Opinion ID: 1799636
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: whether the trial court erred in granting the center's motion for leave to file a motion for summary judgment.

Text: ¶ 20. The appellants contend that the trial judge should not have granted the Center leave to file its Motion for Summary Judgment because the court had set a pretrial motion deadline of January 16, 1995, and both the Motion for Leave and the Motion for Summary Judgment were filed and granted beyond that deadline. Appellants base their argument in the language of M.R.C.P. 6(b), which states: When ... by order of the court an act is required or allowed to be done at or within a specified time, the court for cause shown may at any time within its discretion (1) with or without motion or notice order the period enlarged if request is therefore made before the expiration of the period originally prescribed or as extended by a previous order, or (2) upon motion made after the expiration of the specified period permit the act to be done where failure to act was the result of excusable neglect .. . ¶ 21. The Center listed as its excusable neglect the fact that the plaintiffs did not answer its written discovery responses until after the January 16 deadline, and that it therefore could not evaluate these responses to see if the case was ripe for summary judgment until after the deadline. Freeman and Diogenes insist that the appropriate direction for the Center to take would have been to file for an extension of the pretrial deadline before January 16. ¶ 22. We find that summary judgment motions for defendants are governed specifically by M.R.C.P. 56(b), which states: A party against whom a claim ... is asserted ... may, at any time, move with or without supporting affidavits for a summary judgment in his favor as to all or any part thereof. ¶ 23. The Center was the defendant on the trial level in this case, and, therefore, was free to move for summary judgment at any time. Furthermore, it is well settled that specific statutes govern over general ones. Lenoir v. Madison County, 641 So.2d 1124, 1129-30 (Miss. 1994); Wilbourn v. Hobson, 608 So.2d 1187, 1191 (Miss. 1992). Though we could find no cases which apply the rules of statutory construction to the M.R.C.P. in terms of the application of one rule over another, we hold nonetheless that the same principal applies. As a result, this Court finds that the appellants' first assignment of error is meritless.