Case Name: Tyree PHILLIPS, Sr. v. Karen JACOBS, Individually and as Next Friend of Kimberly Jacobs
Court: Arkansas Supreme Court
Jurisdiction: Arkansas
Decision Date: 1991-04-29
Citations: 305 Ark. 365
Docket Number: 90-350
Parties: Tyree PHILLIPS, Sr. v. Karen JACOBS, Individually and as Next Friend of Kimberly Jacobs
Judges: Hays, Glaze, and Corbin, JJ., dissent.
Reporter: Arkansas Reports
Volume: 305
Pages: 365–374

Head Matter:
Tyree PHILLIPS, Sr. v. Karen JACOBS, Individually and as Next Friend of Kimberly Jacobs
90-350
807 S.W.2d 923
Supreme Court of Arkansas
Opinion delivered April 29, 1991
Boswell, Tucker & Brewster, by: Robert E. McCallum, for appellant.
Jim Pedigo, for appellee.

Opinion:
Robert L. Brown, Justice.
This case comes to us as a one-brief case, the appellee Karen Jacobs having failed to respond. The dispositive issue is whether the trial court's failure to enter an order disposing of the appellee's motion for a new trial within thirty days divested the trial court of jurisdiction to act on the motion thereafter.
We hold that it did, and we reverse the trial court's order granting a new trial entered more than thirty days after the motion was filed.
The facts are these. The appellee Jacobs sued the appellant Phillips for damages resulting from an automobile accident on Highway 67 East near Hope, Arkansas. A jury returned a verdict in favor of the appellant on March 12, 1990. The appellee then filed a motion to set aside the verdict and to grant a new trial under ARCP Rule 59 on April 3,1990. The basis for the new trial motion was that the verdict was clearly contrary to the preponderance of the evidence. No written order either granting or denying the motion was entered within thirty days of that motion. The trial judge did, according to the appellant, write the parties a letter dated May 3, 1990, granting the new trial. However, that letter was not entered of record and is not before us on appeal. On May 17, 1990, forty-four days after the filing of the motion, the trial court entered its order granting a new trial. The appellant then filed this appeal to void the trial court's order granting the new trial on grounds that the court had no jurisdiction to act on the motion after the thirty day period had expired.
Rule 4(c) of the Arkansas Rules of Appellate Procedure (1989) is the operable rule in this regard, and it states in pertinent part:
Disposition of Posttrial Motion. If a timely motion listed in section (b) of this rule is filed in the trial court by any party, the time for appeal for all parties shall run from the entry of the order granting or denying a new trial or granting or denying any other such motion. Provided, that if the trial court neither grants nor denies the motion within thirty (30) days of its filing, the motion will be deemed denied as of the 30th day.
Hence, Rule 4(c) is clear that failure to act within thirty days will be deemed a denial.
We recently held that the effect of this lack of action by the trial court within thirty days was loss of jurisdiction to consider the motion. See Deason v. Farmers & Merchants Bank, 299 Ark. 167, 771 S.W.2d 749 (1989). The Deason facts were substantially similar. A jury verdict was entered against the bank and a judgment followed. The bank moved for a new trial, but the trial court failed to rule on the motion within thirty days. The result was a loss of jurisdiction with respect to that motion in the trial court:
The record is very clear that the motion was not ruled on, taken under advisement, or set for a hearing prior to the close of business on July 5, 1988, the day the 30 days expired. Thus the motion was deemed denied, and the order entered on July 21 was void and of no effect.
299 Ark. at 172; 771 S.W.2d at 752-753.
Though Rule 4(c) was somewhat different prior to the effective date of our Per Curiam of March 14, 1988, which simplified its terms, it consistently has required that trial court to act in some form or fashion on new trial motions within thirty days of filing, and we have previously held that failure to act within that time frame results in loss of jurisdiction to grant the relief requested under the motion. See e.g., Street v. Kurzinski, 290 Ark. 155, 717 S.W.2d 798 (1986). We have further held that a decision by the trial court within the thirty days which is not entered of record fails to meet the dictates of Rule 4(c). See Coking Coal, Inc. v. Arkoma Coal Corp., 278 Ark. 446, 646 S.W.2d 12 (1983).
Nor does ARCP Rule 60(b) invest the trial court with jurisdiction to act on a Rule 59 motion beyond the thirty day period. Rule 60(a) does grant authority in the trial court to act on its own motion to correct clerical errors and mistakes. Rule 60(b) then provides ninety days in which the trial court may, on its motion or any party's motion, correct the error or "prevent the miscarriage of justice." [Emphasis ours.] The reference to certain miscarriages of justice in Rule 60(b) is a reference to those clerical errors or mistakes described in Rule 60(a). Rule 60(c) details grounds for setting aside a judgment after ninety days, including new evidence discovered after the expiration of ninety days. New evidence is also a ground for a new trial motion under Rule 59, but that relates to new evidence discovered within ten days of judgment. No other reference to Rule 59 is made in Rule 60(c). Other than the one reference to newly discovered evidence, Rule 60 generally governs relief for mistakes and errors and fraud in obtaining the judgment, which are distinct and apart from those grounds substantially affecting the material rights of a party set out in Rule 59.
Though Rule 60 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure is substantially different from our Rule 60, the federal rule like our rule is essentially concerned with correcting mistakes and errors in judgments as well as fraud in obtaining the judgment. The relationship of Fed. R. Civ. P. 60 to Fed. R. Civ. P. 59, which also deals with new trial motions, is, therefore, of some help to us in determining the relationship between our rules. Wright and Miller in their treatise noted the words of one court on the salutary effect of Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(b) in providing relief against judgments unfairly, fraudulently or mistakenly entered but then quoted from the same case to the effect "that it would be a perversion of the rule and its purpose to permit it to be used to circumvent another rule." Wright & Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure: Civil § 2858, p. 169; quoting from Edwards v. Velvac, 19 F.R.D. 504, 507 (D.C. Wisc. 1956), cert. den., 354 U.S. 942 (1956). We agree. In the Velvac case the rule being circumvented by the request for Rule 60 relief was the rule providing the time frame in which to file a notice of appeal. Similarly, Rule 60 under our Arkansas rules should not be used to breathe life into an otherwise defunct Rule 59 motion. We, accordingly, reaffirm our holdings that when a Rule 59 motion is timely made, the trial court must decide the motion within thirty days of its filing and enter that decision of record. Otherwise, the trial court loses jurisdiction to grant the relief requested in the motion.
We are mindful of previous precedent holding that the trial court loses jurisdiction to act on a motion for a new trial after ninety days from judgment under Rule 60(b) as opposed to thirty days from the motion under Appellate Rule 4(c). See Mullen v. Couch, 288 Ark. 231, 703 S.W.2d 866 (1986). In Mullen, however, the specific question of whether the trial court also lost jurisdiction to grant or deny the motion by not acting within thirty days was not at issue, because the trial court did not grant the motion for a new trial until more than ninety days had passed from entry of judgment. Accordingly, the issue was dispensed with under Rule 60(b).
To the same effect is a court of appeals decision holding that the trial court has ninety days from judgment to grant the relief sought in a new trial motion. See State Farm and Casualty Insurance Co. v. Mobley, 5 Ark. App. 293, 636 S.W.2d 299 (1982). In that case the trial court had not acted on a new trial motion within thirty days of the motion. Though the court of appeals held that the trial court lost jurisdiction over the motion by not granting relief within ninety days from judgment, our holding today emphasizes that jurisdiction to decide the motion was actually lost much earlier than that — after thirty days from the date of the motion.
The trial court, for the foregoing reasons, was devoid of jurisdiction to grant a new trial in the case before us. That order is reversed and remanded for reinstatement of the judgment on the verdict.
Reversed and remanded.
Hays, Glaze, and Corbin, JJ., dissent.