection as to the language used.

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Bluebook (online)
68 P.2d 705, 50 Ariz. 53, 1937 Ariz. LEXIS 153, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/woods-pharmacy-inc-v-kenton-ariz-1937.