Before Chief Justice Pickering and Justices Hardesty and Saitta. Opinion by Justice Hardesty.
In this original petition for a writ of mandamus or prohibition challenging the district court’s order dismissing a divorce complaint, the Court considered whether Petitioner’s failure to appeal the dismissal order precluded writ relief in the matter. Petitioner and Real Party in Interest were married in 2008; a newly elected judge who had taken his oath of office but was not authorized to take office until two weeks later performed the marriage ceremony. Three years later, Petitioner filed for divorce from the Real Party in Interest, seeking custody of the couple’s minor child. At the divorce hearing, the district court sua sponte raised the issue of whether the newly elected judge had authority to solemnize the marriage. The court concluded the judge did not have such authority and thus ruled the parties were not legally married, dismissing the divorce complaint as moot. Although proceedings to determine custody of the parties’ child continued in a separate custody case after the district court entered the dismissal order, Petitioner did not appeal the dismissal order and failed to seek any other relief until a year later, when she sought writ relief from the Nevada Supreme Court. The Nevada Supreme Court, in noting the long-held rule that the right to appeal is an adequate legal remedy precluding consideration of a writ appeal, rejected Petitioner’s argument that the dismissal order was not appealable as a valid, final judgment because the district court had reached an erroneous legal conclusion. Although the Nevada Supreme Court noted that the district court’s conclusion may have been in error, it affirmed that an incorrect legal conclusion does not render a judgment invalid or void, and so the district court’s dismissal order was a valid, final judgment. Petitioner had an adequate legal remedy by appealing the dismissal order. Because she failed to do so, writ relief was no longer available to her. Writ denied. (Rory T. Kay, Associate in the Las Vegas office of McDonald Carano Wilson LLP.)
