Kemp v. United States

JUSTICE GORSUCH, dissenting.¶

The Court took this case to determine whether a district court’s mistake of law is correctable under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b)(1) or 60(b)(6).¶

From the start, granting review was a questionable use of judicial resources. The answer matters only under rare circumstances: A losing party fails to appeal or secure relief under Rule 59(e), opting instead to file a Rule 60(b) motion. That motion comes more than a year after judgment butpiling contingency on contingency—within what the court would otherwise deem a “reasonable time.” Rule 60(c)(1). By petitioner’s own (uncontested) count, his is the first petition ever to present today’s question for this Court’s review. See Pet. for Cert. 24; Brief in Opposition 26. Beyond even that, an alternative route exists to resolve the question posed here. Congress has adopted the Rules Enabling Act. See 28 U. S. C. §§ 2071–2077. Under its terms, a committee composed of judges and practitioners may recommend to this Court any warranted clarifications to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. § 2073. Those recommendations generally take effect upon our approval and absent congressional objection. § 2074.¶

Undeterred, the Court takes up and resolves this case anyway. It holds that Rule 60(b)(1), not Rule 60(b)(6), applies. In an unexpected twist, the Court adopts a further position neither party saw fit to advance. Going forward, every judicial legal error—not just an inadvertent or obvious “mistake”—is fodder for collateral attack under Rule 60(b)(1). And what is the basis for all this? A mysterious 1946 amendment deleting the word ''his.'' See ante , at 5–6.¶

Respectfully, I would have dismissed the writ of certiorari as improvidently granted. Not only does this case fail to meet our usual standards for review. See Supreme Court Rule 10. At bottom, this dispute presents a policy question about the proper balance between finality and error correction. Should a district court be able to clean up a legal error through a collateral proceeding on any reasonable timeline within a year of judgment? Or do Rule 59(e) and the appellate process provide the necessary corrective measures in ordinary cases, with Rule 60(b)(6) as a last, narrow avenue to relief? Questions like these are best resolved not through a doubtful interpretive project focused on a pronoun dropped in 1946, but through the rulemaking process. There, policy interests on both sides can be accounted for and weighed in light of the “collective experience of bench and bar.” Mohawk Industries, Inc. v. Carpenter , 558 U. S. 100, 114 (2009).¶