Relief Not Demanded

Relief Not Demanded

The ceiling described in the last section binds only a default judgment. Rule 54(c) states that ceiling in its first sentence and reverses course in its second: "Every other final judgment should grant the relief to which each party is entitled, even if the party has not demanded that relief in its pleadings."¹ Every other reaches each final judgment that is not a default judgment, including one that follows a trial or any other contested ending, and each party extends the instruction beyond the plaintiff. In a contested case, the demand in the complaint opens the door to relief without closing it, and the court may award what the proof and the law support.

The two sentences differ because the two kinds of defendants stand in different positions. A defendant who stays silent has only the complaint to consult in deciding how much to fear the case, so the demand has to bind. A defendant who appears learns the shape of the dispute from the litigation itself, through motions, discovery, and trial, and the pleaded figure stops being the only signal of the stakes. Holding that defendant to the demand would let the drafting of the complaint override a result the defendant had every chance to contest. Vermont's reporter's notes to its identical rule make the same point: "The provision for judgments other than by default provides for all cases the flexibility inherent in the general prayer for relief formerly permitted in chancery."² The general prayer was the catch-all request for whatever further relief is just.

The same evidence would produce a different judgment if the supplier had ignored the summons. The judgment would then stop at the $50,000 pleaded, because the first sentence of the rule makes the demand the ceiling for a default judgment. Only one fact moves the answer: whether the defendant took part in the case.

The flexibility has a boundary, and the word entitled marks it. In Prue v. Royer, a defendant had not counterclaimed for foreclosure and had tried his case entirely on the theory that the contract was a lease option. He nonetheless argued that Vermont's version of Rule 54(c) allowed the court to order foreclosure.³ The Vermont Supreme Court agreed that the rule's language is broad, but it explained that its own decisions limit the rule for due process reasons of notice and opportunity to defend. Its chief precedent, Johnson & Dix, Inc. v. Springfield Fuels, Inc., requires that any unpleaded remedy lie within the "ambit of the controversy being litigated," meaning the scope of the dispute the parties actually fought over. Relief also fails if the party against whom it is granted was prevented from raising appropriate defenses or submitting evidence because it did not know the remedy was under consideration.⁴ Because the Vermont rule is identical to the federal rule, as the court observed, Prue shows how a court reads the federal text, although a state court's reading does not bind a federal court.⁵

Laquerre v. Martin illustrates the second limit. The trial court there entered judgment against third-party defendants, who as a result lost a statute-of-limitations defense that they could not raise against the original defendants but could raise against the plaintiffs. Applying Johnson & Dix, the Vermont Supreme Court held that the trial court had gone beyond the ambit of the controversy being litigated and that substantial justice required reversal of the judgment against the third-party defendants.⁶ A remedy that arrives from an unexpected direction can change which defenses are available, and a party who did not know the remedy was in play has had no real opportunity to defend against it.

Prue adds a gloss from Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody, where the U.S. Supreme Court construed the word entitled so that the second sentence may not apply if a party's "conduct of the cause has improperly and substantially prejudiced the other party."⁷ Entitlement thus depends partly on how the case was conducted, and a party otherwise owed a remedy may lose it by litigating in a way that leaves the other side unfairly exposed. In Prue the prejudice came from what foreclosure carries with it. Vermont's Rule 80.1 requires a pleading in compliance with Rule 80.1(b) and raises issues that must be addressed: the time for redemption (the period in which the owner can pay what is owed and keep the property), the need for an accounting, and the opportunity for foreclosure by sale. The trial court gave no notice that it was proceeding to foreclosure, so the plaintiffs lost important rights because they had no opportunity to address those issues.⁸ Laquerre and Prue thus reach similar results for different reasons: the Laquerre third-party defendants lost a substantive defense, and the Prue plaintiffs lost the chance to be heard on matters the remedy ordinarily brings with it.

The court located the defect in the missing notice. It observed that the trial court might have announced that it was proceeding to foreclosure, then given the defendant an opportunity to file a pleading in compliance with Rule 80.1(b) and the plaintiffs an opportunity to raise their issues.⁹ That observation shows what the limit protects. A missing pleading matters because it can leave the other side without notice and without a chance to respond, so a remedy that comes with notice and an opportunity to be heard remains available even though no one pleaded it.

Steps three and four carry most of the weight in practice, because they ask the question Prue treated as central: whether the party against whom relief is granted had a fair chance to meet it.

Answers on this point tend to fail in one of two opposite ways. One reads the pleaded figure as a cap on every judgment, which carries the default rule into contested cases and ignores the second sentence of Rule 54(c). The other treats the second sentence as permission to award any remedy the proof suggests, which overlooks the notice and prejudice limits and would be plainly wrong if the defendant had defaulted. The second sentence states the general rule for contested cases, the first states the exception for defaults, and notice and prejudice mark the edge of the general rule.