PRACTICE AND PROCEDURE - CONDITIONAL JUDGMENTS AT LAW - VALIDITY AND ADVANTAGES

Authors

Abstract

Some modern courts have asserted and many lawyers have assumed that in common law actions a court can not render a judgment conditional in form. It is argued that the court is without jurisdiction so to decide a case, and that in any event the common law has never recognized such a form of judgment as valid. The first point is not so difficult to disprove, and the second, so far as actual decision is concerned, is clearly incorrect." In several early cases common law courts were willing not only to stay execution of judgments until conditions were performed, but also to attach conditions to the judgments themselves. Through the increasing rigidity of the common law system of remedies and especially through the pressure of the jury system toward simplification of issues, this power was lost from view, and it therefore came to be stated as a proposition requiring no authority that a common law court was without power to deliver a conditional judgment. If any reasons were given in the cases the administrative difficulties alone were stressed. Behind these, however, was the realization that any postponement or uncertainty, even to attain more exact justice, might impair the recognized social value in the complete and final settlement of controversies in one proceeding, and that this was especially true where a condition might not be satisfied for a considerable period of time in the future. Other considerations also entered in, such as the difficulty of establishing matters of record," and the supposed difficulty of modifying the judgment after term.

Recommended Citation

PRACTICE AND PROCEDURE - CONDITIONAL JUDGMENTS AT LAW - VALIDITY AND ADVANTAGES, 31 Mich. L. Rev. 696 (1933).
Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol31/iss5/6