Court Opinion

ID: 9717707
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 07:08:55.293091+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:54.768354
License: Public Domain

STATON, Judge,
concurring in result.
I concur in the result reached by the majority. The majority characterizes the workings of Trial Rules 59 and 60 as “a morass and a mixture of overlap, insufficiency, inconsistency and incomprehensibility.” Yet, the majority’s reasoning needlessly complicates the procedural law when the wording of the Trial Rules is unmistakably clear. Because a dismissal for failure to prosecute is a dismissal with prejudice under Trial Rule 41(B), the judgment of dismissal can be set aside only as provided in Trial Rule 60(B). Ind.Rules of Procedure, Trial Rule 41(F). TR. 60(C) clearly and unmistakably provides that a ruling denying or granting relief under TR. 60(B) is a final judgment from which an appeal can be taken only after a TR. 59 motion is made. Since the ruling on the TR. 60(B) motion is deemed a final judgment, an appeal from the TR. 60(B) ruling is pursued the same as an appeal from any other final judgment. By following the express wording of the Trial Rules, the courts and the trial bar can avoid the very morass which the majority mistakenly creates.