Mutual Benefit Society of Baltimore, Inc. v. Haywood

⁵³⁹ Digges, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. For far too many years the courts of Maryland have been plagued by the onslaught of an ever increasing backlog of cases. And only after many years of experimentation, persuasion, arm twisting and the utilization of the local and this Court’s rule making powers has the judiciary been able to check one of the most frustrating ironies of the crowded docket. By creating a statewide dismissal rule (Maryland 530) we were confident that we could at least focus on the dead case, the case left unprosecuted for years at a time, whose mere presence in the mainstream of pending cases created such a paper logjam that our courts were unable to give due attention to cases that still exhibited the vital signs of life.

Caught between the local dismissal rule, 528 C of the Supreme Bench of Baltimore City, and the state dismissal rule, 530, 1 this is an appeal from the slag heap of dead cases. We frankly regret that we must affirm the trial judge’s ultimate refusal to dismiss a case almost five years old. This litigation began with the filing of a million dollar malicious prosecution suit on October 11, 1965, but even with such a pot of gold at the end of the litigant’s rainbow, the case never got off the ground. It simply floated without movement or direction, in suspended animation, in the all too stagnant stream that runs from the clerk’s office to the central assignment office to the courtroom.

It never reached its final destination, having met a sup ⁵⁴⁰ posed death from old age on September 5, 1969, with this docket entry for its epitaph: “Dismissed under Buie 528 C of the Supreme Bench of Baltimore City for lack of prosecution. Judgment absolute in favor of the defendants for costs of suit.” While that epitaph was appropriate and in compliance with the spirit of Maryland Buie 530, what was unseen was the failure of the Supreme Bench rule to provide for notice to the affected parties, which is required by 530 b of the state rule. On October 10, 1969 (more than thirty days from the entry of the dismissal judgment) the plaintiff-appellee Lorenzo Haywood finally took notice and filed a motion to restore the case to the trial docket, seeking a general continuance. Judge Howard, as assignment judge, granted this request and signed an order striking the dismissal.

At this juncture the defendant-appellant filed the present appeal. While we too would have preferred a stale case to remain dead (for a different reason than appellant) we find we must entertain this appeal and affirm the trial judge’s refusal to write “Bequiescat in pace” over the remains of this case. We must entertain the appeal because an order striking out a judgment more than thirty days after entry is in the nature of a final order appealable to this Court. Gay Investment Co. v. Angster, 231 Md. 318, 322 , 190 A. 2d 95 (1963) ; Williams v. Snyder, Adm’r, 221 Md. 262, 267-68 , 155 A. 2d 904 (1959).

We must affirm this appeal because of the irregularity that has occurred in applying the local dismissal rule when it was inconsistent with and superseded by the state dismissal rule. The precise point of inconsistency is the requirement in Maryland Rule 530 b absent in the Supreme Bench rule, that “the clerk shall notify all parties, and their counsel of record of the contemplated dismissal.” (Emphasis added.) This rule went into effect on November 6, 1967. ⁵⁴¹ The express provision for notice to the litigants overrides our often stated proposition that it is the duty of the defendant “to keep