Watson v. Connors

270 S.W.3d 826, 372 Ark. 56, 2008 Ark. LEXIS 3
CourtSupreme Court of Arkansas
DecidedJanuary 10, 2008
Docket07-208
StatusPublished
Cited by14 cases

This text of 270 S.W.3d 826 (Watson v. Connors) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Arkansas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Watson v. Connors, 270 S.W.3d 826, 372 Ark. 56, 2008 Ark. LEXIS 3 (Ark. 2008).

Opinion

Tpm Glaze, Justice.

This appeal asks whether an order of dismissal entered pursuant to Ark. R. Civ. P. 41(b) — but entered without notice to the parties — constitutes a “clerical error” that can be corrected at any time pursuant to Ark. R. Civ. P. 60(b).

Appellant Damiyan Watson and Appellee Gloria Connors were involved in an automobile accident on January 19, 2001. After filing his initial complaint, Watson took a voluntary nonsuit of the action on September 16, 2002. On August 19, 2003, Watson filed another complaint against Connors, and Connors filed her answer on September 9, 2003. No further action was taken in the case, and on March 3, 2005, the Pulaski County Circuit Court entered an order dismissing the case “for lack of action in accordance with Rule 41(b) of the Arkansas Rules of Civil Procedure, all requirements thereof having been accomplished.”

On November 6, 2006, Watson filed a motion to set aside the order of dismissal, alleging that he did not learn of the order of dismissal until he requested a trial setting. 1 He further contended that, although the order recited that compliance had been had with Rule 41(b), the record on file with the Pulaski County Circuit Clerk’s office contained no indication that the court had sent notice to the parties of the pending dismissal. 2 Because of the court’s failure to provide such notice, Watson argued that the case should be reinstated pursuant to Ark. R. Civ. P. 60(b). Connors responded on November 13, 2006, denying that Rule 60(b) could afford Watson any relief.

The trial court entered an order on November 29, 2006, denying Watson’s motion to set aside the dismissal. In its order, the court found that, pursuant to Rule 60(b), it lacked jurisdiction to modify or vacate the earlier order. Citing Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Taylor, 346 Ark. 259, 57 S.W.3d 158 (2001), the court found that “where an order is entered by a court in error, such entry is not considered a clerical error, and the court loses the authority to modify or vacate that order after ninety days.” Watson filed this appeal on December 13, 2006, and continues his argument that the trial court should have set aside the Rule 41 dismissal.

It is within the discretion of the circuit court to determine whether it has jurisdiction under Rule 60 to set aside a judgment, and the question on appeal becomes whether there has been an abuse of that discretion. See New Holland Credit Co. v. Hill, 362 Ark. 329, 208 S.W.3d 191 (2005); Burns v. Madden, 271 Ark. 572, 609 S.W.2d 55 (1980); Hendrix v. Hendrix, 26 Ark. App. 283, 764 S.W.2d 472 (1989).

As stated above, the trial court dismissed Watson’s complaint for want of prosecution pursuant to Ark. R. Civ. P. 41(b), which provides as follows:

In any case in which there has been ... no action shown on the record for the past 12 months, the court shall cause notice to be mailed to the attorneys of record, and to any party not represented by an attorney, that the case will be dismissed for want of prosecution unless on a stated day application is made, upon a showing of good cause, to continue the case on the court’s docket. A dismissal under this subdivision is without prejudice to a future action by the plaintiff unless the action has been previously dismissed, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, in which event such dismissal operates as an adjudication on the merits.

At issue here is whether the court’s failure to send the notice required by Rule 41(b) constituted a “clerical error” as contemplated by Ark. R. Civ. P. 60(b), such that the court could have corrected that error “at any time.” Rule 60(b) provides, in pertinent part, that, “[notwithstanding subdivision (a) of this rule, the court may at any time, with prior notice to all parties, correct clerical mistakes in judgments, decrees, orders, or other parts of the record and errors therein arising from oversight or omission.” (Emphasis added.)

Watson argues that the Rule 41(b) dismissal without notice constituted either a “clerical error” or an “error[ ] . . . arising from oversight or omission.” A “clerical error,” according to Black’s Law Dictionary, is an “error resulting from a minor mistake or inadvertence, especially] in writing or copying something on the record, and not from judicial reasoning or determination.” Black’s Law Dictionary 581 (8th ed. 2004). Black’s provides some examples of clerical errors, listing errors such as “omitting an appendix from a document; typing an incorrect number; mistranscribing a word; and failing to Íog a call.” Id.

This court has held that “where an order is entered by the court in error, it is not a clerical error.” Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Taylor, 346 Ark. 259, 263, 57 S.W.3d 158, 161 (2001). In Taylor, the plaintiff, Taylor, brought a personal-injury case in 1991 in St. Francis County Circuit Court, where the matter was assigned to a judge and given the docket number CIV91-75. Taylor later obtained a dismissal without prejudice during trial in June of 1996. When Taylor refiled her complaint five months later, it was assigned to a different judge with a docket number of CIV96-358. Despite the matter being assigned to a different court, the St. Francis County Clerk’s office generated a notice under CIV91-75 that there had been no action in the case for more than twelve months. For some reason, the clerk’s office later generated an identical notice, but this one reflected the CIV96-358 docket number and gave Taylor ten days to show why the case should not be dismissed. Taylor, 346 Ark. at 261-62, 57 S.W.3d at 160. Nothing happened within that ten days, and the court dismissed CIV96-358. Seventeen months after the dismissal, Taylor filed a motion to vacate the order of dismissal. The trial court granted the motion and reinstated the case, and Wal-Mart appealed, arguing that Taylor’s motion to vacate the order of dismissal was untimely Id. at 262, 57 S.W.3d at 160.

On appeal, this court pointed out that Rule 60 had been modified in 2000 to reflect this court’s holding in Lord v. Mazzanti, 339 Ark. 25, 2 S.W.3d 76 (1999), wherein the court held that “clerical mistakes” under then-existing subdivision (a) could be corrected at any time. In the amendment to Rule 60, the discussion of “clerical errors” was moved from paragraph (a) to paragraph (b), and the discussion of vacation or modification of judgments and orders to prevent the miscarriage of justice was moved from paragraph (b) to paragraph (a). Taylor, 346 Ark. at 263, 57 S.W.3d at 160-61. The court then wrote as follows:

In the case before us, Taylor did not attempt to vacate the order of dismissal until seventeen months had passed. This is significant because if the error is not clerical, but rather an error by the court, then the trial court was without jurisdiction to entertain the motion and enter the order reinstating the case in 1999.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
270 S.W.3d 826, 372 Ark. 56, 2008 Ark. LEXIS 3, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/watson-v-connors-ark-2008.