After voluntary dismissal, the right to re-file a lawsuit is recognized by the courts
OPINION ASSESSMENT
Gary W. filed a lawsuit against Halliburton for age discrimination. When he lost in arbitration and tried to return to federal court, the statute of limitations on the alleged age discrimination had passed. He asked the court instead to grant relief from the previous order of dismissal, He asked the court to grant relief to the previous order of dismissal when he lost the arbitration. The statute of limitations had expired on the alleged age-discrimination. The court had to decide whether a voluntary dismissal of a case under Rule 41 was a “proceeding”, which is “final”, enough to allow reopening of judgments under Rule60 The opinion of Justice Samuel Alito yesterday was the first to be released from the January argument schedule. It answered the question emphatically “yes.” The answer to that question is a resounding “yes.” Alito argues that excluding voluntary dismissals from Rule (b) would place them in a “procedural no man’s-land” because they would be neither interlocutory, which As he concludes, “
f a voluntary dismissal without prejudice is not ‘interlocutory,’ then it is hard to imagine that it could be anything but ‘final.'”
Alito finds it similarly easy to characterize the voluntary dismissal as a “proceeding” for purposes of Rule 60(b). For example, a rule authorizing a stay of “further proceedings” “likely refers to a stay of any further action in the lawsuit, including further docket filings. 0100 For example, a rule authorizing a stay of “further proceedings” “likely refers to a stay of any further action in the lawsuit, including further docket filings,
otherwise the stay would be an ineffective sanction.”
Alito also points to the cumulative references in Rule 60 to a “judgment, order, or proceeding,” which he analyzes as “speak
in an ascending order of generality.” For him, “[a]ny ‘judgment’ will generally involve an ‘order,’ but not all ‘orders’ are ‘judgments.'” In turn, for Alito, “[s]ust as ‘order’ encompasses and exceeds ‘judgment,’ ‘proceeding’ should encompass and exceed ‘order.'” He concludes, then, that it would be “odd … to read ‘proceeding’ as covering only those acts that are already covered by the term ‘order.'” He concludes, then, that “the term ‘proceeding’ encompasses all steps taken in the action, including a voluntary dismissal without prejudice.”
The court has spent a surprising amount of time on its docket this year on cases about federal procedural rules, which raise issues that easily could be addressed by the advisory committee on federal rules. In this case, I can see textbook authors and lower court judges citing the fine parsing and interpretation of Rule 60. I doubt that this case will set a precedent for years to come.
