Dickinson v. Petroleum Conversion Corporation/Dissent Black

Mr. Justice BLACK, dissenting.

The right to appeal a judgment has long been said to depend or whether it is 'final.' This is a simple question where a court decides all issues simultaneously and enters a final order putting an end to a controversy. But when an order apparently leaves some question or claims open for further court action at a later date, doubts as to finality arise. See, e.g., Hohorst v. Hamburg-American Packet Co., 148 U.S. 262, 13 S.Ct. 590, 37 L.Ed. 443. Finality and appealability have provided judges, lawyers, and commentators with a perpetual subject for debate. But litigants have too often been thrown out of court because their lawyers failed to guess that an order would be held 'final' by an appellate court. The creditors of Petroleum Conversion Corporation, who are prosecuting this action for respondent here, are not the first victims of this jungle of doubt. I also doubt that they will be the last victims, despite the Court's hope that the new Rule 54(b) has charted a clear route through the jungle.

I see no practical reason why the Court of Appeals should not have been free to review the respondent's challenge to the 1948 decree without regard to appealability of the 1947 decree. A rational system of jurisprudence should not attach inexorable consequences to failure to guess right on a legal question for the solution of which neither statutes nor court opinions have provided even a reasonably certain guide. Where, as here, arguments as to which of two decrees is 'final' may be considered relatively even, an appellate court should be free to find 'finality' in either decree appealed from. Under such a rule a court could consider the many circumstances relevant to orderly appellate administration without penalizing litigants merely because it finds that an earlier decree falls on the 'finality' side of what remains a twilight zone. Cf. Davis v. Department of Labor, 317 U.S. 249, 63 S.Ct. 225, 87 L.Ed. 246. See also dissent in City of Morgantown v. Royal Ins. Co., 337 U.S. 254, 263-264, 69 S.Ct. 1067, 1072.

Even if the old 'either-or' rule is applied as to appealability of the 1947 and 1948 decrees here, it seems to me that weightier reasons support holding the latter final. The judge who tried the case and rendered both decrees attributed finality to the decree of 1948 and not to that of 1947. He termed the 1947 order a 'Decree,' the 1948 order a 'Final Decree.' He specifically provided in the 1947 decree 'That the taxation of costs in this case and the entry of judgment therefor, be deferred until the entry of judgment in respect to the matters hereinabove reserved for the future determination of this court.' At his order, both Petroleum and Dickinson received notice of subsequent hearings. Four months before the final 1948 decree the trial judge in a memorandum opinion referred to the 1947 decree as 'interlocutory.' Answering contentions that respondent here should have appealed from the 1947 decree, he stated: 'In my opinion it was not a final decree and was not appealable, at least in so far as it involved the claim for $176,000.' And in the 1948 decree the trial judge for the first time declared that the 1947 decree 'is hereby made final.' The creditors prosecuting this appeal for respondent should not be deprived of an opportunity to appeal from the 1948 decree just because attorneys for the corporation failed to appeal from a former decree which the trial judge himself seems to have considered interlocutory and nonappealable.

The holding that Petroleum's appeal from the 1948 judgment must be dismissed may well produce a strange consequence. The reason for dismissal urged here by petitioner Dickinson is that the 1947 decree was final; under his contention, that decree left nothing for the trial court to do except determine the shares of various 'Rinke subscribers' in 'the particular sum' found due to that class from Lloyd and Dickinson, and to assess costs and enter judgment. On this hypothesis the 1947 decree seems just as final on Dickinson's claims and liability as on Petroleum's. The 1947 litigation originated in charges of fraud made by Dickinson against Lloyd. Petroleum and persons designated as 'Rinke subscribers' then intervened, charging fraud against both Dickinson and Lloyd. The 1947 decree rested on findings that the charges against Dickinson and Lloyd had been proven. The court concluded that the Rinke subscribers, and to some extent Petroleum, had been damaged by their fraud. Accordingly the court awarded partial relief to Petroleum on one of its claims, dismissing all its other claims. The court also fixed a particular amount for the Rinke subscribers as a group to recover from Dickinson and the Lloyd estate. That decree, here held final as to Petroleum, apparently had an identical degree of finality as to Dickinson: in addition to fixing the precise sum for which Dickinson and Lloyd were liable to Rinke subscribers as a group, it completely dismissed Dickinson's affirmative claims. Yet Dickinson himself has appealed from the 1948 decree, and ironically enough he is the only party here urging dismissal of Petroleum's appeal from the same decree.

So far as we know, Dickinson's appeal is still pending. With Petroleum out of the case by this Court's judgment, he should certainly not be left free to have his own appeal considered in the Court of Appeals. Permitting him to challenge the 1947 findings would result in appellate review of that decree without the presence of Petroleum, who was one of Dickinson's 1947 adversaries. If Dickinson can challenge the 1947 decree by appeal from the 1948 judgment, Petroleum should also be allowed to challenge it. And if neither can challenge it, the basic questions of fraud and liability are now beyond the reach of appellate review. I cannot join the Court in applying a rule of 'finality' which attaches such consequences to the understandable failure of these parties to appeal from the 1947 decree.