Court Opinion

ID: 9552866
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 19:18:30.382668+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:29:15.477216
License: Public Domain

Thompson, D. J.,1
concurring in part and dissenting in part,
with whom Justice Manoukian agrees:
*558I respectfully dissent from that part of the majority opinion which holds that the second notice of entry of judgment vitiated the first.
The time to file a motion for judgment n.o.v. or for a new trial begins to run when a notice of entry of the judgment is served. NRCP 50(b); 59(b). Service by mail ft complete upon mailing. NRCP 5(b). I find no authority or justification for the majority’s holding that the time to file post-trial motions terminates and then begins again when an additional notice is given. The majority’s reliance on Storey v. Castner, 306 A.2d 732 (Del. 1973) is misplaced. There, the first notice, if sent, was never received. Here, counsel for appellant apparently received the first notice but relied upon the second.
The second notice of entry was obviously intended to advise appellant that respondent had filed a memorandum of costs as provided for in NRS 18.110. This second notice had the memorandum attached to it and was used as a vehicle for service of the memorandum. It was clearly not an admission that something was wrong with the first notice. In this regard, the majority unfairly criticizes respondent’s counsel for keeping appellant properly informed of the papers being filed.
This court has previously held that a trial judge is without jurisdiction to extend the time for filing a motion for new trial. Culinary Workers v. Haugen, 76 Nev. 424, 357 P.2d 113 (1960). NRCP 6(b) forbids an extension of time to file a motion for judgment n.o.v. Despite these inflexible prohibitions, the majority has, in effect, allowed one party the unilateral right to grant extensions to his opponent by serving successive notices of entry of the judgment. If a second notice renders the first “nugatory,” a second notice filed more than 10 days after the first will reinvest the trial court with jurisdiction to hear a post-trial motion even after the time to file it has once expired. Indeed, because the time to appeal begins to run with the service of a notice of entry of judgment, it appears that this court will, under today’s holding, be reinvested with jurisdiction on appeal when a second notice of entry of judgment is mailed more than 30 days after the first.
Instead of finding that the second notice of entry vitiated the first, I would look to NRCP 60(b) as a source of relief for appellant. The federal courts have held in interpreting the parallel federal rules, Fed. R. Civ. Pro. 59(b); 60(b), that under appropriate circumstances the district court may entertain under NRCP 60(b) a motion for a new trial which is untimely under NRCP 59(b) upon a showing of “mistake, inadvertence, surprise, or excusable neglect.” John E. Smith’s Sons Co. v. Lattimer Foundry & Mach. Co., 239 F.2d 815 (3d. Cir. 1956); *559Kruse v. Zenith Radio Corp., 82 F.R.D. 66 (W.D.Penn. 1979); and Crawford v. West India Carriers, Inc., 56 F.R.D. 32 (S.D.Fla. 1972). Such an application was made and denied by Judge Gabrielli in this case. While the trial judge might have exercised his discretion to relieve appellant from this procedural dereliction, he declined to do so. Under these circumstances I perceive no reason that this court should find counsel for appellant to have been misled or confused by the second notice.
I would dismiss the appeal as untimely.
On the merits I fully concur in the remainder of the majority opinion.

The Governor commissioned The Honorable J. Charles Thompson, Judge of the Eighth Judicial District Court, to sit in the place of The Honorable Gordon Thompson, Justice. Nev. Const, art. 6, § 4.