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1 1 (July 31, 2024)

handle is hein.crs/goveqer0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Congressional Court Watcher: Circuit Splits from July 2024 July 31, 2024 The U.S. Courts of Appeals for the thirteen circuits issue thousands of precedential decisions each year. Because relatively few of these decisions are ultimately reviewed by the Supreme Court, the U.S. Courts of Appeals are often the last word on consequential legal questions. The federal appellate courts sometimes reach different conclusions on the same issue of federal law, causing a split among the circuits that leads to the non-uniform application of federal law among similarly situated litigants. This Legal Sidebar discusses circuit splits that emerged or widened following decisions from the last month on matters relevant to Congress. The Sidebar does not address every circuit split that developed or widened during this period. Selected cases typically involve judicial disagreement over the interpretation or validity of federal statutes and regulations, or constitutional issues relevant to Congress's lawmaking and oversight functions. The Sidebar only includes cases where an appellate court's controlling opinion recognizes a split among the circuits on a key legal issue resolved in the opinion. Some cases identified in this Sidebar, or the legal questions they address, are examined in other CRS general distribution products. Members of Congress and congressional staff may click here to subscribe to the CRS Legal Update and receive regular notifications of new products and upcoming seminars by CRS attorneys. * Civil Procedure: A divided Sixth Circuit panel upheld the denial of a company's motion to vacate a default judgment issued years earlier; the lower court had decided the motion to vacate was untimely. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b)(4) permits a federal court to relieve a party ... from a final judgment, order, or proceeding for enumerated reasons or any other reason that justifies relief. Applying circuit precedent, the panel majority held that courts retain discretion to deny Rule 60(b)(4) motions-even for judgments that would otherwise be void due to a fundamental jurisdictional error or violation of a party's due process rights- if those motions are not made within a reasonable time after the final decision. While acknowledging that other circuits have held that there is no time limit for Rule 60(b)(4) motions to vacate void judgments, the panel majority described its interpretation as consistent with the text of the rule and principles of equity. The panel suggested that the reasonable-time clock might not begin Congressional Research Service https://crsreports.congress.gov LSB11214 CRS Legal Sidebar Prepared for Members and Committees of Congress

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