Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-10-07093/USCOURTS-caDC-10-07093-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Argentine Republic
Appellant
National Grid PLC.
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Decided March 11, 2011

No. 10-7093

ARGENTINE REPUBLIC,

APPELLANT

v.

NATIONAL GRID PLC,

APPELLEE

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 1:09-cv-00248)

John P. Gleason was on the briefs for appellant.

Fernando O. Koatz entered an appearance.

Elliot Friedman and Alexander A. Yanos were on the 

brief for appellee. Paul L. Yde entered an appearance.

Before: TATEL and BROWN, Circuit Judges, and 

SILBERMAN, Senior Circuit Judge.

Opinion for the Court filed PER CURIAM.

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PER CURIAM: On November 3, 2008, an arbitration panel, 

convened pursuant to a Bilateral Investment Treaty between 

Argentina and the United Kingdom, determined that 

Argentina had violated the treaty by implementing several 

emergency measures in response to that nation’s financial 

crisis. The panel found Argentina liable to National Grid Plc, 

which had been operating in Argentina under the auspices of 

the treaty, for some $53 million plus costs and interest. On 

November 13, 2008, Argentina received a copy of the 

arbitration award, thus starting the three month clock for it to 

serve notice of a motion to vacate or modify the award

pursuant to the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA). See 9 U.S.C. § 

12 (“Notice of a motion to vacate, modify, or correct an 

award must be served upon the adverse party or his attorney 

within three months after the award is filed or delivered.”); 

see also 9 U.S.C. § 10 (setting forth circumstances in which a 

court may vacate an arbitral award). On February 6, 2009, 

Argentina filed such a motion with the district court, and on 

February 10, three days before the February 13 deadline, it

filed a motion to extend time to serve notice. The latter 

motion relied on Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 6(b)(1), 

which provides that:

When an act may or must be done within a 

specified time, the court may, for good cause, 

extend the time: (A) with or without motion or 

notice if the court acts, or if a request is made, 

before the original time or its extension expires; or 

(B) on motion made after the time has expired if 

the party failed to act because of excusable 

neglect.

Argentina argued that it would be impossible to complete 

service of notice within the three month period because 

National Grid was headquartered in the United Kingdom, and,

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under the Hague Convention on the Service Abroad of 

Judicial and Extrajudicial Documents in Civil or Commercial 

Matters, proper service in the U.K. required using a central 

governmental authority.

On February 19, six days after the February 13 deadline, 

Argentina and National Grid filed a joint stipulation with the 

district court in which National Grid “agree[d] to accept 

service of process of the Petition filed by [Argentina], without 

waiving any defenses that [National Grid] has in this action, 

including but not limited to defenses based on the timing of 

service.” Subsequently, in light of the stipulation, the district 

court dismissed as moot the motion to extend. It then issued a 

final judgment denying the motion to vacate the arbitral 

award as untimely and granting National Grid’s cross-motion

to confirm the award. Argentine Republic v. Nat’l Grid Plc, 

No. 1:09-cv-00248, order at 3–4 (D.D.C. June 7, 2010)

(included at J.A. 1453–54).

Argentina now appeals, arguing that National Grid 

forfeited its timeliness defense and that the district court erred 

in treating its motion to extend as moot and in ultimately 

finding service to be untimely. Argentina also argues that the 

district court erred in granting the confirmation motion

without first giving Argentina the opportunity to raise 

defenses available under the Convention on the Recognition 

and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards (“Convention”).

See 9 U.S.C. §§ 201–208 (codifying the Convention); § 207 

(directing the district court to grant confirmation motions 

“unless it finds one of the grounds for refusal or deferral of 

recognition or enforcement of the award specified in the said 

Convention”).

As a threshold matter, we reject Argentina’s argument 

that National Grid has forfeited its timeliness defense. 

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National Grid expressly preserved this defense in the joint 

stipulation and then raised it in its first responsive pleading. 

Contrary to Argentina’s argument, National Grid had no 

obligation to raise its timeliness defense via a Rule 12(b) 

motion to dismiss. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(h)(1) (affirmative 

defenses may be raised through a Rule 12(b) motion or in the 

first responsive pleading). 

Moving on to the merits of the timeliness defense, we

review the district court’s denial of the motion to vacate de 

novo. Webster v. A.T. Kearney, Inc., 507 F.3d 568, 571 (7th 

Cir. 2007). Aside from the untimely joint stipulation, the only 

record evidence of service of notice is Argentina’s motion to 

extend time to serve. If the district court abused its discretion 

by not granting the motion, then it erred in finding service to 

be untimely. See Smith v. District of Columbia, 430 F.3d 450, 

457 (D.C. Cir. 2005) (“We review the district court’s 

decisions under Rule 6(b) for abuse of discretion.”). But if it 

did not abuse its discretion, dismissal was proper. 

National Grid argues that the district court could not, as a 

matter of law, have granted the motion because Rule 6(b) may 

not be used to extend periods of time dictated by statute. We 

agree. Every court to have considered this question has held 

that Rule 6(b) may be used only to extend time limits imposed 

by the court itself or by other Federal Rules, but not by 

statute. For example, the Sixth Circuit reasoned that Rule 

6(b), on its face, applies only to “procedural steps . . . taken 

‘by these rules or by a notice given thereunder by order of 

court.’ ” U.S. ex rel. Tenn. Valley Auth. v. Easement & Rightof-Way 100 Feet Wide and 747 Feet Long Over Certain Land 

in Cumberland Cnty., Tenn., 386 F.2d 769, 771 (6th Cir. 

1967) (quoting the pre-2007 version of Rule 6(b)); see also

O’Malley v. Town of Egremont, 453 F. Supp. 2d 240, 247 (D. 

Mass. 2006); Parker v. Marcotte, 975 F. Supp. 1266, 1269 

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(C.D. Cal. 1997), rev’d on other grounds, 198 F.3d 254 (9th 

Cir. 1999); Vill. Improvement Ass’n of Doylestown, Pa. v. 

Dow Chem. Co., 655 F. Supp. 311 (E.D. Pa. 1987); 4B 

Charles Alan Wright & Arthur R. Miller, Fed. Prac. & Proc.

Civ. § 1165 (“Federal Rule 6(b) governs the enlargement of 

time periods prescribed by the federal rules or by an order of 

the district court. The rule does not apply to time periods set 

out in statutes.”). To be sure, the language of Rule 6(b) on 

which the Sixth Circuit relied, i.e., the specific reference to 

time periods set out in the Federal Rules or by court order, 

was eliminated in the 2007 restyling of the Rules. The current 

language merely requires that “When an act may or must be 

done within a specified time, the court may, for good cause, 

extend the time.” But the 2007 revision was meant to be

stylistic only, so the pre-revision language remains relevant.

See Fed. R. Civ. P. 6(b), 2007 Amendment (“The language of 

Rule 6 has been amended as part of the general restyling of 

the Civil Rules to make them more easily understood and to 

make style and terminology consistent throughout the rules.

These changes are intended to be stylistic only.”); see also

Potter v. Astrue, No. 7:07-CV-70-BO, 2008 WL 4610234 

(E.D.N.C.) (Oct. 16, 2008) (unpublished) (construing the 

current language of Rule 6 consistently with the prior 

language). 

We see three reasons for following the lead of the other 

courts that have addressed this issue. First, like the Sixth 

Circuit, we believe that Rule 6(b)’s pre-2007 text clearly 

limits the rule’s application to deadlines established by other 

Federal Rules and by court orders. Second, a comparison of 

the current Rule 6(b) with Rule 6(a), which governs methods 

for computing time, supports this reading. Rule 6(a) expressly 

applies to statutory time periods, suggesting by negative 

implication that Rule 6(b), which contains no parallel 

specification, does not. Finally, where Congress has set out a 

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specific deadline that courts have consistently construed to 

prohibit extension on equitable grounds, we think that it 

would be incongruous to allow courts to circumvent the 

congressional directive through the use of Rule 6(b). See Vill.

Improvement Ass’n of Doylestown, 655 F. Supp. at 315 

(refusing to use Rule 6(b) to extend the time limit prescribed 

in 28 U.S.C. § 1446(b) for motions to remove to federal 

court). As National Grid points out, courts have consistently 

interpreted the FAA notice provision to create a strict 

deadline. See, e.g., Dalal v. Goldman Sachs & Co., 541 F. 

Supp. 2d 72, 76 (D.D.C. 2008), aff’d, 575 F.3d 725 (D.C. Cir. 

2009) (noting that there are neither common law nor statutory 

exceptions to the three month deadline). 

We therefore hold that Rule 6(b) may not be used to 

extend statutory time limits. Accordingly, the district court 

had no authority to grant Argentina’s motion to extend time to 

serve notice and therefore acted within its discretion in 

treating the motion as moot. Absent any evidence whatsoever 

of timely service of notice, we affirm the district court’s 

dismissal of Argentina’s motion to vacate the arbitral award.

Turning to Argentina’s claim that the district court erred 

by granting the cross-motion to confirm the arbitral award 

without giving Argentina the opportunity to raise defenses 

afforded to it by the Convention, we agree with National Grid 

that Argentina had ample opportunity to raise these defenses 

in its Opposition to the Cross Motion Seeking Confirmation 

of the Award. Confirmation proceedings under the 

Convention are summary in nature, and the court must grant 

the confirmation unless it finds that the arbitration suffers 

from one of the defects listed in the Convention. Zeiler v. 

Deitsch, 500 F.3d 157, 164 (2nd Cir. 2007) (noting that the 

party opposing confirmation has the high burden of 

establishing that one of the defects exists). Because Argentina 

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made no attempt to raise those defects in the district court, we 

affirm the grant of National Grid’s cross-motion for 

recognition of the arbitral award.

So ordered.

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