Court Opinion

ID: 9419411
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:49:23.211921+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:17.971189
License: Public Domain

Mr. Chief Justice Stone,
dissenting:
I do not understand that the Court rests its decision on the ground that Rule 77 (d) of the Rules of Civil Procedure makes notice of entry prerequisite to the finality of the judgment for purposes of appeal. If it does, most else that is said is unnecessary to the decision. In any case what is said seems to me to be untenable in principle and without support in authority.
To say that a district court can rightly extend the prescribed time for taking an appeal by the reentry, pro forma, of a final judgment after the time to appeal from it has expired, is to disregard considerations of certainty and stability which have hitherto been considered of first importance in the appellate practice of the federal courts. It is to sanction the regulation of the time for appeal by courts, contrary to the appeal statute, and without support in law or any rule of court. Rule 60, which permits *525amendment of the judgment or relief of a party from it, in circumstances not here present, gives no warrant for enlarging the time for appeal by reentry of a judgment which is not amended and from no part of which any party has been relieved.
In the federal courts there is no right to appeal save as it is granted by Congress or a rule of court which is authorized by Congress and has the force of law. See Heike v. United States, 217 U. S. 423, 428; Ex parte Dante, 228 U. S. 429, 432. It is in the public interest, and it is the very purpose of limiting the period for appeal, to set a definite and ascertainable point of time when litigation shall be at an end unless within that time application for appeal has been made; and if it has not, to advise prospective appellees that they are freed of the appellant’s demands. Matton Steamboat Co. v. Murphy, 319 U. S. 412, 415.
That purpose is defeated if judges may enlarge the time for appeal beyond the period prescribed by law, whether by an order purporting directly to extend it or by reentry, without change, of a judgment which has already become final. It is for that reason that this Court has consistently ruled that no federal judge or court possesses the power to extend the time for appeal beyond the statutory period by any form of judicial action which falls short of a reconsideration of the provisions of the judgment in point of substance so as to postpone its finality.
The decisions are numerous and diligence of court and counsel has revealed no exceptions. Credit Company v. Arkansas Central Ry. Co., 128 U. S. 258, is representative of the unbroken current of authority. There, in dismissing an appeal as untimely the Court, speaking by Mr. Justice Bradley, said at page 261: “The attempt made, in this case, to anticipate the actual time of presenting and filing the appeal, by entering an order nunc pro tunc, does not help the case. When the time for taking an *526appeal has expired, it cannot be arrested or called back by a simple order of court. If it could be, the law which limits the time within which an ■ appeal can be taken would be a dead letter.”
At the last term of Court we held that the reentry of its final judgment by a state appellate court, with only formal changes not affecting any matter adjudicated, did not enlarge the time to appeal to this Court. Department of Banking v. Pink, 317 U. S. 264. And at the same term we held that a motion to amend a final judgment would not toll the time for appeal unless the amendments proposed were of substance rather than form, Leishman v. Associated Electric Co., 318 U. S. 203, 205-6-an inquiry which presupposed that reentry of the judgment without formal change could not enlarge the time. To the same effect are Pfister v. Northern Illinois Finance Corp., 317 U. S. 144, 149-51; Zimmern v. United States, 298 U. S. 167. And in Wayne Gas Co. v. Owens-Illinois Glass Co., 300 U. S. 131, 137, this Court, citing In re Stearns & White Co., 295 F. 833; Bonner v. Potterf, 47 F. 2d 852, 855: United States v. East, 80 F. 2d 134, 135, declared that where it appears that a rehearing has been granted only for the purpose of extending the time of appeal the appeal must be dismissed — a statement equally applicable to the reentry of the judgment solely for that purpose.
Petitioner, by the exércise of the diligence required by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure could have learned of the entry of the judgment against him and have taken a timely appeal. His case is not hard enough to afford even the proverbial apology for our saying that federal judges, by the reentry of a judgment for no other purpose, are free to make a dead letter of .the statutory limit of the period for appeal.
Mr. Justice Murphy concurs.