Peterson v. Lightfoot

BRITTAIN, J.

The defendant appeals from a judgment in a suit - for partnership accounting. The judgment provided that the assets of the partnership be sold by a commissioner, and upon the return of the commissioner and the equal division of the assets between the parties, a final judgment be entered dissolving the partnership or declaring it dissolved.

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The respondent contends that the judgment is a nonappealable interlocutory order. The findings and conclusions of law finally determined the rights of the parties, leaving only the transmutation of the assets into cash and their equal division to be done. The appellant claims that the court was in error in determining that the assets ordered to be sold belonged to the partnership and he claims owner- • ship of them himself. If his contentions in this regard

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should be sustained by the appellate court after the sale of his property, he would be without remedy or find himself compelled to resort to a doubtful remedy against fhe purchaser at the commissioner’s sale. For all practical purposes of disposing of the issues tried the judgment was final. “The question, as affecting the right of appeal, is not what the form of the order may be, but what is its legal effect.”

(Estate of West,

162 Cal. 352, [122 Pac. 953];

Byrne

v.

Hoag,

126 Cal. 283, [58 Pac. 688];

People

v.

Bank of Mendocino County,

133 Cal. 107, [65 Pac. 124];

Clark

v.

Dunnam,

46 Cal. 204.)

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