Opinion ID: 852076
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Post-Judgment Jurisdiction

Text: Turner's leading argument is that the trial court lacked jurisdiction to enter the order on fees because entering a final judgment terminates a trial court's jurisdiction and the order granting the Town's motions to dismiss and for partial summary judgment constituted a final judgment. (Appellant's Br. at 7-8.) The Town replies that the court had the legal authority and thus jurisdiction to consider the petition even after it entered a final judgment in the Town's favor. (Appellee's Br. at 7.) To act in a given case, a trial court must possess both subject matter jurisdiction and personal jurisdiction. See K.S. v. State, 849 N.E.2d 538 (Ind.2006); see also Perry v. Stitzer Buick GMC, Inc., 637 N.E.2d 1282 (Ind.1994). Subject matter jurisdiction exists when the Indiana Constitution or a statute grants the court the power to hear and decide cases of the general class to which any particular proceeding belongs. K.S., 849 N.E.2d at 540; see also Blanck v. Ind. Dep't of Corr., 829 N.E.2d 505 (Ind.2005). Personal jurisdiction exists when a defendant both has sufficient minimum contacts within the state to justify a court subjecting the defendant to its control, and has received proper notice of a suit against him in that court. See LinkAmerica Corp. v. Albert, 857 N.E.2d 961 (Ind.2006). We recently noted a tendency to confuse jurisdictional defects with legal errors. K.S., 849 N.E.2d at 541. Indeed, a party who was asleep at the wheel has a powerful incentive to couch a claim of procedural error as a jurisdictional defect either to circumvent the doctrine of waiver or to open up an avenue for collateral attack. Id. (citing J.I. Case Co. v. Sandefur, 245 Ind. 213, 197 N.E.2d 519 (1964); Restatement (Second) of Judgments § 11 cmt. e (1982)). This tendency gained steam as it became common to speak of jurisdiction over a particular case, a concept we abolished in the hope of clarifying the nature of jurisdiction in Indiana trial courts. Id. at 540. Indiana is rather ordinary on this topic; like most states, we see these matters much as William Blackstone did. Here, it is clear that the trial court had subject matter jurisdiction when Turner filed suit. Turner filed a civil suit for tortious interference, quantum meruit, and breach of a duty to a third-party beneficiary in Hendricks Superior Court, a tribunal of general jurisdiction. Nothing in the timing of the trial court's action alters that analysis. As such, jurisdictional concepts are simply the wrong analytical tools for determining whether an Indiana trial court's post-judgment action was a valid exercise of its authority. Instead, we think of a court's ruling as deciding the case such that any of its acts after judgment implicate not its jurisdiction, but rather court rules and judicial doctrines that safeguard the finality of judgments. So, the question here is one of procedural error, not jurisdiction. Indiana adheres to the American rule that in general, a party must pay his own attorneys' fees absent an agreement between the parties, a statute, or other rule to the contrary. State Bd. of Tax Comm'rs v. Town of St. John, 751 N.E.2d 657 (Ind.2001). Still, the General Recovery Rule in Indiana Code § 34-52-1-1(a) provides that a prevailing party shall recover costs in all civil actions. Subsection (b) provides that a court may further award attorneys' fees as part of the cost to the prevailing party if the court finds that the losing party advanced a frivolous claim or defense. Indiana Code § 34-13-3-21 authorizes a court to award attorneys' fees as part of the costs to a defendant governmental entity on similar grounds. Indiana Trial Rule 54(D) implements this same framework, providing that a prevailing party may recover costs as a matter of course unless a statute or rule expressly provides otherwise or the trial court directs otherwise in accordance with any provision of law. Turner argues that the trial court's original judgment granting the Town's motion to dismiss and its motion for partial summary judgment neither actually awarded attorneys' fees nor reserved the matter for later adjudication. (Appellant's Br. at 12-13.) As Turner points out, the judgment referred only to costs, a term of art that, Turner asserts, excludes attorneys' fees. (Appellant's Br. at 12-13.) Because the Town prayed for attorneys' fees in both its motions and the court did not grant them in its judgment, Turner argues, the later petition for attorneys' fees constituted a motion to alter or amend the judgment. (Appellant's Br. at 1011.) That motion was untimely, Turner concludes, because the Town filed it roughly sixty days after the trial court entered its final judgment. (Appellant's Br. at 14-15.) The Town responds that Turner mischaracterizes its petition as a motion for reconsideration or to correct error for two reasons: first, by using the word costs, the judgment reserved to the trial court the power to award attorneys' fees at a later date; and second, the question of attorneys' fees is a collateral matter that does not alter the merits of the judgment in any event. (Appellee's Br. at 9-10.) At oral argument, counsel for the Town argued that given the lack of a time limit in Sections 34-13-3-21 or XX-XX-X-X(b), or Indiana Trial Rule 54(D), a petition for fees would be timely at any time after a final judgment, subject only to the discretion of the trial court. A. Awarding Costs in the Judgment. Indiana courts have always understood costs as a term of art that includes filing fees and statutory witness fees but does not include attorneys' fees. See, e.g., Wiley v. McShane, 875 N.E.2d 273 (Ind. Ct.App.2007); see also Van Winkle v. Nash, 761 N.E.2d 856 (Ind.Ct.App.2002). That should come as no surprise given Indiana's adherence to the common-law American rule that each party must pay his own attorneys' fees in course of litigation. Town of St. John, 751 N.E.2d at 658. We take the routine and summary award of costs to the prevailing party simply to mean here what it usually meansfiling fees and witness fees. It did not mean that the trial court had either granted or denied the Town's request for attorneys' fees. B. Petitions for Attorneys' Fees as Untimely Motions. Even after the matter proceeds to a final judgment, however, a party may still move the court to reopen, under the limited exceptions for motions to reconsider, motions to correct error under Indiana Trial Rule 59, and motions for relief from judgment under Indiana Trial Rule 60(B). A party must file a motion to correct error within thirty days of the judgment. Ind. Trial Rule 59(C). A party must file a motion for relief from judgment within a reasonable time after or within one year of the judgment, depending on the grounds on which the party seeks relief. Ind. Trial Rule 60(B). By contrast, Indiana Trial Rule 54(D), which governs orders awarding costs to the prevailing party but does not expressly mention attorneys' fees, does not contain any such traditional time limit for filing a motion for costs. As a result, when a prevailing party files a petition for attorneys' fees after the time limits in Indiana Trial Rules 59(C) or 60(B) have passed, the losing party sometimes tries to shoehorn that petition into one of these Rules so he can denounce it as being untimely. With a sideways glance to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, however, we note that this maneuver is unnecessary in federal court. In federal court, the prevailing party seeking attorneys' fees must file his petition no later than fourteen days after the district court enters a final judgment. Fed.R.Civ.P. 54(d)(2)(B)(i). But it was not always so, and it has been so in federal court only since the U.S. Judicial Conference's Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure proposed the 1993 amendments to the Civil Rules. Before the 1993 amendments, Federal Rule 54(d) contained no such time limit, so federal courts occasionally dealt with losing parties arguing that a prevailing party's petition for attorneys' fees ran afoul of a time limit in some other Federal Rule. Resolving a circuit split, the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately decided that the time limit in Federal Rule 59(e) did not apply to petitions for attorneys' fees. White v. N.H. Dep't of Emp't Sec., 455 U.S. 445, 102 S.Ct. 1162, 71 L.Ed.2d 325 (1982) (petition for attorneys' fees under 42 U.S.C. § 1988 four months after parties entered consent decree in suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983). It noted that Federal Rule 59(e) generally applied only to matters affecting the merits of a judgment. Id. at 450-51, 102 S.Ct. 1162 (citing Browder v. Dir., Ill. Dep't of Corr., 434 U.S. 257, 98 S.Ct. 556, 54 L.Ed.2d 521 (1978)). According to the Court, a petition for attorneys' fees presented an issue separate from the merits because it required an inquiry that could not commence until after one party prevailed. Id. at 451-52, 102 S.Ct. 1162. But in dicta, the Court noted that § 1988's grant of discretion to the district courts in awarding attorneys' fees would support a denial of attorneys' fees in cases in which a post-judgment petition for attorneys' fees unfairly surprised or prejudiced the losing party. Id. at 454, 102 S.Ct. 1162. We think the U.S. Supreme Court's application of the pre-1993 Federal Rules to petitions for attorneys' fees is instructive. A petition for fees does not disturb the merits of an earlier judgment or order, so it does not implicate Indiana Trial Rules 59(C) or 60(B). As such, none of those respective time limits govern a petition for attorneys' fees. Instead, trial courts must use their discretion to prevent unfairness to parties facing petitions for fees. A request for attorneys' fees almost by definition is not ripe for consideration until after the main event reaches an end. Entertaining such petitions post-judgment is virtually the norm. To be sure, a request for fees is in some sense an equitable petition, and it might be that an extremely tardy request should fall on deaf ears due to lack of notice or staleness. Here, however, Turner received multiple warnings. In two separate letters to Einterz, Steele warned Turner that the Town would seek fees, citing for good measure the statute that authorized such an award for a frivolous suit. In three separate motions to the court, the Town prayed for an award of fees as well. Coming on the heels of these five separate warnings, the Town's renewed petition for attorneys' fees could hardly have come as a shock to Turner.