Jackson v. Medical Coaches

• Decision Date: 12 July 1999
• Parties: Patricia V. Jackson v. Medical Coaches et al.
• Court: Rhode Island Supreme Court

734 A.2d 502

Patricia V. Jackson v. Medical Coaches et al.

Supreme Court of Rhode Island.

Decided July 12, 1999.

Opinion Filed July 12, 1999.

Present WEISBERGER, C.J., and LEDERBERG, BOURCIER, FLANDERS, and GOLDBERG, JJ.

Adam C. Robitaille, Merrill J. Friedemann, Dennis E. Carley, Providence, Aram R. Schefrin, For Plaintiff.

J. Scott Kilpatrick, David Edward Maglio, III, Providence, for defendant, Mobile Medical Support.

Mark O. Denehy, Providence, for defendant, Medical Coaches, Alais et al.

Thomas C. Angelone, Providence, for defendant, Mahor Door Services.

Anne T. Turilli, James R. Oswald, Providence, for defendant, Siemens Medical Services.

OPINION

PER CURIAM.

The defendants, Medical Coaches and Siemans Medical Systems, Inc. (Siemans), appeal from a Superior Court judgment that entered following an order granting the motion of the plaintiff, Patricia V. Jackson, to vacate previous final judgments dismissing the plaintiff's claims against both defendants. This new judgment provides that her complaint "is now dismissed without prejudice," thereby amending the earlier judgments that had dismissed her complaint "with prejudice." We ordered the parties to show cause why we should not decide this appeal summarily. No such cause having been shown, we proceed to resolve the appeal at this time.

Facts and Travel

In 1996, plaintiff filed a complaint against the aforementioned defendants and others, alleging product liability, negligence, strict liability, and breach of warranty. The plaintiff, a magnetic-resonance-imaging technologist, injured herself when a hand crank hit her head as she was attempting to open a roll-up door in order to retrieve a stretcher from a mobile-medical trailer. Medical Coaches filed a motion to dismiss plaintiff's complaint pursuant to Rules 12(b)(5) and 41(b)(2) of the Superior Court Rules of Civil Procedure, alleging that plaintiff had failed to serve it with process until more than four months after she had filed the complaint. Thereafter, Siemans also filed a motion to dismiss, arguing that it too had not been served by plaintiff until November 4, 1996, over four months after plaintiff filed her complaint, and that this delay in effecting service was unreasonable and inexcusable. After a hearing, a Superior Court justice granted defendants' motions and dismissed plaintiff's complaint with prejudice. Final judgments entered as to Medical Coaches and Siemans pursuant to Rule 54(b) of the Superior Court Rules of Civil Procedure. The plaintiff filed no appeal from either judgment.

Thereafter, on May 1, 1997, plaintiff filed a second action against defendants which was identical to the first complaint. The defendants, in response, moved for summary judgment, arguing that the statute of limitations and res judicata barred plaintiff's claims. The court granted these motions on October 23, 1997, but stayed the entry of final judgment for a period of thirty days to allow plaintiff to file a motion to vacate the prior "with prejudice" judgments that had entered with respect to the first complaint. The plaintiff filed a motion to vacate on December 10, 1997. As noted by defendants, however, plaintiff filed the motion well beyond the thirty-day stay provided for in the court's order. In addition, she mistakenly filed the motion in the second action rather than in the earlier 1996 case. Nonetheless, plaintiff had filed a timely memorandum of law on November 21, 1997, in support of her motion to vacate. Thus, the Superior Court heard and subsequently granted the motion, entering an order on February 16, 1998, stating that the first complaint "is now dismissed without prejudice." The defendants filed a timely notice of appeal.

Analysis

The first issue we face concerns the propriety of this appeal. Generally, an order vacating a default judgment is interlocutory and therefore not appealable. See Hunter v. Malhotra, 695 A.2d 1004, 1005 (R.I.1997)

; Giarrusso v. Corrigan, 108 R.I. 471, 472, 276 A.2d 750, 750 (1971). Although the original judgments in this case were not default judgments, but rather judgments that entered following the grant of a motion to dismiss for untimely service of process, we discern no grounds in this context for differentiating between the vacation of a default judgment and the vacation of a final judgment on the merits. ¹ However, in this case, the court did not simply grant a motion to vacate a final judgment and then reopen proceedings in a pending action; rather, it entered a new, final judgment, albeit one that was without prejudice to plaintiff's commencement of a new action restating the same claims. Such a judgment is final and appealable because it leaves nothing further to be done in that particular dismissed lawsuit. See, e.g., Almeida v. Plasters' and Cement Masons' Local 40 Pension Fund, 722 A.2d 257, 258 n. 1 (R.I.1998) (holding that a judgment dismissing the plaintiff's complaint without prejudice for failure to exhaust administrative remedies was final for purposes of allowing an appeal by the defendant); see also, e.g., Town of Coventry v. Hickory Ridge Campground, Inc., 111 R.I. 716, 725, 306 A.2d 824, 829 (1973) (recognizing that this Court, in some instances, has considered an order of dismissal without prejudice as a final judgment for purposes of appeal). Therefore, we are of the opinion that the court's entry of this new judgment — albeit one that was without prejudice — possessed the requisite finality to permit defendants to appeal.

Passing to the merits of this appeal, we conclude, for the reasons that follow, that the motion justice should not have granted the motion to vacate nor should he have amended the original judgments to change the "with prejudice" language to "without prejudice." Initially, defendants² take issue with the fact that plaintiff had filed a motion to vacate pursuant to Rule 60(b) of the Superior Court Rules of Civil Procedure.³ The defendants contend that the mere fact that the motion justice may have erred in dismissing the first case with prejudice did not constitute the type of "mistake" that would warrant relief under Rule 60(b), and therefore, the motion justice should have denied plaintiff's motion to vacate. Rather, defendants argue, plaintiff either should have appealed to this Court from the original judgments' dismissal with prejudice of the first complaint, or she should have sought a modification thereof within the ten-day post-judgment periods set forth in Rule 52(b) or Rule 59(e) of the Superior Court Rules of Civil Procedure. Medical Coaches also argues that plaintiff failed to provide any cognizable reasons for granting the relief requested under Rule 60(b). Siemans further suggests that the motion justice had no authority to vacate the judgments on the basis that they were premised upon an alleged error of law — to wit, that the motion justice erroneously entered the judgments with prejudice against plaintiff for her failure to effect timely service of process upon defendants — notwithstanding the provisions of Rule 4(l) of the Superior Court Rules of Civil Procedure that such a judgment should be without prejudice. This defendant also contends that the original judgments were not void because the Superior Court had both personal and subject-matter jurisdiction over the parties. For the reasons that follow, we agree with defendants' arguments.

Rule 60(b)(1) permits relief from the operation of a judgment due to mistake, inadvertence, surprise, or excusable neglect. In addition, Rule 60(b)(6) provides for relief from judgment for "any other reason justifying relief." However, this Court has held that Rule 60(b)(6) "is not intended to constitute a catchall," Bendix Corp. v. Norberg, 122 R.I. 155, 158, 404 A.2d 505, 506 (1979), and "that the `circumstances must be extraordinary to justify relief.'" Id. (quoting 1 Kent, R.I. Civ. Prac. § 60.08 at 456 (1969)). In this case, neither one of these Rule 60(b) subsections were available to plaintiff.

At the hearing on her motion to vacate the original judgments, plaintiff argued that Rules 4(l) and 41(b)(2) of the Superior Court Rules of Civil Procedure were in conflict with one another. In Bendix Corp., we stated that "courts have refused to grant relief under Rule 60(b) when a party or his counsel, after trial, discovers applicable law that he did not perceive or raise at trial." 122 R.I. at 158-59, 404 A.2d at 507. Accord Brown v. Amaral, 460 A.2d 7, 11 (R.I.1983)

. Based upon Bendix Corp. and Brown, we hold that the motion justice should not have allowed plaintiff to obtain relief from the judgments under Rule 60(b) on the grounds that the court mistakenly included the "with prejudice" language in the original orders and judgments dismissing plaintiff's first complaint. Here, plaintiff belatedly discovered applicable law (Rule 4(l)) that she did not perceive or raise when the original judgments were presented to the court for entry. Rule 60(b) does not constitute a vehicle for the motion justice to reconsider the previous judgments in light of later-discovered legal authority that could have and should have been presented to the court before the original judgments entered. Brown, 460 A.2d at 11; Bendix Corp.,

122 R.I. at 158-59,

404 A.2d at 506-07.

In response to plaintiff's motion to vacate, the motion justice ruled that he was vacating the original judgments pursuant to Rule 60(b)(4), which provides for relief from a judgment which is void. The motion justice reasoned that he had erred in ordering the dismissal of plaintiff's complaint with prejudice since Rule 4(l) clearly states that the action shall be dismissed without prejudice. He stated: "It seems to me if the Rule says dismissed without prejudice, my Order was void. It doesn't make any sense." However, "[a] judgment is not void merely because it is erroneous." 11 Charles Alan Wright et al., Federal Practice and Procedure § 2862 at 326 (1995). Thus, the motion justice's original error...