Court Opinion

ID: 9951669
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-03-18 18:01:08.633413+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:42:00.577718
License: Public Domain

Case: 24-20018 Document: 29-1 Page:1 Date Filed: 03/18/2024

GQnited States Court of Appeals

for the Fifth Circuit United States Court of Appeats

FILED
March 18, 2024

No. 24-20018 Lyle W. Cayce

Clerk

WILMINGTON SAVINGS FUND SOcIETY, FSB, doing business as
Christiana Trust, as Trustee,

Plaintiff—Appellee,
versus
LEEROY M. MYERS; BARBARA MYERS,

Defendants — Appellants.

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Southern District of Texas
USDC No. 4:22-CV-88

PUBLISHED ORDER

Before HAYNES, WILLETT, and DUNCAN, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM:

Subject to a few exceptions, an appeal in a civil case must be filed
within 30 days after entry of judgment. FeEp. R. App. P. 4(a)()(A). A
timely filed motion to alter or amend a judgment under Rule 59(e) of the
Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, however, can suspend the time for filing
the notice of appeal. Once a party files a motion under Rule 59(e), “the time

to file an appeal runs for all parties from the entry of the order disposing of
Case: 24-20018 Document: 29-1 Page:2 Date Filed: 03/18/2024

No. 24-20018

the last such remaining motion.” FED. R. App. P. 4(a)(4)(A). Thus, once

the district court rules on the motion, the 30-day clock to file an appeal begins

to run anew.

Successive motions under Rule 59(e), however, “will not indefinitely
toll the prescribed period for filing a notice of appeal.” Trowel Trades Emp.
Health and Welfare Trust Fund of Dade Cnty v. Nezelek, Inc., 645 F.2d 322,
326 (5th Cir. 1981). As one of our sister circuits put it, “A party may not

continue to file Rule 59(e) motions in order to forestall the time for appealing;
only the first motion stops the clock.” Andrews v. E.I. Du Pont De Nemours
and Co., 447 F.3d 510, 515 (7th Cir. 2006). So when a district court decides a

Rule 59(e) motion but “does no more in the second judgment than make a

clerical change, such as correct the names of parties or dates, the time for
filing motions does not start to run from entry of the second judgment, but
rather runs from the date of the first judgment.” Cornist ». Richland Parish
Sch. Bd., 479 F.2d 37, 39 (5th Cir. 1973).

Yet sometimes a district court may make more than a mere clerical
change to ajudgment. In rare cases, the district court may, pursuant to a Rule
59(e) motion, “change[] matters of substance, or resolve[| a genuine
ambiguity, in a judgment previously rendered.” Fed. Trade Comm/n v.
Minneapolis-Honeywell Regulator Co., 344 U.S. 206, 211 (1952). In such cases,

“the period within which an appeal must be taken . . . begin to run anew.” Jd.

at 211-12. In other words, the order making such substantive changes is
construed as a new judgment from which the 30-day appeal clock runs, and a
party can suspend the time for filing a notice of appeal with another motion
under Rule 59(e). If, in that case, a party files a second Rule 59(e) motion, the
deadline to appeal will begin running once the district court decides that
motion. See FEp. R. App. P. 4(a)(4).

In this case, defendants Leeroy and Barbara Myers filed two motions
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No. 24-20018

under Rule 59(e), both seeking to amend the district court’s final judgment.
In their first motion, they argued, among many other things, that the district
court’s judgment was mislabeled because even though it purported to
dispose of all claims and parties in the case, the title of the order did not signal
that it was a final judgment. The heading instead read as follows
(capitalization altered): “Plaintiff Wilmington Savings Fund Society, FSB,
D/B/A Christiana Trust, Not Individually but as Trustee for Pretium
Mortgage Acquisition Trust’s Motion for Summary Judgment.” The district
court thus appears to have borrowed a title from an exhibit in the plaintiffs’

motion for summary judgment as a title for its final judgment.

Recognizing the mistake, the district court partially granted the
Myers’ motion to amend, keeping the body of the order identical but revising
the order’s title to “Amended Final Judgment.” In doing so, the district
court explained that it was granting the Myers’ request to amend the heading
in order “to clarify [its prior order] as a final judgment.” About a month later,
the Myers filed another Rule 59(e) motion, reasserting many of their same
arguments in their first motion but with “new evidence.” The district court
denied that motion on December 13, 2023, and the Myers filed their notice
of appeal thirty days later, on January 12, 2024.

Plaintiff-appellee Wilmington Savings Fund Society, FSB, now
argues that the Myers’ appeal should be dismissed as untimely. According to
Wilmington, the district court merely made a clerical change to its final
judgment (z.e., revised the title of the order), so the Myers’ notice of appeal
on January 12, 2024, ran well past 30 days after the district court granted in
part and denied in part their first Rule 59(e) motion.

We disagree. Ordinarily, such minor changes to an order do not
“disturb[] or revise[]| legal rights and obligations” of the parties. Honeywell,
344 US. at 212; see also Cornist, 479 F.2d at 39. But other circuits have
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No. 24-20018

applied Honeywell’s “genuine ambiguity” exception to circumstances in
which there is “an ambiguity as to the legal effect of a court’s order.” Conway
y. United States, 326 F.3d 1268, 1276 (Fed. Cir. 2003); see also Taylor ».
Continental Grp. Change in Control Severance Pay Plan, 933 F.2d 1227, 1231
n.2 (3d Cir. 1991). Wilmington does not argue that we should depart from

that understanding here, nor do we see any reason to ourselves, especially
when the language of an order, including its title, is key to determining
finality. See Ueckert v. Guerra, 38 F.4th 446, 450 (5th Cir. 2022). When the

district court in this case granted the Myers’ first Rule 59(e) motion, it sought

to remove an ambiguity in the legal effect of its initial order—that is, to
amend the title of the order and to clarify it as a final judgment.” The Myers’
notice of appeal, dated January 12, 2016, was filed within 30 days of the
district court’s December 13, 2023, order denying their second Rule 59(e)

motion—and is thus timely.

We accordingly DENY Wilmington’s motion to dismiss.

* There is, to be sure, a facial parallel between this case and Honeywell, insofar as
the lower court could be said to have merely revised the “label” of the order being
appealed. See Honeywell, 344 U.S. at 212-13. But unlike Honeywell, in which the court of
appeals simply “reiterated” its prior order, éd. at 212, there was in this case a clear
discrepancy between the label and the body of the district court’s order. We prefer to
dispose of appeals on the merits when possible, see DeMelo v. Woolsey, Marine Industries,
Inc., 677. F.2d 1030, 1033-34 (5th Cir. 1982), and the discrepancy in the district court’s
order arguably created an ambiguity.