Court Opinion

ID: 9480633
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:54:12.666995+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:47:48.946823
License: Public Domain

MANION, Circuit Judge,
joined by CUMMINGS, POSNER, COFFEY, and EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judges, and ESCHBACH, Senior Circuit Judge, concurring.
The main question we face in this case is whether the district court properly considered the merits of Varhol’s new trial motion. The answer, based strictly on the Federal Rules, would appear to be a simple, and resounding, “No!”. Rule 59 allows only ten days to serve a new trial motion. Rule 6(b) forbids district courts from extending that time, so any extension does not make an otherwise untimely motion timely. Textile Banking Co. v. Rentschler, 657 F.2d 844, 849 (7th Cir.1981). We have repeatedly held that district courts have no power to grant untimely Rule 59 motions. E.g., Branion v. Gramly, 855 F.2d 1256, 1259 (7th Cir.1988); Bailey v. Sharp, 782 F.2d 1366, 1369 (7th Cir.1986); Car Carriers, Inc. v. Ford Motor Co., 745 F.2d 1101, 1112 (7th Cir.1984); Hulson v. Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Ry. Co., 289 F.2d 726, 729 (7th Cir.1961). Accord Beliz v. W.H. McLeod & Sons Packing Co., 765 F.2d 1317, 1325 (5th Cir.1985). Since Va-rhol’s new trial motion was untimely (despite the trial judge’s purported extension of time to file it), it would appear the district court had no power to, and should not have, considered the motion on its merits. If the trial judge did not have the *1573power to consider the merits of Varhol’s new trial motion, we must affirm that decision without reaching the merits; if the district court could not properly grant the motion, it could not have been error to deny it. As a practical consequence, this means Varhol will have forfeited his opportunity for review of the amount of damages because a timely motion for new trial is néc-essary to preserve that issue for appeal. Hahn v. Becker, 588 F.2d 768, 772 (7th Cir.1979).
This reasoning, however, runs head-on into this court’s decision in Eady v. Foerder, 381 F.2d 980 (7th Cir.1967). In Eady, the district court told counsel for the losing party that he could have thirty days to file any post-trial motions. Counsel, relying on this statement, filed a Rule 59 motion 28 days after entry of judgment. The district court granted the motion. On appeal, the appellant argued that the district court had no power to grant the motion because it was untimely. Id. at 980-81. We rejected this argument, relying on Harris and Wolf-sohn (and thus, impliedly, on Thompson, the case on which Wolfsohh relied) to hold that where a district court extends the ten-day period to file a new trial motion, and a party relies on that extension in filing an untimely motion, the unique circumstances of that reliance allow the district court to consider the motion’s merits. Id. at 981. We have since interpreted Eady to apply only where a party actually relies on the extension; that is, where the party is not aware that the court cannot extend the time to file the motion. See Bailey, 782 F.2d at 1368-69. Amtrak does not contend that Varhol’s attorneys were aware that the trial judge could not extend the time for filing his new trial motion, and thus we assume that they did actually rely on the district court’s extension. Therefore, the circumstances in this case fall squarely into Eady’s judge-made exception to Rule 59’s time limit.
Whether or not we consider Varhol’s damages argument on the merits depends on whether Eady should remain the law in this circuit. It should not. There are powerful reasons to overrule Eady, the most important being that Eady is inconsistent with the federal rules. In Pavelic & Le-Flore v. Marvel Entertainment Corp., — U.S. -, 110 S.Ct. 456, 107 L.Ed.2d 438 (1989), the Supreme Court recently reiterated that courts are to give the federal rules their “plain meaning.” Id. 110 S.Ct. at 458. As we have seen, Rules 59 and 6 are as plain as can be: Rule 59 gives a litigant ten days to serve post-trial motions, and Rule 6 denies the district court the authority to extend that time limit.
It follows from this that the district court may not rule on an untimely Rule 59 motion. The assertion that Rules 59 and 6 do not explicitly spell out the consequences of a late motion, and that we should thus treat Rule 59’s deadline not as a requirement- for subject matter jurisdiction but rather as akin to a requirement of personal jurisdiction or a statute of limitations (both of which can be waived) does not change this result. The problem is that Eady allows — in fact, depends on — the district court extending the time to file a Rule 59 motion, which is exactly what Rule 6 expressly prohibits. The rules’ drafters did not have to spell out the consequences of a late-filed Rule 59 motion; those consequences flow naturally from Rule 6’s prohibition of extension of time to file Rule 59 motions. Even Professors Wright and Miller admit that “an intelligent reading of the rules [makes] it quite clear that the district court has no authority ... to entertain a new trial motion [served] more than ten days following entry of judgment....” 4A Charles Alan Wright & Arthur Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure § 1168, at 506 (2d ed. 1987).1
*1574Whether Rules 59 and 6 limit a court’s subject matter jurisdiction, strictly speaking, is not important. What is important is that the rules set limits, and that those limits lead to the conclusion that district courts may not decide untimely Rule 59 motions. The real issue here is whether the federal rules, as written, bind the federal courts. On this issue, the Supreme Court has recently and emphatically spoken: in applying the federal rules, our task is to apply the rules’ text as we find it, not to change it or attempt to improve it. See Pavelic & LeFlore, 110 S.Ct. at 460. Appeals to Rule 1 and “the interest of justice” do not excuse us from heeding this command. The problem with relying on Rule 1 is that Rule 1 is a rule of construction. Eady, however, did not construe the rules; it ignored them. The panel in Eady did not mention Rule 1, or even attempt to relate its holding to the text of any federal rules. Rules of construction such as Rule 1 are necessary to interpret unclear statutes. Rules 59 and 6, however, do not require a rule of construction to aid in their interpretation. Rule 1 just does not apply to this case, and we ought not use that rule as a warrant to bend the other .rules any time an arguably harsh result may offend our sense of “justice.” Cf. Schiavone v. Fortune, 477 U.S. 21, 27-32, 106 S.Ct. 2379, 2383-86, 91 L.Ed.2d 18 (1986) (rejecting arguments based on Rule 1 and the truisms that pleading is not a “game of skill” and that courts are not to avoid decisions on the merits because of “mere technicalities,” because in interpreting a clear rule “the choice ... is between recognizing or ignoring what the Rule provides in plain language.”).
If district courts really need a mechanism to extend the time for filing post-trial motions after entering a judgment, it is up to the Supreme Court and Congress, through the procedure established by the Rules Enabling Act, 28 U.S.C. § 2072, to provide that mechanism.2 The judiciary and Congress “have established a long tradition of shared responsibility” in regulating practice and procedure in the federal courts, a .tradition “embodied principally .. in the Rules Enabling Act.” The Act “was designed to foster a uniform system of procedure throughout the federal sys-tem_” See G. Heileman Brewing Co. v. Joseph Oat Corp., 871 F.2d 648, 665 (7th Cir.1989) (Ripple, J., dissenting). Though local courts may supplement the federal rules, that supplementation may not conflict with the rules. See id.; Fed.R.Civ.P. 83. Courts of appeals and district courts have no power to change the federal rules on their own and upset the uniform procedural system Congress and the Supreme Court have established. By ignoring the clear text of Rules 59 and 6 — in effect, amending those rules — Eady subverts the relationship between the judiciary and Congress in regulating practice and procedure in the federal courts embodied in the Rules Enabling Act.
Eady’s inconsistency with the federal rules, and the damage Eady does to the rulemaking process established by Congress and the judiciary are themselves compelling reasons to overrule Eady. But there are other reasons as well. Eady, as we interpreted it in Bailey v. Sharp, 782 F.2d 1366 (7th Cir.1986), applies only to lawyers who have never heard of the case and are ignorant of the rules prohibiting extensions of time to file post-trial motions. *1575See id. at 1368-69. Eady requires actual reliance on the district judge’s misstatement; a lawyer who discovers Eady or reads the federal rules cannot actually rely on the misstatement because he knows (or should know) the judge is wrong. Eady thus rewards the uninformed (or those who pretend to be). Not knowing the rules, however, is something to be deterred, not promoted. Certainly, uninformed attorneys do not benefit litigants or the court system.3
Moreover, since application of Eady turns on a lawyer’s knowledge of the law, the district court’s jurisdiction over a post-trial motion could turn on a detailed factual inquiry into counsel’s knowledge, thought processes, and even honesty (is the lawyer really unaware, or is he just pretending?). Rules 59 and 6 are clear and simple, as they should be. Courts and litigants can know what is properly before a court without bogging down in procedural minutiae. Detailed factual inquiries into an attorney’s state of mind such as Eady may require, besides being unseemly, disrupt that clarity and simplicity. See Bailey, 782 F.2d at 1373 (concurring opinion).
If the Supreme Court’s unique circumstances cases compelled the result in Eady, we would be bound to uphold Eady despite the reasons for overruling it. But Harris and Thompson do not compel Eady, and probably do not even support it. Harris and Thompson both depended on the fact that certain things that occur in the district court may extend the time for filing a notice of appeal. The question in those cases was how a mutual mistake between the judge and the parties about the existence of that time extending act — in Harris, a possibly erroneous finding of excusable neglect and extension of time to appeal before the original appeal period had run, and in Thompson an erroneous extension of time to file a Rule 59 motion — would affect the appeal. See Bailey, 782 F.2d at 1369-70 (concurring opinion). The Court in Harris and Thompson merely held, in effect, that courts of appeals should not penalize litigants when such mutual mistakes occur.
There is no rule allowing district court judges to extend the time to file post-trial motions, and Rule 6 flatly prohibits extensions. There can be no mutual mistake about how an erroneous extension would affect the court’s ability to hear a post-trial motion: the district court has no power to hear an untimely motion. Thompson stands for the proposition that a district court’s mistake, where a mechanism exists for extending the time to appeal, should not deprive the court of appeals of jurisdiction. Eady, however, allows the district court to expand its own power to hear a post-trial motion beyond the limits the federal rules set and in the face of a rule that expressly disallows such extensions. Nothing in Thompson or Harris (or any other Supreme Court case we know of) suggests that courts should be able to expand their own power simply by asserting that power. Indeed, far from being compelled by any Supreme Court precedent, Eady is contrary to a number of recent Court cases holding that courts are to apply the federal rules as *1576written, and emphasizing the importance of strictly enforcing Congressionally-mandat-ed procedural requirements, even if the result seems somewhat arbitrary or even unfair. See, e.g., Pavelic, 110 S.Ct. 456; Hallstrom v. Tillamook County, — U.S. -, 110 S.Ct. 304, 311, 107 L.Ed.2d 237 (1989) (“In the long run, experience teaches that strict adherence to the procedural requirements specified by the legislature is the best guarantee of even-handed administration of the law.”); Torres v. Oakland Scavenger Co., 487 U.S. 312, 108 S.Ct. 2405, 101 L.Ed.2d 285 (1988) (Fed.R.App.P.3(c) requires each party appealing a judgment be named in notice of appeal; appellate court has no jurisdiction over appeal against parties not named); Schiavone, 477 U.S. at 27-32, 106 S.Ct. at 2383-86; Baldwin County Welcome Center v. Brown, 466 U.S. 147, 152, 104 S.Ct. 1723, 1726, 80 L.Ed.2d 196 (1984) (judges may not disregard procedural requirements “out of a vague sympathy for particular litigants”).
The Second Circuit has recognized that Thompson does not support Eady’s holding. In Long Island Radio Co. v. NLRB, 841 F.2d 474, 478-79 (2d Cir.1988), the court rejected an argument, based on Thompson’s unique circumstances doctrine, that the National Labor Relations Board had jurisdiction to consider an untimely attorney’s fee application because the Board had mistakenly granted an extension of time to file the application. The Second Circuit declined to extend Thompson, reasoning that “there was no suggestion in Thompson that the district court, in misstating the timeliness of the new-trial motion, had succeeded in enlarging its own jurisdiction to entertain that motion.” Id. at 478-79. The Second Circuit cited not Eady, but the concurrence in Bailey (which criticized and urged overruling Eady), and the Second Circuit analysis effectively repudiated Eady. Thus, Eady puts us in conflict with another circuit.
Since Eady is inconsistent with the federal rules and not compelled by any Supreme Court precedent, the only reason left for not overruling it is stare decisis, or as our colleagues put it, “the test of time.” But stare decisis does not compel us to uphold Eady merely because it has been around a long time. Judge Flaum’s concurrence in this case is the first attempt by any judge in this (or any other) circuit to attempt to supply a principled basis for Eady’s holding. Eady itself offered no rationale for its holding other than citations to Harris and Wolfsohn. The panel in Eady completely ignored the federal rules (around which any discussion of the problem faced in Eady and here must turn), and failed to present or analyze any arguments for or against its holding. Eady also ignored two earlier decisions from this court, Hulson v. Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Ry. Co., 289 F.2d 726 (1961), and Nugent v. Yellow Cab Co., 295 F.2d 794 (1961), both of which held that district courts had no power to rule on untimely Rule 59 motions despite the fact that the district courts in those cases had expressly extended the time for filing those motions. Given that no basis for Eady’s holding has ever been advanced in this circuit until today, it is at best creative to suggest that stare decisis compels us to uphold Eady because “the rationales for rejecting Eady existed in 1967 when the case was decided.” It is also ironic to rely on stare decisis, given Eady’s treatment (or, more accurately, nontreatment) of Hul-son and Nugent, which only six years earlier had rejected the very approach Eady took. What happened to stare decisis then?
As for the “test of time”: Despite having more than twenty years to pick up support, no other case, in this circuit or other circuits, has followed Eady. (There is a passing reference to Eady in Mayer v. Angelica, 790 F.2d 1315, 1338 (7th Cir.1988), that could be read as approving Eady, but Mayer specifically bypassed the procedural problem so its reference to Eady is dictum.) See Bailey, 782 F.2d at 1370 (concurring opinion); 4A Wright & Miller, supra, § 1168, at 505 (stating that “[n]o other circuit has followed the result in Eady," a statement that the 1990 pocket part does not retract, and that our colleagues’ con*1577currence does not challenge).4 In fact, as we have seen, the Second Circuit has (at least implicitly) rejected Eady and adopted the approach of the Bailey concurrence (which was also the approach of Hulson and Nugent, the two cases from this circuit Eady ignored). It is just incorrect to say that Eady has “stood the test of time”; if anything, Eady’s failure to attract support from other courts indicates that it has flunked that test and is ripe to be overruled. Preserving Eady places us on the wrong side of an intercircuit conflict, a conflict the Supreme Court would certainly resolve against us given Eady’s inconsistency with the federal rules and the Court’s insistence that we apply those rules as written. This court should overrule Eady and affirm the district court’s decision not to order a new trial on damages based on Yarhol’s failure to file a timely new trial motion to properly preserve the damages issue.

. My position that we should overrule Eady does not depend on calling Rules 6 and 59 rules of subject matter jurisdiction (in the strict sense). In any event, it is too late in the day to question the "jurisdictional” nature of the time limits in Rules 6 and 59. In Bailey, this court issued a writ of mandamus ordering a district court to vacate an order granting a new trial because the movant in district court had served his new trial motion after the ten-day limit set by Rules 59 and 6 had expired. See 782 F.2d at 1369. The premise on which we granted the writ was that the district court lacked jurisdiction to grant a new trial because the new trial *1574motion was untimely. See id. at 1367, 1369. Bailey made the jurisdictional nature of Rules 6 and 59, and the nature of the "jurisdiction" of which it spoke, abundantly clear:
Rules 6 and 59 allocate decision-making authority between the district court and the court of appeals. Once the time prescribed for a motion lapses, the parties' recourse lies in appeal rather than continued importuning of the district judge.
Id. at 1368. Language speaking about the allocation of decision-making authority between trial and appellate courts is the language of subject matter jurisdiction. The approach Judge Flaum’s concurrence takes would at least require us to question if not overrule Bailey, a decision on which his concurrence relies.

. In any event, such a change is probably not necessary. A judge who wants to give the parties more than ten days to file post-trial motions can easily do that by postponing the formal entry of judgment by any amount of time necessary. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 58. So, Eady not only created an unauthorized exception to the rules’ time limits; it also created an unnecessary one.

. While Eady supposedly states an “equitable" exception to the rules, it is puzzling why this equitable exception should apply here but not in Bailey. Bailey was a much more compelling case. In Bailey, the lawyer relying on Eady did what a good lawyer should do: he researched the law regarding time limits on post-trial motions and found Eady. Unfortunately, he misread Eady as saying that a district court can generally hear untimely motions, rather than as stating an equitable exception to the rules. (This is the inevitable result of Eady's muddying the waters; the rules themselves are clear, and had the lawyer in Bailey had only the rules before him he could only have concluded the district court’s extension of time was improper.) See Bailey, 782 F.2d at 1368. In this case, Va-rhol’s lawyer took the judge’s word without doing his homework. It seems odd (and far from "equitable”) to penalize the litigant whose lawyer actually did his homework (but made an honest mistake in misreading what he found) while not penalizing the litigant whose lawyer failed to do what he should have done — research the problem. For an "equitable” exception, Eady hardly seems to apply equitably.
Moreover, the fact that Amtrak’s counsel may have been uninformed, or may even have kept silent to spring a procedural trap does not, as Judge Flaum’s concurrence implies, excuse Va-rhol’s lawyer's failure to know the rules. Even in procedural matters, two wrongs do not make a right.

. It is true that the Third Circuit has adopted a rule similar to the rule created in Eady in the context of motions for sentence reduction under the pre-1987 amendment version of Fed.R.Crim.P. 35. See Virgin Islands v. Gereau, 603 F.2d 438, 442 (3d Cir.1979). But Gereau, like Eady, offered no rationale for its holding other than citation to the Supreme Court's unique circumstances cases, which were no more applicable to the situation in Gereau than they were to the situation in Eady. More importantly, the Third Circuit has recently questioned the viability of the unique circumstances doctrine, and in that discussion also questioned Gereau's viability. See Kraus v. Consolidated Rail Corp., 899 F.2d 1360, 1364-65 (3d Cir.1990). In Kraus, the Third Circuit "assum[ed] arguendo” that it could apply the unique circumstances doctrine, but stated that it would "narrowly construe! 1 and sparingly appl[y] the ‘unique circumstances' exception to time requirements."’ Id. at 1365 (citation omitted). Given Kraus, one may seriously question whether the Third Circuit would continue following its holding in Gereau, a holding that Judge Flaum’s concurrence implicitly acknowledges, concurring opinion at 1571, is not compelled by the Supreme Court’s unique circumstances cases.