Opinion
No. 27162-5-III.
March 12, 2009.
Appeal from a judgment of the Superior Court for Benton County, No. 03-2-00540-9, Carrie L. Runge, J., entered May 23, 2008.
Affirmed by unpublished opinion per Korsmo, J., concurred in by Kulik, A.C.J., and Brown, J.
UNPUBLISHED OPINION
The trial court amended judgment under CR 60(a) in this adverse possession action. Michelle Marcum contends that the court impermissibly corrected a judicial error when it amended the judgment to correct a legal description of the land awarded to Randall Walli. The record supports the court's determination that it corrected a clerical error because the legal description contained in the original judgment did not accurately reflect the court's intentions. Accordingly, we affirm.
FACTS
Walli Ranch, LLC and Randy Walli ("Walli") filed an action in Benton County Superior Court on March 17, 2003, to quiet title by adverse possession in property owned by Michelle Marcum. Walli's complaint referred to a fence running east to west along the southern edge of its property. The fence had been intact from at least 1957 to March 2003, when Ms. Marcum had it removed. The plaintiffs sought a declaratory order judging them as true and exclusive owners of the property on their side of the east-west fence line. Walli twice amended the complaint to add parties. Each complaint referred to the east-west fence line as the basis for Walli's claim; no version of the complaint contained a legal description of the land.
Following trial, the court entered judgment on May 4, 2007, awarding the land at issue to Walli. The judgment included a legal description of the land, which Walli had commissioned from Worley Surveying Service, Inc., and supplied to the court. The Worley Surveying employee who had completed the land survey on which the description was founded has since passed away.
Walli learned that the legal description incorrectly stated the western end of the former fence line when it undertook to construct a fence to separate its property from Ms. Marcum's. Walli then brought a motion to correct the judgment on March 14, 2008, asserting that the legal description contained in the judgment could be demonstrated to be incorrect on the basis of the evidence admitted at trial. The motion was based on CR 60(a), which allows a court to amend judgments to correct clerical errors.
The trial court held a hearing on Walli's motion to amend the judgment on May 23, 2008. After considering argument from both sides, the trial court granted Walli's motion to amend the judgment. The court stated:
As I recall this trial, which was lengthy and involved a lot of testimony, of course the court did have a lot of evidence before it to include photographs which contained the equipment and then the fence line as it had existed, and the court's intent in making its ruling was to reflect that the property north of the fence line was what the court intended to provide to the plaintiff.
It is my understanding that the legal description does not reflect the court's ruling, but it's the court's belief that the court can correct an error to reflect the court's ruling, which was based on the evidence that was presented at this trial.
Report of Proceedings at 18-19.
The legal description in the judgment was amended to accurately reflect the location of the fence line. Ms. Marcum then timely appealed the amended judgment.
ANALYSIS
The issue presented by this appeal is whether CR 60(a) provided a permissible basis for the decision to amend the judgment. A trial court's decision to amend judgment under CR 60(a) is reviewed for abuse of discretion. Presidential Estates Apartment Assocs. v. Barrett, 129 Wn.2d 320, 325-326, 917 P.2d 100 (1996). Discretion is abused when it is exercised on untenable grounds or untenable reasons. State ex rel. Carroll v. Junker, 79 Wn.2d 12, 26, 482 P.2d 775 (1971).
CR 60(a) provides that "[c]lerical mistakes in judgments, orders or other parts of the record and errors therein arising from oversight or omission may be corrected by the court at any time." While a clerical error may be remedied under CR 60(a), a judicial error may not. Presidential Estates, 129 Wn.2d at 326. "A judicial error involves an issue of substance; whereas, a clerical error involves a mere mechanical mistake." Marchel v. Bunger, 13 Wn. App. 81, 84, 533 P.2d 406, review denied, 85 Wn.2d 1012 (1975).
To determine whether an error is "judicial" or "clerical" in nature, "a reviewing court must ask itself whether the judgment, as amended, embodies the trial court's intention, as expressed in the record at trial." Presidential Estates, 129 Wn.2d at 326 (citing Marchel, 13 Wn. App. at 84). If the amended judgment does embody the trial court's intention, then "the error is clerical in that the amended judgment merely corrects language that did not correctly convey the intention of the court." Id. at 326. An amended order that does not embody the trial court's original intention is "judicial error," and CR 60(a) does not allow a trial court to "go back, rethink the case, and enter an amended judgment that does not find support in the trial court record." Id.
In In re Estate of Kramer, the Washington Supreme Court determined that the trial court properly amended the judgment to correct clerical error when the language in the final decree placed a restriction on the right of the surviving spouse that was counter to the court's findings of fact and the terms of the will. In re Estate of Kramer, 49 Wn.2d 829, 830-831, 307 P.2d 274 (1957). A judge who presides over the trial and the subsequent motion to amend judgment may draw upon his or her recollection of the proceedings in determining the court's intentions at the time it entered the original judgment. In re Marriage of Getz, 57 Wn. App. 602, 604-606, 789 P.2d 331 (1990).
In Marchel, this court reviewed whether two separate alterations to a legal description of land in an amended judgment were appropriate for remedy by CR 60(a). 13 Wn. App. 81. The court determined that a repetitious course of "'thence southwesterly 132 feet'" resulted from a clerical error, as the repetition was not in the complaint or the court's findings of fact. Id. at 84. On the other hand, the court found that the addition of the language "'more or less'" to the amended judgment was an impermissible correction of judicial error. Id. The original judgment had embodied the trial court's intention, because the court had specifically removed the language "more or less, to the intersection with a drainage ditch now in existence on said premises" from the legal description contained in the complaint upon a finding of fact that no drainage ditch actually existed at that time. Id.
In this case, the record supports the court's belief that the original judgment did not embody its intentions. Walli consistently based its adverse possession claim upon the location of the east-west fence line. Indeed, Walli's claim to the land north of the fence would have failed completely absent a strong reliance on the location of that fence line. The evidence relied on at trial, including testimony, photos, and exhibits, was based upon the location of the east-west fence line. The trial judge acknowledged the reliance on the fence line in her oral ruling on the amended judgment, stating that "the court's intent in making its ruling was to reflect that the property north of the fence line was what the court intended to provide to the plaintiff." RP 18. Thus, the decision to amend the judgment to reflect the correct description of the fence line was proper under CR 60(a) because it was what the trial judge intended from the beginning. There was no abuse of discretion.
Ms. Marcum relies heavily upon this court's decision in Foster v. Knutson, 10 Wn. App. 175, 516 P.2d 786 (1973). There, plaintiffs in a foreclosure proceeding learned, after entry of judgment and notice of appeal, that one of the descriptions they had obtained from a title company and incorporated into their action contained inaccuracies. Id. at 176. The plaintiffs sought to have the judgment amended on appeal. Id. Because the power to grant a CR 60(a) motion lies only with the trial courts, this court undertook to determine whether the trial court could exercise its discretion to grant the motion if the matter was remanded. Id. at 177. The court concluded that the error in the legal description of properties did not constitute a clerical mistake because the record showed that the description had been contained in an exhibit and in the complaint, and the plaintiff had stipulated that the description contained the only properties being foreclosed. Id. Thus, the original judgment embodied the properties the trial court had intended to foreclose. Id.
While the facts of Foster are similar to this case, several key distinctions render that decision inapplicable. First, Foster was a foreclosure proceeding, whereas the underlying action here was to quiet title by adverse possession. While a foreclosure proceeding could be entirely predicated on a legal description of the land at issue, it would run counter to a successful claim of adverse possession to base the award of land on anything but its physical aspects. Second, in Foster, the legal description of the land appears to have been the only relevant evidence before the court in the proceedings. In the case at hand, the court relied on a good deal of evidence from various sources. Finally, in Foster, this court, rather than the trial court, was asked to rule on the motion to amend judgment. Here, the same judge who entered the original judgment considered the motion to amend judgment, and thus the court could draw upon its own recollections of its intentions when ruling on the motion to amend. See Getz, 57 Wn. App. at 604-605.
Ample support exists in the record for a finding that the trial court intended to award land to the plaintiffs based upon the east-west fence line, rather than the erroneous legal description contained within the original judgment. That was certainly a tenable basis for granting the amendment under CR 60(a). Thus, the court did not abuse its discretion when it amended the judgment to correct the legal description.
The judgment is affirmed.
A majority of the panel has determined this opinion will not be printed in the Washington Appellate Reports, but it will be filed for public record pursuant to RCW 2.06.040.
KULIK, A.C.J. BROWN, J., concur.