Court Opinion

ID: 9520941
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 01:53:41.049499+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:47:17.967592
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE SIMON, dissenting: The majority’s holding that a motion to reconsider a judgment submitted prior to the filing of a formal written order is untimely and does not extend the time for filing a notice of appeal celebrates form over substance. This type of pitfall occurs frequently and has claimed too many victims. Defendant filed his motion to reconsider on September 20, twenty-one days after the plaintiff’s summary judgment motion was allowed. In allowing the summary judgment, the circuit judge stated that a formal order would be signed and filed later, and it was, on October 6. This 16-day gap between the filing of the defendant’s motion and the pro forma order, merely confirming the events of August 30 when the trial judge announced his decision, is treated by the majority as the fatal blow to the defendant’s appeal. Instead of taking this rigid approach, I would allow the appeal, because the motion to reconsider was still alive and well and reposing in the circuit court files at the time the formal order was filed. A “notice of appeal is to be liberally construed. The notice of appeal serves the purpose of informing the prevailing party in the trial court that the unsuccessful litigant seeks a review by a higher court.” (Burtell v. First Charter Service Corp. (1979), 76 Ill. 2d 427, 433). Even if the motion to reconsider was technically premature, the entry of the written order breathed new life into it. At that point I would regard the motion to reconsider as having been constructively refiled, and the actions that then followed properly vested the appellate court with jurisdiction. Even more distressing is the fact that both parties treated the appeal as properly brought until the appellate court, sua sponte, dismissed the appeal on the ground that the notice was not timely filed. Although I do not blame the appellate court for questioning its jurisdiction, the failure of this court to treat the motion for reconsideration as properly pending after the entry of the written order deprives the defendant of an appeal, a result I regard as unfair. As I pointed out under somewhat similar circumstances (see Garcia v. Industrial Com. (1983), 95 Ill. 2d 467, 470 (Simon, J., dissenting)), I would choose substance instead of form.