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In Waetzig v. Halliburton Energy Services, Inc., (No. 23-971), the Supreme Court finally settled a question lawyers have been debating from time immemorial: Is a plaintiff’s voluntary dismissal of a complaint without prejudice under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41(a) a “final proceeding” for purposes of a Rule 60(b) motion to reopen the suit? A unanimous Court concluded that it was, eliminating a circuit split created by a Tenth Circuit decision that had ruled it was not.  

The case began when Gary Waetzig was fired by Halliburton. He sued his former employer in federal court alleging age discrimination. Halliburton responded by asserting that Waetzig was required to arbitrate his claim. Waetzig acquiesced, submitting his claim for arbitration. But instead of asking the District Court to stay his suit pending the outcome of that arbitration, he voluntarily dismissed his complaint pursuant to Rule 41(a), which permits a plaintiff to dismiss a case “without a court order” if the plaintiff serves “a notice of dismissal before the opposing party serves either an answer or a motion for summary judgment.” Because Halliburton had not answered or moved for summary judgment, Waetzig’s dismissal was effective without any court action. And because this was Waetzig’s first such dismissal, it was (according to the Rule’s terms) presumptively without prejudice.  

Unfortunately for Waetzig, he lost the arbitration. He then filed a motion in the docket for the dismissed case, asking the District Court to reopen the case and vacate the arbitration award. He argued the District Court had the authority to reopen the case under Rule 60(b), which allows a court “[o]n motion and just terms,” to “relieve a party . . . from a final judgment, order, or proceeding.” The District Court agreed with Waetzig and awarded Rule 60(b) relief, holding that a voluntary dismissal without prejudice counts as a “final proceeding” within the meaning of Rule 60(b), and that Waetzig’s voluntary dismissal was a “careless mistake” of the sort Rule 60(b)(1) allows relief from. Then, in a second order, the District Court found that the arbitration award was improper and set it aside. Halliburton appealed, arguing the District Court lacked authority to reopen the case in the first place because a voluntary dismissal without prejudice does not count as a “final judgment, order, or proceeding,” and therefore falls outside the reach of Rule 60(b). The Tenth Circuit agreed with Halliburton: It held that a voluntary dismissal without prejudice could not be a “final proceeding” because “a final proceeding must involve, at a minimum, a judicial determination with finality.” In reaching that result, the Tenth Circuit disagreed with the Fifth and Seventh Circuits, which both had held that a voluntary dismissal without prejudice was a “final proceeding” within the meaning of Rule 60(b).  

A unanimous Supreme Court sided with the Fifth and Seventh Circuits over the Tenth. Writing for the Court, Justice Alito first concluded that a voluntary dismissal under Rule 41(a) was “final.” According to sources like the Advisory Committee’s Notes on the rule, the word “final” means only that interlocutory judgments are not subject to Rule 60. Whether it’s with or without prejudice, a voluntary dismissal “terminates the case,“ making it “final.” Alito then addressed whether such a dismissal was also a “proceeding.” Turning to dictionaries, he concluded that “proceeding” included “all formal steps taken in an action.” He thus rejected Halliburton’s argument that a “proceeding” required judicial intervention, noting that such a restrictive definition would deprive “proceeding” of independent meaning since the Rule also covers “orders,” which by definition require judicial action. Having concluded that a voluntary dismissal was both “final” and a “proceeding,” Alito put one and one together and held that it was a “final proceeding” within the meaning of Rule 60(b). The District Court thus had the authority to reopen Waetzig’s case.  

Waetzig’s legal claim lives to fight another day, but maybe not that many more. For while Halliburton put up a valiant defense of the Tenth Circuit’s Rule 60(b) decision at the Supreme Court, its heart wasn’t really in it. Instead, Halliburton devoted many of the pages of its Supreme Court brief (and a good chunk of its oral argument) to the point that it doesn’t matter whether the District Court had the authority to reopen Waetzig’s dismissed case under Rule 60(b) because it didn’t have jurisdiction to set aside the arbitration award issued in Halliburton’s favor. But the Court gave that argument short shrift: It granted cert only on the question of whether the District Court had the authority under Rule 60(b) to reopen the case. And whether it did or didn’t wasn’t affected by whether it had the authority to then go on and grant Waetzig the relief he sought (namely vacating the arbitration award). The Court thus left “any subsequent jurisdictional questions” to the lower courts on remand. And if we had to guess, we suspect the Tenth Circuit will once again rule for Halliburton, only this time on the perhaps sounder basis that even if the District Court could reopen the case, it couldn’t free Waetzig from the arbitration award.