MID-WEST FRUIT CO. v. DAVIS

MID-WEST FRUIT CO. v. DAVIS
1924 OK 1016
231 P. 208
104 Okla. 254
Case Number: 14935
Decided: 11/12/1924
Supreme Court of Oklahoma

MID-WEST FRUIT CO.
v.
DAVIS.

Syllabus

¶0 Appeal and Error--Default Judgments--Vacation--Grounds--Discretion of Trial Court.
Upon petition to vacate a default judgment upon the grounds of unavoidable casualty and misfortune (Comp. Stat. 1921, sec. 810, subd. 7), the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain the allegations of the petition is a matter solely for determination of the trial court in the exercise of a sound judicial discretion, and upon review of such action in this court the judgment of the trial court will be affirmed in the absence of a clear showing that the trial court abused its discretion. No abuse of discretion being clearly shown under the facts of this case, no error is apparent.

Disney & Wheeler, for plaintiff in error.
W. R. Banker, for defendant in error.

LOGSDON, C.

¶1 This is one of those unfortunate and infrequent cases in which counsel are compelled by their sense of duty to a client to come to this court asking that the rules of procedure adopted for the orderly conduct and dispatch of the business of the trial courts be set aside in order to relieve the client from the results of oversight or lapse of memory of counsel. The following language from the opinion in the case of Pulaski Oil Co. v. Conner, 62 Okla. 211, 162 P. 464, is very apropos here:

"Counsel has the sympathy of the writer in the matter, and yet we are bound to impute negligence to the oversight, and the individual litigant must suffer the result of it, rather than that there be laid down a rule so broad as to deprive all default adjudication of any strength. The danger of default is the only guaranty of punctuality in litigants and orderliness in court procedure; and anything less than strictness in the rule of this court in vacating such judgments would undermine trial procedure, and be subversive of public policy."