Court Opinion

ID: 9804733
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 17:08:45.438966+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:17:51.429381
License: Public Domain

HARTZ, J.,
concurring.
I join the opinion of Judge Matheson. In my view, however, there is an additional ground for affirmance. Mr. Harris’s motion under Fed.R.CivJP. 60(b) was untimely. Such a motion “must be made within a reasonable time.” FedR.Civ.P. 60(c)(1). Mr. Harris’s motion was filed some 14 years after the order he sought to set aside. There was no excuse for that delay, and the delay obviously caused difficulties in conducting an evidentiary hearing so long after the underlying facts. True, the Supreme Court’s decision in Magwood v. Patterson, 561 U.S. 320, 130 S.Ct. 2788, 177 L.Ed.2d 592 (2010), was handed down more than a decade after the original order. But a litigant does not need a Supreme Court opinion directly in point to challenge a decision. Magwood did not overrule any precedent. See id. at 337, 130 S.Ct. 2788 (“[T]he dissent fails to cite any case in which this Court has dismissed a claim as excessive or abusive if the petitioner raised it in an application challenging a new judgment.”).