Alabama Appellate Watch : Blog Published by Lightfoot Franklin & White : Alabama Litigation Lawyer & Attorney : Appellate, Alabama Supreme Court (Supreme Court of Alabama)

The circuit court awarded an employee workers’ compensation benefits. The employer challenged this decision by post-judgment motion, filing a “Motion for New Trial Pursuant to Rule 50 and/or Relief from Judgment Pursuant to Rule 60.” The circuit court denied these motions on May 24. The next day, the circuit court purported to set aside this order, and scheduled the employer’s motions for a hearing. After that hearing, the circuit court again denied the employer’s motions. This was on June 21; 42 days later, the employer appealed from the June 21 order.

The Court of Civil Appeals, acting on its own motion, dismissed the appeal as untimely. The circuit court lacked authority to reconsider its initial denial of the Rule 59 and 60 motions. Once it denied those motions (on May 24), it lost jurisdiction of the case; the time to appeal then began to run. In the appellate court’s words:

[A] trial court does not have jurisdiction to entertain a motion to reconsider the denial of a Rule 60(b) . . . motion. . . . Similarly, after a trial court denies a Rule 59 post-judgment motion, the trial court no longer has jurisdiction over the case and the aggrieved party’s only remedy is to appeal.

(Quotation omitted).

A timely appeal thus must have come within 42 days of the May 24th denial — that is, by July 5. Because the employer did not appeal until August 2 (which was 42 days after the ineffective second denial), its appeal was late and was consequently dismissed.

(The Court of Civil Appeals made two subsidiary points along the way, which may be of interest. First, the court reminded readers that amended Rule 58(c) — which deems judgments “entered” on the “actual date” on which they are “input” to the State Judicial Information System — applies retroactively. Rule 58(c) was amended effective September 16, 2006, “but has been held to apply retroactively to all cases pending” on that date, “including cases ‘pending’ in an appellate court.”

The Court of Civil Appeals trod familiar ground in this case, in which a party unwrapped the well-loved (if ill-treated) motion to “reconsider,” trying to keep its case alive. The trial court granted the plaintiff wife a default judgment. The husband filed a Rule 55(c) post-judgment motion to set that judgment aside. Subsequently, the husband filed a “‘motion to review’ in which he cited facts and circumstances that had arisen after the entry of the trial court’s judgment, but he did not seek to amend” his Rule 55 motion. The trial court denied the Rule 55 motion; but, at the same time, it set the “motion for review” for hearing. No one appealed the Rule 55 denial.

More than three months later, the husband filed a “Motion for Relief from Order.” He claimed that he had never received notice that his Rule 55 motion had been denied, and he asked the court to “reconsider” that denial. The trial court denied this motion. From the last order the husband timely appealed.

The appellate court first noted that it was compelled to address the issue of jurisdiction. “Although neither party has questioned this court’s appellate jurisdiction,” the court wrote, “it is the duty of an appellate court to consider the lack of subject matter jurisdiction ex mero motu.” The appellate court lacked jurisdiction here because “all actions taken [by the trial court] after the denial of the [post-judgment] motion [were] void.” “[T]he Rules of Civil Procedure do not authorize a movant to file a motion to reconsider the trial court’s ruling on his own post-judgment motion.” Using block language from the Alabama Supreme Court, the Rorex court described this proscription and those limited exceptions in which a trial court may revisit a post-judgment disposition.  “[I]n most cases," the court reiminded readers, "the only review of a denial of a post-judgment motion is by [an] appeal.”