Justices debate right to renew lawsuit after voluntary dismissal – SCOTUSblog

Tuesday’s argument in Waetzig v. Halliburton Power Providers was transient and relaxed. The difficulty within the case is the usual for permitting a claimant to reopen a case that he voluntarily dismissed a number of years earlier, and the justices didn’t appear to seek out the matter contentious.

Vincent Levy represented Gary Waetzig, the previous Halliburton worker who’s attempting to resume his age discrimination lawsuit in opposition to the vitality firm. Virtually half of his presentation was consumed by a prolonged sequence of questions from Chief Justice John Roberts, designed to get Levy to confess that the one cause he desires to make use of Federal Rule of Civil Process 60(b) to reopen the litigation he beforehand had dismissed is as a result of the statute of limitations would stop Waetzig from submitting a brand new go well with now. It took Roberts 10 separate inquiries to elicit that admission!

The primary substantive debate through which the justices engaged was whether or not the voluntary dismissal of the unique case was the type of “ultimate” continuing to which Rule 60(b) would apply. Levy argued that the order was ultimate, contending that the limitation to “ultimate” rulings was supposed to exclude mid-case rulings in an “open, pending” matter.

Justices Neil Gorsuch and Ketanji Brown Jackson requested a number of questions on that time, seeming to take it significantly. Jackson requested Matthew McGill, representing Halliburton, straight if he may deal with Levy’s narrative on that matter. McGill, predictably sufficient, learn the historical past otherwise, however the justices pressed him so little that it’s tough to inform how a lot they accepted what he needed to say.

An important factor I acquired out of the argument is that the justices appear extremely motivated to resolve the query introduced. McGill’s transient argued {that a} jurisdictional downside (based mostly on the court docket’s determination in Badgerow v. Walters) individually justified the dismissal of Waetzig’s case. That argument most likely is a powerful one, as Justice Elena Kagan (the writer of Badgerow) commented to Levy that in her view he “ha[s] a tricky row to hoe on the Badgerow query,” however she appeared equally intent on skipping that downside on this case. In dialog with McGill, Kagan quipped that she “like[s] Badgerow in addition to the following particular person,” however that “it’s simply not the time to be speaking about that now,” as a result of “that’s not what’s in entrance of us.”

The argument was fairly brief (barely 50 minutes), and a lot of the justices didn’t say something in in the least substantive, so it’s fairly tough to foretell how they will resolve this one. I don’t assume, although, they may discover this sophisticated. My guess is that we’ll get a solution earlier than the tip of April.