Opinion ID: 543041
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Is a Post-Judgment Motion for Pre-Judgment Interest a

Text: 12 Rule 59(e) Motion? 13 In Osterneck v. Ernst & Whinney, 489 U.S. 169, 109 S.Ct. 987, 103 L.Ed.2d 146 (1989), the Supreme Court held that a motion for prejudgment interest filed after the entry of judgment constitutes a Rule 59(e) motion to alter or amend the judgment and renders of no effect any notice of appeal filed before a ruling on that motion. The court distinguished prior decisions holding that motions for costs or attorney fees were not Rule 59(e) motions. See White v. New Hampshire Department of Employment Security, 455 U.S. 445, 102 S.Ct. 1162, 71 L.Ed.2d 325 (1982) (attorney fees); Buchanan v. Stanships, Inc., 485 U.S. 265, 108 S.Ct. 1130, 99 L.Ed.2d 289 (1988) (costs). The court reasoned that prejudgment interest, unlike attorney fees and costs, traditionally has been considered part of the plaintiff's compensation. 109 S.Ct. at 991. Secondly, the court concluded that costs and attorney fees are issues which are wholly collateral to the judgment in the main cause of action, id., whereas prejudgment interest is an issue which is intertwined in a significant way with the merits of the plaintiff's primary case as well as the extent of his damages, id. at 992. 14 Osterneck would seem to settle the first question before us, but Jurgens argues the decision must be read as nullifying only those notices of appeal that [can be] affected in some way by the pending prejudgment interest motion. According to Jurgens, since his prejudgment interest motion could not have affected his cross-appeal on punitive damages, his notice of cross-appeal is still effective. 15 We disagree. It is true that there must be a nexus between the subject of a post-trial motion and the merits of the underlying action in order for the motion to be considered a Rule 59(e) motion to alter or amend the judgment. In fact, the very question decided by the court in Osterneck was that a post-judgment motion for prejudgment interest was intertwined in a significant way with the merits of the plaintiff's primary case as well as the extent of his damages. Id. at 991. Once that threshold question has been resolved, however, and the motion has otherwise been determined to be a Rule 59(e) motion, Rule 4(a)(4) comes fully into play. Rule 4(a)(4) is unqualified: an outstanding Rule 59(e) motion renders all prior notices of appeal of no effect, whether or not there is any further nexus between the subject matter of the motion and the subject matter of the appeal. 16 Jurgens also dwells on the district court's failure to enter an AMENDED JUDGMENT. According to Jurgens, the judgment entered by the district court on October 27, 1989 was in essence a separate judgment, distinct from the [prior] judgment entered on July 5, 1989. Apparently, Jurgens believes that a facially independent second judgment does not amend the first judgment as required by Rule 59(e), therefore a notice of appeal filed from the first judgment must still be valid. We reject this reasoning. First of all, the label placed upon the judgment matters little. By the terms of Rule 4(a)(4), what is important in determining the validity of a notice of appeal is whether the pending motion was one to amend the prior judgment. If the motion falls within Rule 4, we fail to see how the form of the judgment disposing of the motion could remove it from Rule 4. Second, and perhaps equally important to our decision, the judgment of October 27, 1989 explicitly amended the prior judgment of July 5, 1989. 3 17 Jurgens' final argument is that because his cross-appeal was far down the appellate pipeline when the district court disposed of the outstanding motion for prejudgment interest (i.e., briefs had been filed, etc.), application of theOsterneck decision would be unjust and merely undermine certainty in the appeal process. Perhaps that is true in the circumstances of this case; nonetheless, the application of Rule 4(a)(4) is  'mandatory and jurisdictional.'  Griggs v. Provident Consumer Discount Co., 459 U.S. 56, 61, 103 S.Ct. 400, 403, 74 L.Ed.2d 225 (1982) (per curiam) (quoting Browder v. Director, Illinois Dept. of Corrections, 434 U.S. 257, 264, 98 S.Ct. 556, 561, 54 L.Ed.2d 521 (1978)). We simply have no discretion to waive defects in a premature notice of appeal, whatever the consequence. Id. 4 18