Case: 24-20018 Document: 29-1 Page:1 Date Filed: 03/18/2024 GQnited States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit United States Court of Appeats FILED March 18, 2024 No. 24-20018 Lyle W. Cayce Clerk WILMINGTON SAVINGS FUND SOcIETY, FSB, doing business as Christiana Trust, as Trustee, Plaintiff—Appellee, versus LEEROY M. MYERS; BARBARA MYERS, Defendants — Appellants.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas USDC No. 4:22-CV-88 PUBLISHED ORDER Before HAYNES, WILLETT, and DUNCAN, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM: Subject to a few exceptions, an appeal in a civil case must be filed within 30 days after entry of judgment. FeEp. R. App. P. 4(a)()(A). A timely filed motion to alter or amend a judgment under Rule 59(e) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, however, can suspend the time for filing the notice of appeal. Once a party files a motion under Rule 59(e), “the time to file an appeal runs for all parties from the entry of the order disposing of Case: 24-20018 Document: 29-1 Page:2 Date Filed: 03/18/2024 No. 24-20018 the last such remaining motion.” FED. R. App. P. 4(a)(4)(A). Thus, once the district court rules on the motion, the 30-day clock to file an appeal begins to run anew.

Successive motions under Rule 59(e), however, “will not indefinitely toll the prescribed period for filing a notice of appeal.” Trowel Trades Emp. Health and Welfare Trust Fund of Dade Cnty v. Nezelek, Inc., 645 F.2d 322 , 326 (5th Cir. 1981). As one of our sister circuits put it, “A party may not continue to file Rule 59(e) motions in order to forestall the time for appealing; only the first motion stops the clock.” Andrews v. E.I. Du Pont De Nemours and Co., 447 F.3d 510 , 515 (7th Cir. 2006). So when a district court decides a Rule 59(e) motion but “does no more in the second judgment than make a clerical change, such as correct the names of parties or dates, the time for filing motions does not start to run from entry of the second judgment, but rather runs from the date of the first judgment.” Cornist ». Richland Parish Sch. Bd., 479 F.2d 37 , 39 (5th Cir. 1973).

Yet sometimes a district court may make more than a mere clerical change to ajudgment. In rare cases, the district court may, pursuant to a Rule 59(e) motion, “change[] matters of substance, or resolve[| a genuine ambiguity, in a judgment previously rendered.” Fed. Trade Comm/n v. Minneapolis-Honeywell Regulator Co., 344 U.S. 206 , 211 (1952). In such cases, “the period within which an appeal must be taken . . . begin to run anew.” Jd.

at 211-12. In other words, the order making such substantive changes is construed as a new judgment from which the 30-day appeal clock runs, and a party can suspend the time for filing a notice of appeal with another motion under Rule 59(e). If, in that case, a party files a second Rule 59(e) motion, the deadline to appeal will begin running once the district court decides that motion. See FEp. R. App. P. 4(a)(4).

In this case, defendants Leeroy and Barbara Myers filed two motions Case: 24-20018 Document: 29-1 Page:3 Date Filed: 03/18/2024 No. 24-20018 under Rule 59(e), both seeking to amend the district court’s final judgment. In their first motion, they argued, among many other things, that the district court’s judgment was mislabeled because even though it purported to dispose of all claims and parties in the case, the title of the order did not signal that it was a final judgment. The heading instead read as follows (capitalization altered): “Plaintiff Wilmington Savings Fund Society, FSB, D/B/A Christiana Trust, Not Individually but as Trustee for Pretium Mortgage Acquisition Trust’s Motion for Summary Judgment.” The district court thus appears to have borrowed a title from an exhibit in the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment as a title for its final judgment.

Recognizing the mistake, the district court partially granted the Myers’ motion to amend, keeping the body of the order identical b