AA PRIMO BUILDERS, LLC v. Washington

245 P.3d 1190, 126 Nev. 578
CourtNevada Supreme Court
DecidedDecember 30, 2010
Docket53983, 54471
StatusPublished
Cited by173 cases

This text of 245 P.3d 1190 (AA PRIMO BUILDERS, LLC v. Washington) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Nevada Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
AA PRIMO BUILDERS, LLC v. Washington, 245 P.3d 1190, 126 Nev. 578 (Neb. 2010).

Opinion

OPINION

By the Court,

Pickering, J.:

Appellant AA Primo Builders, LLC appeals the dismissal of its suit to recover money allegedly due from respondents Bertral and Cheri Washington on a 2005 patio remodel job. The dismissal came in 2009, more than three years into the litigation. It was based on the Secretary of State having revoked AA Primo’s charter to do business as a Nevada limited liability company, effective December 1, 2008. AA Primo asked the district court for a stay to give it time to make the annual filings needed to reinstate its charter, but the district court refused, instead granting the Washingtons’ summary judgment motion. AA Primo next filed a timely motion under NRCP 59 asking the district court to vacate the judgment of dismissal, because by then it had succeeded in reinstating its charter. Again, the district court refused relief, and it also awarded the Washingtons their fees and costs. This appeal followed.

We reverse. Dismissal was too harsh a penalty for AA Primo’s default in annual fees and filings due the Secretary of State. Administrative revocation of a domestic limited liability company’s charter suspends the entity’s right to transact business, not its ability to prosecute an ongoing suit. See NRS 86.274(5); NRS 86.505. Under NRS 86.276(5), moreover, reinstatement retroactively restores the entity’s right to transact business; it is “as if such right had at all times remained in full force and effect.” Thus, AA Primo’s suit should not have been dismissed and, having been dismissed, should have been reinstated once AA Primo’s charter was. Finally, before dismissal, the district court should have given AA Primo the brief stay it requested to seek charter reinstatement.

*581 I.

Before the merits, we must address the Washingtons’ threshold challenge to the timeliness of AA Primo’s appeal and, hence, our jurisdiction. AA Primo did not file its notice of appeal until the district court denied its “motion to amend order,” asking to vacate the judgment of dismissal and reinstate the suit based on its reinstated charter. 1 If AA Primo’s “motion to amend” qualified as “a motion under Rule 59[(e)] to alter or amend the judgment,” it tolled the time to file the notice of appeal, and AA’s appeal is timely. NRAP 4(a)(4)(C). If AA Primo’s motion did not qualify as an NRCP 59(e) tolling motion, the notice of appeal was untimely, and we lack jurisdiction. See NRCP 4(a)(1) (“Except as provided in [NRAP] 4(a)(4), a notice of appeal must be filed ... no later than 30 days after [service of] written notice of entry of the judgment or order appealed from”).

An NRCP 59(e) motion does not have to win on the merits to have tolling effect under NRAP 4(a)(4)(C). The formal requirements are minimal. “A motion to alter or amend the judgment [must] be filed no later than 10 days after service of written notice of entry of the judgment.” NRCP 59(e). It must also satisfy NRCP 7(b) and be “in writing, . . . state with particularity [its] grounds [and] set forth the relief or order sought.” See United Pac. Ins. Co. v. St. Denis, 81 Nev. 103, 106-07, 399 P.2d 135, 137 (1965) (citing NRCP 7(b) and NRCP 59(e)); see Elustra v. Mineo, 595 F.3d 699, 707-08 (7th Cir. 2010) (a single-sentence motion meeting Fed. R. Civ. P. 7’s requirements and asking to vacate a judgment qualified as tolling under the federal counterparts to *582 NRCP 59 and NRAP 4(a)(4)(C)). But beyond this, NRCP 59(e) does not impose limits on its scope.

NRCP 59(e) and NRAP 4(a)(4)(C) echo Fed. R. Civ. P. 59(e) and Fed. R. App. P. 4(a)(4)(A)(iv), and we may consult federal law in interpreting them. See Coury v. Robison, 115 Nev. 84, 91 n.4, 976 P.2d 518, 522 n.4 (1999). Because its terms are so general, Federal Rule 59(e) “has been interpreted as permitting a motion to vacate a judgment rather than merely amend it,” 11 C. Wright, A. Miller & M. Kane, Federal Practice and Procedure § 2810.1, at 119 (2d ed. 1995), and as “covering] a broad range of motions, [with] the only real limitation on the type of motion permitted [being] that it must request a substantive alteration of the judgment, not merely correction of a clerical error, or relief of a type wholly collateral to the judgment.” Id. at 121 (citing Osterneck v. Ernst & Whinney, 489 U.S. 169 (1989); Buchanan v. Stanships, Inc., 485 U.S. 265 (1988)). Among the “basic grounds” for a Rule 59(e) motion are “correct[ing] manifest errors of law or fact,’ ’ ‘ ‘newly discovered or previously unavailable evidence,” the need “to prevent manifest injustice,” or a “change in controlling law.” Id. at 124-27.

By these standards, AA Primo’s post-judgment “motion to amend order” qualifies as an NRCP 59(e) motion to alter or amend judgment with tolling effect under NRAP 4(a)(4)(C). The motion was in writing, invoked NRCP 59, asked to vacate the judgment of dismissal, and appended proof that the charter, for want of which AA Primo’s suit was lost, had been restored. It urged the district court to consider NRS 86.276(5), which provides that reinstatement of an administratively revoked charter “relates back to the date on which the company forfeited its right to transact business ... as if such right had at all times remained in full force and effect.” And it argued that NRS 86.276(5) and AA Primo’s reinstated charter provided a “compelling legal basis . . . to amend” the judgment and avoid “manifest injustice.”

It is hard to imagine a post-judgment motion that would qualify for tolling under NRCP 59(e) and NRAP 4(a)(4)(C) if AA Primo’s did not. Nonetheless, the Washingtons dispute whether, as “a thinly-veiled motion for reconsideration,” the motion tolled for AA Primo. As support, they quote the last sentence of local EDCR 2.24(b), which provides, “A motion for reconsideration does not toll the 30-day period for filing a notice of appeal from a final order or judgment.” But the Washingtons’ own authority defeats them. They ignore the first sentence of EDCR 2.24(b),. which restricts the “motion[s] for reconsideration” the rule covers to motions “seeking reconsideration of a ruling of the court, other than

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Bluebook (online)
245 P.3d 1190, 126 Nev. 578, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/aa-primo-builders-llc-v-washington-nev-2010.