Justices debate the right to renew a lawsuit after voluntary dismissal
ARGUMENT ANALYSIS
Tuesday’s argument in Waetzig v. Halliburton Energy Services was brief and relaxed. The issue in the case is the standard for allowing a claimant to reopen a case that he voluntarily dismissed a few years earlier, and the justices did not seem to find the matter contentious.
Vincent Levy represented Gary Waetzig, the former Halliburton employee who is trying to renew his age discrimination lawsuit against the energy company. Roberts asked Levy a series of questions designed to get him to admit that he only wanted to use Federal Rule of Civil Procedure (60(b) in order to reopen a case he had previously dismissed because Waetzig would be prevented from filing a lawsuit now due to the statute of limitation. It took Roberts 10 separate questions to elicit that admission!
The main substantive debate in which the justices engaged was whether the voluntary dismissal of the original case was the kind of “final” proceeding to which Rule 60(b) would apply. Levy argued that the order was final, contending that the limitation to “final” rulings was intended to exclude mid-case rulings in an “open, pending” matter.
Justices Neil Gorsuch and Ketanji Brown Jackson asked several questions about that point, seeming to take it seriously. Jackson asked Matthew McGill of Halliburton directly if he would be able to address Levy’s narrative. McGill, as expected, read the history in a different way, but the justices did not press him enough to know how much they agreed with his interpretation. McGill’s brief argued a jurisdictional issue (based on the court decision in Badgerow V. Walters) justified the dismissal Waetzig case separately. Kagan told McGill that she “likes
Badgerow as much as the next person,” but that it’s not the right time to discuss that now, because that isn’t what we are facing. Kagan joked with McGill that she liked Badgerow just as much as anyone else, but that it was “not the right time” to discuss the issue because “that is not what we are dealing with.” I don’t believe they will find it complicated. I think we’ll have an answer by the end of April.
