Recapping the previous two blog entries, a majority of the Illinois Second District Appellate Court held: (1) An amendment to Illinois Supreme Court Rule 303(a) applied retroactively so that a premature Notice of Appeal preserved appellate jurisdiction. (See entry 10/29/07, two below.) (2) Separate postdissolution petitions in a divorce case present new claims, but not new actions, so a Rule 304(a) order must be issued to appeal a ruling on fewer than all of the issues. (See entry 10/30/07, directly below.)
The opinion was not without criticism. A special concurrence drew exactly opposite conclusions.
On the question of the retroactive application of the amendment to Rule 303(a), the Concurrence stated that Tamara had a vested right in the trial court’s judgment. That mitigated against a retroactive application of the amendment. To the contrary, the majority applied the amendment retroactively to this case, which allowed Darrell to appeal.
Without applying the amendment to this case, Darrell’s Notice of Appeal would have been premature and insufficient to establish appellate jurisdiction. The Concurrence stated: “Because the parties had a vested right in the final judgment the amendment to Rule 303 cannot operate retroactively to bestow us with jurisdiction to interfere with that right.”
The Concurrence also argued that Tamara’s petition for increased child support was a separate action, not just a separate claim within the same action, from Darrell’s request for a change in visitation. The Concurrence is immersed in lengthy case law analysis that is difficult to write about concisely in this space. Suffice it to say that the Concurrence reached an opinion 180 degrees different from the majority based on the very same case law.
To read the Concurrence, and the rest of the opinion in IRMO Duggan, No. 2-06-0061 (10/16/07), click here.