Opinion

Verdun v. Scallon Brothers Contractors, Inc.

  • 263 La. 1073
  • 270 So. 2d 512
  • 1972 La. LEXIS 5295
Court
Supreme Court of Louisiana
Filed
Dec 11, 1972
Status
Published
Author
Dixon
On the bench
McCaleb, Dixon
Cited by
38 cases

"Injunction may be used to prevent but not to correct a wrong; it cannot be employed to redress an alleged consummated wrong or undo what has already been done."

How later courts described this case

  • "Injunction may be used to prevent but not to correct a wrong; it cannot be employed to redress an alleged consummated wrong or undo what has already been done."

Written by the judges who cited it.

The opinion

DIXON, Justice

(dissenting).

Both parties to this suit have urged the court to decide the issues presented. Al *1080 though the majority opinion conforms to the jurisprudence as it legally avoids deciding the case, there seems to be neither statutory prohibition nor compelling reason against our deciding the issues, which are still alive and which have been fully briefed and argued.

By perpetuating the jurisprudence which sidesteps a decision, we merely require these litigants to file another suit in the same court and present the same issues in order to settle the dispute that exists between them.

Louisiana long since abandoned the notion that courts could not advise litigants. Although “advisory opinions” will always be hard to get, a “declaratory judgment” is not. C.C.P. 1872. If these litigants had only thought to couple a demand for a declaratory judgment with the suit for injunction, we could not have avoided deciding the issues.

Since we do have a declaratory judgments statute, and since appellate courts are now urged to make any judgment which is “just, legal and proper” upon the rqcord on appeal (C.C.P. 2164), and since both parties desire an adjudication of the single legal issue presented, we ought not to delay a decision until the parties have trudged once more the weary path from the trial court to the Court of Appeal and back to us.

This is a copy of a public record, reproduced as it was published. It is not legal advice, and it may not be the version a court would rely on. Check the official source before you cite it.

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