Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, PROCEDURE—U.S.: Voluntary dismissal without prejudice counts as ‘final proceeding’ under Rule 60(b), (Feb 26, 2025)

By Todd Harrison, J.D.

A voluntary dismissal is “final” because it terminates the case and is also considered a “proceeding” based on text, context, and history.

Answering in the affirmative the question of whether Rule 60(b) permits a district court to reopen a case that was voluntarily dismissed without prejudice under Rule 41(a), the U.S. Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, found that such a dismissal counts as a “final judgment, order, or proceeding,” and thus qualifies for Rule 60(b) relief. The issue arose from a former Halliburton employee’s request to reopen his voluntarily dismissed case after arbitration was not decided in his favor. The Court did not address Halliburton’s claims that the district court lacked jurisdiction over the motion to vacate the arbitration award, determining that such an argument presented no barrier to the question at hand and leaving it to the lower courts to address the matter on remand (Waetzig v. Halliburton Energy Services, Inc., No. 23-971 (U.S. Feb. 26, 2025)).

Following his termination, a former employee of Halliburton filed this suit alleging age discrimination in violation of the ADEA. Halliburton responded by asserting that the employee was required to arbitrate his claim, which the employee ultimately agreed to do.

Voluntary dismissal. After agreeing to arbitration, the employee opted not to have the lower court stay his lawsuit pending the results of arbitration, instead electing to have his case voluntarily dismissed under FRCP 41(a). He subsequently lost at arbitration. In the employee’s view, the arbitrator failed to follow various procedural rules outlined by the arbitration agreement, and he turned back to the federal court to remedy the situation.

Case reopened. Instead of filing a new lawsuit in federal court attacking the validity of the arbitration award, the employee filed a motion under the old docket number, asking the court to reopen that case and to vacate the arbitration award. However, his voluntary dismissal under Rule 41(a) had effectively terminated his case. In an effort to get around this problem, the employee asserted that the district court could reopen the case under FRCP 60(b), which permits a court to “relieve a party... from a final judgment, order, or proceeding.” A court may opt to do so for six enumerated reasons, including “mistake, inadvertence, surprise, or excusable neglect.”

Here, the district court agreed with the employee and awarded Rule 60(b) relief, holding that a voluntary dismissal without prejudice counts as a “final proceeding” and that the employee had committed a “careless mistake” when he voluntarily dismissed his case instead of moving for a stay pending the results of arbitration.

Upon reopening the case, the court issued a separate order granting the employee’s motion to vacate the arbitration award. Halliburton appealed.

Tenth Circuit. On appeal, Halliburton argued that a voluntary dismissal without prejudice does not count as a “final judgment, order, or proceeding,” and thus fell outside the reach of Rule 60(b). The Tenth Circuit agreed, reasoning that the act of dismissal required neither the entry of a judgment nor the issuance of an order by the court. The Tenth Circuit, splitting from other Circuits that have considered the issue, concluded that a voluntary dismissal without prejudice could not be a “final proceeding” because a “a final proceeding must involve, at a minimum, a judicial determination with finality.”

The Supreme Court granted certiorari to decide whether a Rule 41(a) dismissal without prejudice is a “final judgment, order, or proceeding” under Rule 60(b).

Jurisdictional issue. Before reaching the question at hand, the Court first addressed a preliminary issue related to jurisdiction. Halliburton claimed that the district court lacked jurisdiction over the employee’s motion to vacate the arbitration award. However, the Court found it need not address the merits of this argument as it presented no barrier to deciding the question presented before it, noting that the question it was tasked with deciding was separate from, and antecedent to, the question of whether the district court could exercise jurisdiction over the employee’s motion to vacate.

One such case cited by Halliburton, Kokkonen v. Guardian Life Ins. Co. of America, 511 U. S. 375 (1994), helped to prove the Court’s point. There, the Court had suggested that Rule 60(b) could not confer jurisdiction upon a federal court where jurisdiction would not otherwise exist, reasoning that reopening a case under Rule 60(b) would not automatically confer jurisdiction over a subsequent motion to enforce a settlement agreement.

Although Kokkonen and other cases cited by Halliburton might bear on the district court’s jurisdiction over the motion to vacate, they said nothing about whether the district court had the power under Rule 60(b) to reopen the employee’s case in the first place, explained the Court. The issue here was whether the district court had the power to reopen the case pursuant to Rule 60(b). Any subsequent jurisdictional issues could be addressed on remand.

Finality. Turning to the question before it, the Court first held that a voluntary dismissal without prejudice is “final” under Rule 60(b). To support this holding, the court noted that Black’s Law Dictionary (3d ed. 1933) defined “final order” as an order that “terminates the action itself.” A voluntary dismissal without prejudice falls within this definition, said the Court.

This straightforward reading of “final” is confirmed by Federal Rules Advisory Committee’s Notes accompanying the 1946 amendments to Rule 60(b), wherein the Committee explained its reason for adding the term “final.” According to the Committee, the addition of “final” clarified that “interlocutory judgments are not brought within the restrictions of the Rule, but rather they are left subject to the complete power of the court rendering them to afford such relief from them as justice requires.” Thus, the term “final” was intended to exclude “interlocutory judgments” from the reach of the Rule, explained the Court.

Once a case is finally terminated, the court’s power under Rule 60(b) kicks in, permitting the court to look back at the “final” act in a case and to provide relief from that act when appropriate. A voluntary dismissal without prejudice is one such “final” act, said the Court, at which point Rule 60(b) is the appropriate avenue for relief.

Any contrary interpretation, continued the Court, would place voluntary dismissals without prejudice into a “procedural no man’s land.” Such dismissals would not be “interlocutory” in the manner discussed by the Committee because they would be outside of a court’s “complete power” over an ongoing case. Nor would they be “final” and thus subject to Rule 60(b).

If a voluntary dismissal without prejudice is not “interlocutory,” then it would be hard to imagine that it would be anything but “final,” said the Court.

Jurisdictional statutes. Halliburton argued for a narrower definition of “final,” asking the Court to construe its meaning in Rule 60(b) to fall in line with what it means in jurisdictional statutes like 28 U. S. C. §1291, which gives the Courts of Appeals jurisdiction over appeals from “final decisions” of district courts. This grant of appellate jurisdiction could be traced back to the first Judiciary Act, and long before the adoption of Rule 60(b), the Court had developed a long line of jurisprudence explaining the meaning of “final” as it related to appellate jurisdiction. Halliburton urged the Court to look to this “legal lineage” when interpreting Rule 60(b), contending that, based on that body of case law, a determination is “final” principally when it “terminate[s] the litigation between the parties on the merits of the case.” The Court was not persuaded.

The body of case law cited by Halliburton was not helpful in interpreting the meaning of the term “final” in Rule 60(b), explained the Court, noting that there was little reason to think that the term “final” in Rule 60(b) was transplanted from statutes governing the jurisdiction of federal appellate courts. In that context, the concept of finality prevents interlocutory appeals from unduly impairing the resolution of civil and criminal cases at the trial level, observed the Court.

Finality under Rule 60(b) does not play a similar role, said the Court, pointing out that a motion for relief under Rule 60(b) is discretionary, not a matter of statutory right.

Proceeding. Next, the Court held that a voluntary dismissal without prejudice counts as a “proceeding” under Rule 60(b). Dictionary definitions suggest that the term “proceeding” encompasses all steps in an action, including the filing of papers that are noted on the docket, said the Court. Further, other Federal Rules similarly treat “proceeding” as including all formal steps taken in an action.

Halliburton and the Tenth Circuit had offered an alternative definition, arguing that “proceeding” is given more precise content by the neighboring words with which it is associated, in this case “judgment” and “order.” Because a “judgment” and “order” both involve some judicial determination of rights, it argued that a “proceeding” should, too, involve some judicial action or conclusive determination of rights. The Court was not moved.

A reading of “proceeding” to require a judicial determination would strip it of any independent meaning, said the Court. Further, such a limited reading would run counter to the general structure of Rule 60(b), noting that when the Rule authorizes relief from a “judgment, order, or proceeding,” it speaks in an ascending order of generality. Accordingly, the judgment of the Tenth Circuit was reversed, and the case was remanded for further proceedings.

The case is No. 23-971.

Judge: Alito, S.

Attorneys: Vincent Gregory Levy (Holwell Shuster & Goldberg) for Gary Waetzig. Matthew Dempsey McGill (Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher) for Halliburton Energy Services, Inc.

Companies: Halliburton Energy Services, Inc.

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