Court Opinion

ID: 9488657
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:51:41.503545+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:53:01.220827
License: Public Domain

McKAY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
After review of the relevant precedents, I respectfully must dissent. If I were counting noses in the Supreme Court, I might come to a different conclusion. However, the only sound way to predict future Supreme Court action is to apply standard interpretive principles to its past decisions. Following that practice, I am persuaded that the Third Circuit in United States v. Grana, 864 F.2d 312 (3d Cir.1989), correctly applied Houston v. Lack, 487 U.S. 266, 108 S.Ct. 2379, 101 L.Ed.2d 245 (1988), to a similar fact situation.
In the case before us, the court puts great emphasis on the fact that the operative and controlling word is “entry” while in Houston the operative and controlling word was “filed.” As the dissent in Houston so ably pointed out, the barriers to interpreting “filed” to mean anything other than receipt by the clerk were as formidable as the barrier to interpreting “entry” to mean anything other than the clerk’s act of lodging the *465Judgment in its docket. Effectively, the majority in Houston acknowledged that in every situation except pro se prisoner cases, “filed” still means receipt by the clerk no matter the equities. The net effect is that the court relied on the uniqueness of the fact that prisoners are under control of the state itself to give “filed” a meaning in their cases that it did not, and still does not, have in any other litigant’s ease. That is the precise parallel for precisely the same reason for us to hold that “entry,” while retaining its “act of the clerk” meaning in all other cases, means “delivery of notice to the prisoner” in pro se prisoner cases.
It may be argued that the plain meaning of “entry” is somehow plainer or more emphatic than the plain meaning of “filed.” I believe a reading of Houston, especially the dissent, and the majority’s implicit conclusion that “filed” still really means “filed” in all but prisoner cases adequately answers any assertion that the plain meaning of the one word is more emphatic than the plain meaning of the other.
I would apply Houston, as set out in Gra-na and expanded on in this brief dissent, to the facts of this case. Thus I would partially remand to the trial court to determine the truth of the time allegations and retain jurisdiction until that task is completed. If the trial court verifies the allegations, I would proceed to the merits.