STERN 1011 FIRST STREET SOUTH, LLC, et al., Respondents, vs. KENNETH A. GERE, et al., Appellants.
A21-0904
STATE OF MINNESOTA IN SUPREME COURT
August 31, 2022
Moore, III, J.
Court of Appeals. Filed: August 31, 2022 Office of Appellate Courts
Francis J. Rondoni, Christopher P. Renz, Gary K. Luloff, Chestnut Cambronne, P.A., Minneapolis, Minnesota, for respondents.
Scott G. Knudson, Scott M. Flaherty, Maren M. Forde, O. Joseph Balthazor, Jr., Taft Stettinius & Hollister, LLP, Minneapolis, Minnesota, for appellants.
S Y L L A B U S
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A letter submitted to the district court citing Minn. R. Gen. Prac. 115.11 and requesting permission to file a motion to reconsider is not a proper motion underMinn. R. Civ. App. P. 104.01, subd. 2 , that tolls the time for appeal. -
Because Minn. R. Civ. App. P. 104.01, subd. 2 , unambiguously excludes letters requesting permission to file a motion to reconsider from its list of motions with tolling effect, the interests of justice do not compel the court to accept jurisdiction over an untimely appeal.
Reversed.
O P I N I O N
MOORE, III, Justice.
This case presents procedural and ultimately jurisdictional questions concerning the timeliness of an appeal in a civil case. On May 10, 2021, the district court granted summary judgment in favor of defendants and judgment was entered accordingly, but the summary judgment order mistakenly included language dealing with an entirely unrelated matter. Shortly thereafter, defendants submitted a letter to the district court under
FACTS
This case arises from a dispute between owners of a commercial property in Hopkins over the allegedly fraudulent behavior of one of the owners during the refinancing of the property. Specifically, in December 2017, respondents Stern 1011 First Street South, LLC and Haberman 1011 First Street South, LLC (the “Stern/Haberman parties”) sued appellants Kenneth A. Gere,1 Gere 1011 First Street South, LLC, and Planned Investments, Inc. (the “Gere parties”), asserting various claims of financial irregularities related to Gere’s management of the property’s refinancing in 2007. See Stern 1011 First Street South, LLC v. Gere, 937 N.W.2d 173, 175–76 (Minn. App. 2020) (providing details of the claims), review denied (Minn. Mar. 25, 2020).
The Gere parties moved for summary judgment, arguing that the Stern/Haberman parties’ claims were untimely and lacked merit. On May 10, 2021, the district court granted the Gere parties’ motion,
On May 19, 2021, counsel for the Gere parties, who had prevailed at summary judgment, electronically filed and served a two-paragraph letter to the district court seeking to correct the order’s erroneous reference to the reply brief from another case. The letter stated it was sent “pursuant to
Two days later, on May 21, 2021, the district court issued an amended summary judgment order without directly responding to the Gere parties’ letter or holding a hearing on a motion to reconsider. The updated order struck the misplaced discussion of an overlength reply memorandum and explained in a new asterisked sentence on the first page that the order had “been amended due to the Court accidentally including verbiage from another matter in the original Order, causing this one to be edited and to be an Amended Order.”2 The district court directed that judgment be entered on the amended order and dismissed Stern’s complaint with prejudice. An amended judgment was accordingly entered by the court administrator the same day.
On July 19, 2021, the Stern/Haberman parties filed a notice of appeal from “an Order of the Court filed on” May 21, 2021. On July 20, 2021, the court of appeals issued an order construing the notice of appeal as seeking review of the May 21, 2021 judgment. On July 30, 2021, the Gere parties filed their statement of the case, asserting that the court of appeals lacked jurisdiction over the appeal because it was untimely. Specifically, the Gere parties cited Dennis Frandsen & Co., Inc. v. Kanabec Cty., 306 N.W.2d 566, 570 (Minn. 1981), for the proposition that the “time to appeal an issue determined by the trial court begins to run upon entry of judgment ‘and does not begin to run anew by reason of an amendment which leaves that determination undisturbed.’ ” In response, the court of appeals formally questioned its jurisdiction and the parties submitted informal memoranda on the topic.
On August 17, 2021, the court of appeals issued the order from which the Gere parties now appeal. See Stern 1011 First Street South, LLC v. Gere, No. A21-0904, Order at 1 (Minn. App. Aug. 17, 2021). The court of appeals accepted the Stern/Haberman parties’ argument that the Gere parties’ May 19, 2021 correspondence was functionally a motion to amend to correct a clerical error in the May 10, 2021 order in compliance with
We granted the Gere parties’ petition for review.
ANALYSIS
The Gere parties assert that the Stern/Haberman parties’ appeal from the amended summary judgment order was untimely and therefore there is no appellate jurisdiction. Construction and application of the Rules of Civil Appellate Procedure is a question of law, which we review de novo. Klapmeier v. Cirrus Indus., Inc., 900 N.W.2d 386, 391 (Minn. 2017). When the facts—such as dates—governing a jurisdictional issue are not in dispute, we also review the jurisdiction question de novo. Madson v. Minnesota Mining & Mfg. Co., 612 N.W.2d 168, 170 (Minn. 2000). We interpret procedural rules in accordance with their plain language and purpose. Rubey v. Vannett, 714 N.W.2d 417, 421 (Minn. 2006).
I.
The Gere parties argue that the court of appeals erred by treating their
Motions for reconsideration in district court civil cases are governed by
The deadline to file a notice of appeal in a civil case is 60 days after entry of judgment.
Subdivision 2 was among several significant amendments made to the appellate rules in 1998. The amendments were intended to simplify appellate practice “in the hopes of creating ‘less confusion’ about the timing of appeals.” Madson, 612 N.W.2d at 171 (quoting
Before the 1998 amendments to Rule 104.01, “the district court’s jurisdiction to decide posttrial motions terminated when the time for appeal ran, even if the motion had not been decided.” Madson, 612 N.W.2d at 171. Consequently, under the previous rule, even if a “posttrial motion was not yet decided, parties had to file a timely appeal and then apply to the appellate court for a stay of the appeal to allow time for the district court to decide the motion.” Id. The purpose of the amendments to Rule 104.01, then, was twofold: “to make it clear that an appeal is not necessary until the proper motion is decided, and to avoid a party’s erroneous assumption that an improper or unauthorized motion would prevent the running of an appeal deadline.”
But the rule amendments did not expressly say what constitutes a “proper” motion under
We reversed. In doing so, we explained that the standard for determining whether a motion is “proper” should not be associated with the merits of the underlying motion because that approach “would inject back into postjudgment motion practice the very uncertainty that the 1998 amendments were designed to eradicate.” Id. at 171. Instead, we held that to be “proper,” a post-decision motion must simply (1) comply with the rules of civil procedure for motions, and (2) be authorized,
Notably, the exhaustive list of “proper” tolling motions in
Therefore, to determine whether the document the Gere parties submitted to the court requesting permission to file a motion for reconsideration was a “proper” tolling motion under
The second prong of the Madson test requires that the face of the document demonstrate that the party has filed a motion “expressly allowed” under Rule 104.01, subd. 2. 612 N.W.2d at 172. The plain language of
format specified by the rule (that is, a short letter); it specifically stated that the request was made “pursuant to” Rule 115.11; and it “respectfully request[ed] permission to seek reconsideration” of the May 10, 2021 order. Thus, on its face, the Gere parties’ letter was clearly a letter requesting reconsideration, which is not a tolling motion “expressly allowed” under
The Stern/Haberman parties assert that the letter is not even a proper request for reconsideration because correcting an error in an order is not a legitimate ground for reconsideration. They urge us to accept the court of appeals’ characterization of the letter as a Rule 60.01 motion because the relief the letter sought was correction of a clerical error. We are not persuaded for two reasons.
First, nothing in the language of Rule 115.11 requires that a request for reconsideration amount to a substantive challenge to the merits of the district court’s decision or precludes a party from using the rule as a basis for seeking correction of an alleged clerical error in a district court order.6 Litigants are entitled to choose the basis for their filing; the fact that multiple avenues were available for the same type of relief does not make their decision to pursue one over the others incorrect. The Gere parties’ letter was a rule-compliant request for reconsideration, which the rules of appellate procedure
clearly state neither tolls nor extends the time for appeal. The court of appeals erred by disregarding the plain language of
The second reason we decline to accept the court of appeals’ framing of the letter as a Rule 60.01 tolling motion is that this characterization focuses exclusively on the relief sought—an approach we rejected in Madson. There, one of the parties argued that a motion was not “proper” because it was not the correct motion to accomplish the movant’s intended purpose. 612 N.W.2d at 171. We rejected that argument because it “associate[d] the standard for determining whether a motion is ‘proper’ with the merits of the underlying motion.” Id. Here, the Stern/Haberman parties’ and court of appeals’ approach similarly elevates function and substance over form, which is inconsistent with the facial inquiry we established in Madson.
In short, the document the Gere parties filed was, both facially and substantively, a fully compliant request for reconsideration under
Because the Gere parties’ letter was not a proper tolling motion, it did not toll or extend the Stern/Haberman parties’ time to appeal the district court’s May 10, 2021 order and entry of judgment. Pursuant to
II.
The Stern/Haberman parties alternatively contend that if we determine—as we do above—that the Gere parties’ letter did not toll the time for appeal, then we should nevertheless accept jurisdiction in the interests of justice.
“The appellate courts may reverse, affirm or modify the judgment or order appealed from or take any other action as the interest of justice may require.”
We decline to invoke our inherent authority to accept jurisdiction in this case because the Stern/Haberman parties have not presented peculiar facts or interpretation issues like our previous cases presented that would warrant a departure from the procedural rules here. See Ruberg v. Skelly Oil Co., 297 N.W.2d 746, 749 (Minn. 1980) (involving a recent rule amendment permitting appeals from orders for judgment); Krug v. Indep. Sch. Dist. No. 16, 293 N.W.2d 26, 29 (Minn. 1980) (involving close question of whether amended order raised a new, previously unappealable issue and whether the appeal period ran from the original order or the amended order). The governing procedural rules here do not present the “risk of confusion” that prompted us to accept jurisdiction over an untimely appeal in In re S.M.E., 725 N.W.2d 740, 744 (Minn. 2007), nor could the Stern/Haberman parties “reasonably understand” the clear direction from Advisory Comments to
Even the closest factual case, E.C.I. Corp. v. G.G.C. Co., 237 N.W.2d 627 (Minn. 1976), is distinguishable. The case involved the issue of whether an appeal timeline began to run from the original entry of judgment or the date of an amended, corrected entry of judgment. E.C.I. Corp., 237 N.W.2d at 629. We accepted jurisdiction in the interests of justice, but our holding applied to modified judgments on issues that were not appealable before the modification—in other words, judgments that were not final. Id. The corollary principle is likewise long established: that when an issue is appealable
We have been reluctant to make exceptions that would “eviscerate the uniform, impartial application of the rules” of civil procedure. In re J.R., 655 N.W.2d at 4. Accepting jurisdiction here would do just that. The Advisory Comments to the Rules of Civil Appellate Procedure could not have been more direct and clear in warning all counsel considering an appeal about the potential adverse consequences of the precise tolling issue in this case, regardless of which party initiated the request to reconsider.7 Because the Stern/Haberman parties have not presented sufficiently compelling reasons to depart from this court’s precedent in Madson or the clear direction of the advisory comments to
CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, we reverse the decision of the court of appeals and dismiss the appeal for lack of appellate jurisdiction.
Reversed.
Notes
(a) for judgment as a matter of law under
(b) to amend or make findings of fact under
(c) to alter or amend the judgment under
(d) for a new trial under
(e) for relief under
(f) in proceedings not governed by the Rules of Civil Procedure, a proper and timely motion that seeks the same or equivalent relief as those motions listed in (a)–(e).