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25 Mo. 351

Brewer v. Dinwiddie

Supreme Court of Missouri

Decided July 15, 1857

Supreme Court of Missouri · decided 1857-07-15

I. The leave to file the answer was tantamount to a set ting aside of the judgment by default. No objection being made as to the time of filing the answer, or the answer itself, it was not competent to the court by a mere exercise of arbitrary power to defeat its own action and the rights of the defendant.

Relies on Ashby v. Glasgow · Hill v. City of St. Louis

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1857-07-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 7 later decisions — most recently April 1933

7 state decisions

30185718601870188018901900191019201930decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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Soott, Judge,

¶1delivered the opinion of the court.

¶2It appears from the record in this case that there was a final judgment therein at the October term. Afterwards, at a subsequent term of the court, a motion was filed to set aside this judgment and give the defendant leave to file his answer, which motion was so far sustained as to permit the defendant to file his answer and show cause at the next term why the judgment should not be final. The answer not having been filed within the time prescribed, by an order of the court at a subsequent term the original judgment was confirmed.

¶3Nothing is better settled than that after the term at which a final judgment is rendered, the court can not interfere with it. (Ashby v. Glasgow, 7 Mo. 320 ; Hill v. City of St. Louis, 20 Mo. 584.) Where there is any irregularity in the proceedings, the court will on motion at a subsequent term — the irregularity being shown to its satisfaction — set the judgment aside, or do whatever the justice of the case may require. But in a proceeding like that under consideration, there is no authority whatever to interfere after the close of the term at which the final judgment was entered.

Judge Ryland concurring,

¶4the judgment will be affirmed ;

Judge Leonard absent.
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