Here's one that every Hawaii civil practitioner, trial and appellate, should read. It's only a few pages, but it's very important.
It is a pillar of the appeals process that in the usual case, the lower court's judgment must be final -- resolving all claims by all parties against all other parties -- before the appellate court can consider an appeal. If this wasn't already understood, more than 20 years ago, the Hawaii Supreme Court published an opinion that said so, which made it clear that not only does there need to be finality in fact, but that fact must be reduced to a piece of paper, a "Judgment." Jenkins v. Cades Schutte Fleming & Wright, 869 P.2d 1334 (Haw. 1994). And that judgment must recite certain words, and it is these magic words that the appellate court will look at when determining whether it has jurisdiction.
Sounds simple enough. But it even the best of of us sometimes don't get it 100% right, 100% of the time. It's a technical rule, and when there are multiple parties with multiple claims, and those claims are resolved over the course of long litigation, it's not unheard of to miss details when it comes time for the circuit (trial) court to wrap it all up. That is compounded by the fact that in most circuit court judgments are drafted by the prevailing parties, reviewed for form by other counsel. The circuit judge reviews, and signs off.
Every now and then, the form of judgment which the prevailing party drafted doesn't meet the Cades form requirements, even where the circuit court had actually resolved every claim asserted by every party. So the judgment is in substance final, but isn't "final" for purposes of appeal. And that defect isn't discovered until some time during the appeals process.
We've been there. In one recent case, for example, our client prevailed in the circuit court. The other side appealed. The parties filed their statements of jurisdiction and their merits briefs. This took nearly a year. All that was left was oral argument, if any. But the court of appeals dismissed the appeal for lack of jurisdiction: the circuit court's judgment recited that all claims asserted by the all parties had been resolved, but did not specify the each of the four counts in the complaint had been resolved and how they had been resolved. The parties agreed that yes, the trial court had indeed resolved all claims and that it intended its judgment to be final and appealable, but the Judgment form lacked the magic words. We jointly asked the court of appeals to put the case on hold while we went back to the trial judge and asked him to redraft the judgment so it recited the right words. Motion denied, appeal dismissed.
So we went back down, fixed the form of the judgment, and the other side rebooted the appeals process. Notice of Appeal, etc., etc., statements of jurisdiction, and the merits briefs, all done over again. Eventually we lost in the court of appeals on the merits, but ultimately the story ended well because we prevailed in the Hawaii Supreme Court (that's another story).
The point of this story isn't to dwell on old, unhappy, far-off things, and battles long ago, but to show that sometimes, the final judgment rule could be applied so technically and rigidly, that it stood in the way of actually getting an appeal resolved. It was a waste of resources to go through the briefing process only to be thrown out for a fixable and ultimately insubstantial problem. The parties not only doubled up the costs, but the resolution of the case was delayed for a year.
So we were very heartened when the Hawaii Supreme Court recently determined in Waikiki v. Hoomaka Vill. Association of Apt. Owners, No. SCWC-16-000011 (June 30, 2017) (per curiam), that we were not barking up the wrong tree in our earlier case when we asked for the appeal to be put on hold to allow the trial court to fix technical defects in the form of its judgment.
That case resulted from an incident in a condo where one resident's dog injured another resident. Everyone piled in and made counter- and cross- claims. The trial court granted summary judgment in favor of the third-party defendant, and eventually the remaining parties resolved the remaining issues. The plaintiff appealed the earlier summary judgment entered in favor of the third-party defendant. The court of appeals dismissed for lack of a final, Cades-compliant judgment: the court had resolved all claims by all parties and entered a judgment, but that paper didn't refer to the already-resolved claim against the third-party defendant.
The Hawaii Supreme Court held that in these type of situations, the court of appeals should not have dismissed the appeal for lack of jurisdiction, but should have allowed the parties to go back to the trial court temporarily, get the form of the judgment corrected, and then continue on with the appeal. The court of appeals has jurisdiction to issue any order "in the aid of its jurisdiction," and this qualified:
In light of the record before this court, and in the interest of judicial economy, the more favorable course is for a final appealable judgment to be entered by the circuit court. Having determined that it lacked jurisdiction over the appeal due to the absence of a final judgment and in light of Jhun’s motion requesting that it issue an order directing the circuit court to execute a final judgment, the ICA should have exercised its authority under HRS § 602-57(3) to direct the circuit court to enter an appropriate appealable final judgment. Once an appealable final judgment is entered, the pending appeal will be perfected.
Slip op. at 18.
Perfect.
Waikiki v. Hoomaka Vill. Association of Apartment Owners, No. SCWC-16-0000011 (Haw. June 30, 2017) (per curiam)
