Court Opinion

ID: 9520692
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 01:47:00.126771+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:46:41.383821
License: Public Domain

*324MAY, Judge,
dissenting.
Our rules do not permit Integrity to raise the contract argument in what it characterizes as its "response" to the fort argument U.S. Bank raised in its petition for rehearing. Moreover, allowing Integrity to do so in a brief in response to a petition for rehearing is unfair because it effectively deprives U.S. Bank of an opportunity to respond to the contract argument. I must therefore respectfully dissent from the grant of rehearing.
A proper petition for rehearing does not ask the court to re-examine all the questions in the record, or all the questions decided against the party filing it. Griffin v. State, 763 N.E.2d 450, 450-51 (Ind. 2002). Rather, claimed errors in the original decisions must be articulated with precision. Id. More generally, our rules require that an appellee's argument "address the contentions raised in the appellant's argument." App. R. 46(B)(2). Integrity's brief in response to U.S. Bank's petition for rehearing went outside that rule to address contract-related matters U.S. Bank had not raised.
When a general rehearing is granted, the case stands before the court as if it had never been decided. Griffin, 763 N.E.2d at 451. But "when rehearing is granted as to a particular point, the original opinion will be modified as to that point only." Id. (emphasis supplied). U.S. Bank did not request a "general rehearing" and it is apparent the majority has not granted one. Instead, it has modified the original opinion on a specific point never raised in the U.S. Bank petition.
This has, in effect, granted Integrity a rehearing it did not timely request. In our original decision the contract claim was decided adversely to Integrity. Integrity could have brought a timely request for a rehearing on the contract claim, but it chose not to. It instead waited to raise the contract claim in its response to U.S. Bank's request for rehearing on the tort issue only. Integrity thus first raised the contract issue outside the time limit for filing its own petition for rehearing, and should not be permitted to later raise that new issue for rehearing in its response to U.S. Bank's timely petition.
The grant of rehearing in this case is inappropriate for another, and more important, reason: it permits Integrity to make an argument to which U.S. Bank cannot respond. App. R. 54(D) explicitly prohibits reply briefs on rehearing, so U.S. Bank is left with no mechanism for responding to Integrity's argument on an issue U.S. Bank did not raise in its petition. The majority justifies this result by noting the "correctness" of Integrity's argument is "apparent." (Opinion on Relh'g at 7.) I would decline to adopt the premise that if one litigant's argument "appears correct," that is enough to deprive the other litigant of any opportunity to respond to it. I have found no authority that would permit such a result, and it is inconsistent with the essential structure of litigation to hold that if a party's initial argument appears convincing, we will not entertain the opponent's response.
There is a final reason we should decline to consider Integrity's contract argument on rehearing. The majority relies on Integrity's assertions in a reply memorandum it submitted to the trial court during summary judgment proceedings. But as the majority explicitly notes, "neither party mentioned the reply memorandum in its appellate brief. The memorandum appears in Integrity's appellee's appendix, which neither party cited in its appellate brief." (Id. at 3 n. 1.)
A petitioner may seek rehearing only on points raised in the original brief, Griffin, 763 N.E.2d 450, 451 (Ind.2002), and a re*325hearing petition is confined to those issues that were properly presented in the initial appeal and that were overlooked or improperly decided. Holmes v. ACandS, Inc., 711 N.E.2d 1289, 1291 (Ind.Ct.App.1999), trans. denied. Integrity's argument on the contract issue is premised on evidence that was in the record, but that it did not rely on, or even mention, in the appeal.
An issue raised for the first time on rehearing is waived, see, eg., Massey v. Conseco Services, L.L.C., 886 N.E.2d 581, 582 (Ind.Ct.App.2008), trans. denied 898 N.E.2d 1222 (Ind.2008), and I would apply that rule to an issue raised for the first time in response to a rehearing brief.
Our original opinion should stand.