Court Opinion

ID: 9505639
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-06 20:13:36.58573+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:04:40.003177
License: Public Domain

SULLIVAN, Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. Trial Rule 53.3(A) provides that “[i]n the event a court ... fails to rule on a Motion to Correct Error within thirty (30) days after it was heard ..., the pending Motion to Correct Error shall be deemed denied.” The trial court here failed to rule on plaintiffs motion to correct error until after the 30-day period had expired and so it was deemed denied.
The majority opinion effectively repeals T.R. 53.3(A)’s time limits in those cases where the party filing the motion to correct error timely initiates an appeal and the trial court thereafter belatedly grants the motion. The majority holds that in *291such cases, the motion is not deemed denied after all and instead the court’s new ruling replaces its former ruling as an appealable final order. This not only conflicts with the clear and unambiguous language of T.R. 53.3(A) but with established precedent as well. Each of the following cases holds that a trial court has no power to rule on a motion to correct error after the 30-day period expires and that any subsequent ruling is a nullity: Rose v. Denman, 676 N.E.2d 777, 781 (Ind.Ct.App.1997); Roscoe v. Roscoe, 673 N.E.2d 820, 821 (Ind.Ct.App.1996); Moran v. Cook, 644 N.E.2d 179, 180 (Ind.Ct.App.1994); Jackson v. Paris, 598 N.E.2d 1106, 1107 (Ind.Ct.App.1992). I cannot agree that a ruling repeatedly held in case law to be a “nullity” can be an appealable final order.
The majority advances several policy justifications for its new rule. I respectfully suggest that there are countervailing policy reasons that are just as weighty, chief among them the general value of certainty that the current bright-line rule provides. More specifically, by leaving open-ended the time a trial court has to rule on a motion to correct error, litigants and the Court of Appeals are left in a highly uncertain world — not knowing whether or not the trial court will grant the motion, rendering the appeal moot, and placing the party originally favored by the court’s ruling in the position of having to decide whether to appeal.
Litigants should be able to rely on our rules as written. If we are going to change the operation of T.R. 53.3(A) in this way, I think we should do so through the rule-making process and not case law.1
We have used the Supreme Court Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure created by T.R. 80 as a source of expert opinion and as a listening post — for bench and bar comments on prospective rule changes. The majority gives no reason for not employing the Rules Committee process here. And I would observe that the principal reason for having rules in the first place is to provide a level playing field for litigants in the sense that everyone knows the rules upfront. While new Trial Rules are prospective in their application, the new rule promulgated by the majority is given retroactive application — not only to these litigants but presumably to all other litigants whose cases are pending on appeal as of the date of this decision.2
To repeat, here the trial court failed to rule on plaintiffs motion to correct error until after the 30-day period had expired and so it was deemed denied. While I recognize that the plaintiff abandoned his timely-filed praecipe only after the trial court ruled in his favor on the motion to correct error, that ruling was a “nullity.” In accordance with rule and precedent, the plaintiff should have continued to perfect his appeal. Doing so is a jurisdictional prerequisite to appellate review; failure to comply with applicable appellate time limits results in forfeiture of an appeal. See *292Claywell v. Review Bd. of the Indiana Dept. of Employment and Training Serv., 643 N.E.2d 330, 330 (Ind.1994). The plaintiff did not comply with the applicable time limits. Nor is the defendant’s appeal properly before us for the reasons discussed above — the order defendant appealed from was a nullity. We lack jurisdiction (as did the Court of Appeals) and must dismiss. Roscoe, 673 N.E.2d at 821; Harkrider v. Lafayette Nat. Bank, 613 N.E.2d 36, 41 (Ind.Ct.App.1993); Jackson, 598 N.E.2d at 1107; accord Claywell, 643 N.E.2d at 330.
SHEPARD, C.J., concurs.

. It is worth noting that when our court last amended T.R. 53.3(A), it was to eliminate the uncertainty that surrounded its use. Prior to 1989, the rule had provided that if the trial court had not ruled on a motion to correct error within the requisite time period, "upon application of any interested party, the pending motion to correct error may be deemed denied.” T.R. 53.3(A) (West 1988) (effective Jan. 1, 1983). To eliminate the uncertainty occasioned by the open-ended nature of this language, this court amended the rule effective February 16, 1989, adopting its current language: if the trial court has not ruled on a motion to correct error within the requisite time period, "the pending Motion to Correct Error is deemed denied." T.R. 53.3(A) (West 1999) (effective Feb. 16, 1989). Today's opinion reintroduces at least some of the uncertainty that this court sought to eliminate in 1989.

. See Sneed v. Associated Group Ins., 663 N.E.2d 789, 795 (Ind.Ct.App.1996) ("With respect to new rules announced through adjudication, the rule generally will be applied to all cases pending on direct appeal at the time of the decision. With respect to new rules announced through a rulemaking process, however, the new rule generally will only be applied to cases which arise after the new rule has been announced.” (citations omitted)).