Doris Powledge Phillips v. General Motors LLC, Wilmington Trust Co.

689 F. App'x 95

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
• Decided: May 3, 2017
• Docket: 16-2472-bk
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

SUMMARY ORDER

Plaintiff-appellant Doris Powledge Phillips appeals the June 22, 2016 judgment of the district court, denying Phillips’s request for relief under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b) because she was not a party or its legal representative. On appeal, Phillips argues that the court should vacate her Settlement Agreement with General Motors Corporation (“Old GM”) because Old GM failed to produce responsive documents during discovery and fraudulently induced her to accept the Settlement Agreement. The bankruptcy court held that Phillips lacked “standing” under Rule 60(b) because she had assigned all interest in her claim “without limitation” to a third party. See A-100. The district court affirmed the bankruptcy court’s decision. A-5-10. For the reasons set forth in the district court’s well-reasoned. opinion, we find these arguments to be without merit. We assume the parties’ familiarity with the underlying facts, procedural history of the case, and issues on appeal.

⅜ ⅝ ⅝

We review a bankruptcy court’s denial of Rule 60(b) relief for abuse of discretion. See Motorola Credit Corp. v. Uzan, 561 F.3d 123, 126 (2d Cir. 2009); Grace v. Bank Leumi Tr. Co., 443 F.3d 180, (2d Cir. 2006). Relief under Rule 60(b) is only available to “a party or its legal representative.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(b). Since Phillips assigned all claims “without limitation” relating to her lawsuit against Old GM to a third party, she cannot bring a Rule 60(b) motion. See A-100.

Our precedents are clear that a transfer- or is no longer a proper party to the litigation, “An unequivocal and complete assignment extinguishes the assignor’s rights against the obligor and leaves the assignor without standing to sue the obli-gor.” Aaron Ferer & Sons Ltd. v. Chase Manhattan Bank, Nat’l Ass’n, 731 F.2d 112, 125 (2d Cir. 1984); accord Commonwealth of Penn. Pub. Sch. Emps . Ret. Sys. v. Morgan Stanley & Co., 25 N.Y.3d 543, 550-51, 14 N.Y.S.3d 313, 35 N.E.3d 481 (2015).

Phillips cites several cases that are inap-posite here. As the district court noted, we have “ ‘extended standing under Rule 60 to non-parties only twice’ — in Grace v. Bank Leumi Trust Co., 443 F.3d 180 (2d Cir. 2006) and Dunlop v. Pan Am. World Airways, Inc., 672 F.2d 1044 (2d Cir. 1982)— and in each instance [we] ‘expressly limited [our] holding to the facts’ at issue.” A-8, Those cases are not analogous to the instant appeal. We have no precedent for allowing substantially affected parties to bring Rule 60 motions once their rights have been transferred to another party. See Aaron Ferer & Sons Ltd., 731 F.2d at 125.

Accordingly, we conclude that the district court properly denied Phillips’s motion for Rule 60(b) relief because Phillips is no longer a party within the meaning of Rule 60(b).

CONCLUSION

We have considered all of appellant’s claim's on appeal and found them to be without merit. For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the District Court is AFFIRMED.