Recognizing a Rule 59(e) Motion

A losing party may call a post-judgment paper a motion to reconsider, to vacate, or to reopen, and the title may never mention Rule 59(e). The court must still decide whether the paper, in substance, asks it to alter or amend the judgment, because Rule 59(e) sets a deadline for motions of that kind: no later than 28 days after entry of the judgment.¹ The answer also controls appeal timing. Under Alabama's appellate rules, a proper Rule 59(e) motion extends the time for filing a notice of appeal,² and under the federal appellate rule the Supreme Court applied in one leading case, a notice of appeal filed while a timely Rule 59(e) motion was pending had no effect.³

Courts classify the paper by function. A post-judgment motion is a Rule 59(e) motion when it "involves reconsideration of matters properly encompassed in a decision on the merits."⁴ Function is the right measure because the deadline and the appeal consequences attach to what the motion asks the court to do. If the caption controlled, a party could dodge the deadline by renaming a genuine request for rethinking, and a timely request for correction could fail because it carried the wrong title. Classifying by the relief requested removes both risks, because a movant cannot change the relief by choosing a caption.

Two questions follow from the test. The first concerns the caption: how much weight a court gives the title the movant chose, and what happens when the title and the request point in different directions. The second concerns the phrase "matters encompassed in a decision on the merits": which post-judgment requests reach the merits decision, and which concern matters outside it. A request on the merits side is a Rule 59(e) motion and carries the deadline and the appeal consequences. A request outside it does not, even when it is filed the same day.

Substance Over Label

Rule 59(e) names a kind of motion, not a kind of caption. Its deadline governs a "motion to alter or amend a judgment," and nothing in that wording turns on what the movant calls the paper.⁵ A court therefore reads the relief the paper requests. If the paper asks the court to rethink its merits decision and arrives within 28 days, the court treats it as a Rule 59(e) motion under any title. The decisions below apply that approach in a state appeal, a federal appeal, and filings that cite no rule.

Alabama authority illustrates the stakes: a proper Rule 59(e) motion extends the time for filing a notice of appeal under Alabama's appellate rules.⁶ The word proper matters. A paper that qualifies carries the extension, and a paper that does not qualify carries none, whatever its author hoped.

Havensight Capital LLC v. Nike, Inc. shows a federal court applying the functional test. Havensight styled its paper a motion to vacate the judgment and re-open the case, but the court of appeals concluded that the motion actually sought reconsideration of the district court's decision on the merits.⁷ A motion that "involves reconsideration of matters properly encompassed in a decision on the merits" is properly characterized as a motion to alter or amend the judgment under Rule 4(a).⁸ The characterization matters because a motion of that kind is the one that would ordinarily toll the time for filing the notice of appeal.⁹

Many papers cite no rule at all and ask only for reconsideration. A motion for reconsideration asks the court to reconsider its decision, and courts ordinarily treat it as a Rule 59(e) motion "to alter or amend a judgment" unless the movant specifies otherwise.¹⁰ The default fits the functional test, because a request to reconsider a decision is a request to change the judgment that rests on it.

A dismissal imposed as a sanction shows how the default works. In an appeal by a plaintiff named Olson, the court of appeals observed that the district court had dismissed the case without considering the likely merits of Olson's claims, although a district court must consider whether a suit has any possible merit before dismissing for ordinary misconduct, and that before the final pretrial conference the defendants never moved for dismissal or summary judgment and took part willingly in settlement negotiations.¹¹ Suppose a plaintiff in that position files a paper within the time limit that cites no rule and asks the court to reconsider and set aside the dismissal, and the defendant answers that the paper is a Rule 60(b) motion. The paper asks the court to reconsider its decision, so the default applies. Unless the movant specified otherwise, the paper is ordinarily a Rule 59(e) motion, and the defendant's label does not change what the paper requests.¹²

The principle also cuts the other way: substance can place a filing outside Rule 59(e) even when it arrives promptly. In Lorenzen v. Employees Ret. Plan of the Sperry & Hutchison Co. the Seventh Circuit stated its working presumption broadly. All motions addressed to the judgment and filed within the deadline are deemed Rule 59(e) motions, except purely procedural motions, such as for extensions of time, and motions that kick off collateral proceedings, such as a proceeding to obtain an award of costs or attorney's fees.¹³ The court applied the ten-day deadline that preceded today's 28 days. The period has changed, and the method of classification has not. Prompt filing therefore answers only one of the two questions, and the next section takes up the line between requests that reach the merits decision and requests that do not.

Merits Versus Collateral Matters

Rule 59(e) reaches a "motion to alter or amend a judgment" and does not list the requests that qualify.¹⁵ The dividing line comes from White v. New Hampshire Department of Employment Security, and Osterneck v. Ernst & Whinney restated it: a postjudgment motion is a Rule 59(e) motion where it involves "reconsideration of matters properly encompassed in a decision on the merits."¹⁶ The Court applied the ten-day period the rule then contained. The period is now 28 days, but the line between merits requests and collateral requests has not moved. A request on the merits side carries the deadline and its effect on the time to appeal, and a request on the collateral side carries neither.

The line follows from how Rule 59(e) fits with the appellate rules. Together, Rule 59(e) and Appellate Rule 4(a)(4) implement the finality requirement of 28 U.S.C. § 1291 by preventing an effective notice of appeal until the district court has had an opportunity to dispose of all motions that seek to amend or alter what might otherwise appear to be a final judgment.¹⁷ A motion that asks the court to change the merits judgment puts that judgment at risk. If the court grants it, the decision on appeal has changed, and an appeal taken in the meantime aims at a moving target. A request that leaves the merits judgment untouched puts nothing at risk. The classification question is therefore whether the request, if granted, would change what the judgment decides or awards.

Requests for attorney's fees and costs stand on the collateral side. The Seventh Circuit treats a motion that starts a proceeding to obtain costs or fees as collateral, and so outside Rule 59(e).¹⁸ Osterneck reached its own result under a line of earlier decisions that includes White, Buchanan v. Stanships, Inc., and Budinich v. Becton Dickinson & Co.¹⁹ In Budinich the Court reiterated that a request for attorney's fees is not part of the merits of the underlying action, because fees are not part of the compensation for the plaintiff's injury but have traditionally been regarded as an element of costs awarded to the prevailing party.²⁰

Prejudgment interest falls on the other side of the line. Applying those precedents, the Court held in Osterneck that a postjudgment motion for discretionary prejudgment interest is a motion to alter or amend the judgment under Rule 59(e).²¹ Its reason was that prejudgment interest "is an element of [plaintiff's] complete compensation."²² That reason shows why the presence of money cannot be the test. Fees and interest are both sums requested after judgment, but interest completes the answer to the question the merits judgment resolves, which is what the defendant owes for the injury, while fees are an element of costs awarded to the prevailing party and are not compensation for the injury.²³ A request for interest therefore asks the court to change what the judgment awards, and the Seventh Circuit calls it equivalent to a motion to alter the amount of damages awarded in the judgment.²⁴

A single paper can hold requests on both sides of the line, and Lorenzen shows what turns on the sorting. The retirement plan had filed a notice of appeal, and three days later counsel for Mrs. Lorenzen filed a postjudgment motion. If it was a proper Rule 59(e) motion, it wiped out the plan's notice of appeal under Appellate Rule 4(a)(4) as that rule then read.²⁵ The court approached the question by sorting motions according to what they ask for. A motion for prejudgment interest qualifies, because it is equivalent to a motion to alter the damages awarded, and a motion that starts a proceeding for costs or fees does not.²⁶ A paper that combines such requests must therefore be sorted request by request.

A common error is to let the filing date or the dollar amount decide the classification. Neither does. A fee motion filed on the fifth day after judgment is as collateral as one filed on the twenty-fifth, and an interest motion filed on the twenty-eighth day is as much a Rule 59(e) motion as one filed on the first. The test asks what the request would change, and the 28 days settle only whether a motion that qualifies is timely.²⁷

A fee request can still affect appeal timing, but only through a further step by the court. The civil rules allow the court, on a timely fee motion under Rule 54(d)(2) and before a notice of appeal has been filed and has become effective, to order that the motion have the same effect under Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 4(a)(4) as a timely Rule 59 motion.²⁸ The need for that order shows that a fee motion does not carry Rule 59(e)'s effect on its own. Getting appeal timing wrong can end the appeal: in the Okonite litigation, the court of appeals found Okonite's appeal from the merits untimely and held that it had no jurisdiction to hear it.²⁹