United States District Court, D. Arizona
ORDER
On
August 6, 2019, Plaintiff Arek Fressadi
(“Plaintiff”) filed a document titled
“Motion to Reconsider This Court's Failure to
Remand As Required-This Court Lacks Jurisdiction: Rulings
Other Than Remand Are Void” (Doc. 357) (“Motion
to Reconsider the Court's July 23 Order Denying
Plaintiff's Motion to Reconsider June 20 Order”).
Therein, Plaintiff requests reconsideration of this
Court's July 23, 2019 Order (Doc. 353) that denied
Plaintiff's previously-filed Rule 59 and 60 Motions to
Order New Trial, Amend/Alter Judgment, and/or Vacate Portions
of the Court's 6/20/19 Order Doc. 343 (“Motion to
Amend/Alter”) (Doc. 348), Motion for Leave to File
Excess Pages (Doc. 349), Motion to Accept Late Filing (Doc.
350), and Motion to Supplement his Rule 59 and 60 Motions
(Doc. 351) (collectively, “Rule 59 and 60 Motions for
Reconsideration”). The Court's July 23, 2019 Order
(Doc. 353) denied Plaintiff's Rule 59 requests as
untimely and his Rule 60 requests because the Motion to
Amend/Alter exceeded the page limitations allowed by the
Local Rules. (Doc. 353 at 2-3).
The
Court is confident of Plaintiff's familiarity with the
standards governing motions for reconsideration, as he has
filed no less than nine over the course of this litigation.
(See Docs. 27, 45, 104, 130, 160, 173, 196, 269,
348). The Court will nonetheless summarize these standards
for his benefit. The purpose of a motion for reconsideration
is to correct manifest errors of law or fact or to present
newly discovered evidence. School Dist. No. 1J, Multnomah
County, Oregon v. AcandS Inc., 5 F.3d 1255, 1263 (9th
Cir. 1993).
[A] motion to reconsider would be appropriate where, for
example, the court has patently misunderstood a party, or has
made a decision outside the adversarial issues presented to
the court by the parties, or has made an error not of
reasoning but of apprehension. A further basis for a motion
to reconsider would be a controlling or significant change in
the law or facts since the submission of the issue to the
court. Such problems rarely arise and the motion to
reconsider should be equally rare.
Above the Belt, Inc. v. Mel Bohannan Roofing, Inc.,
99 F.R.D. 99, 101 (E.D. Va. 1983) (emphasis added). See
also, Sullivan v. Faras-RLS Group, Ltd., 795
F.Supp. 305, 308-09 (D. Ariz. 1992); LRCiv. 7.2(g)(1)
(stating a court will “ordinarily deny a motion for
reconsideration of an Order absent a showing of manifest
error or a showing of new facts or legal authority that could
not have been brought to its attention earlier with
reasonable diligence…”). In light of the
standards governing a motion to reconsider, courts in this
district have held that a motion to reconsider an order
denying a prior motion to reconsider “would be
appropriate in only the most rarest and extreme of
circumstances.” Fisher v. United States, 2014
WL 12585767, *1 (D. Ariz. Jan. 7, 2014). Plaintiff's
Motion to Reconsider the Court's July 23 Order Denying
Plaintiff's Motion to Reconsider June 20 Order does not
present one of those rare circumstances.
Plaintiff
does not argue that the Court committed manifest error when
it applied the governing rules on time limits for filing Rule
59 motions[1] or in its application of page limitations
on motions when it denied Plaintiffs Rule 59 and 60 Motions
for Reconsideration in its July 23 Order. Instead, Plaintiff
reiterates jurisdictional arguments that he has already
presented to the Court and that were rejected in the
Court's June 20, 2019 Order that partially denied
Plaintiffs request to remand. (See Doc. 343). In
that regard, Plaintiff is simply asking this “court to
rethink what [it] has already thought through-rightly or
wrongly[.]” United States v. Rezzonico, 32
F.Supp.2d 1112, 1116 (D. Ariz. 1998). This is not a proper
basis for a motion for reconsideration. Id. at 116.
Moreover, to the extent Plaintiff again is seeking
reconsideration of the Court's prior rulings on these
jurisdictional issues, his request is improper and
untimely. See LRCiv. 7.2(g)(2) (“Absent good
cause shown, any motion for reconsideration shall be filed no
later than fourteen (14) days after the date of the filing of
the Order that is the subject of the motion”). As
noted, the Court ruled on the jurisdictional issues raised by
Plaintiff on June 20, 2019. (See Doc. 343). The
present Motion to Reconsider the Court's July 23 Order
Denying Plaintiffs Motion to Reconsider June 20 Order was
filed on August 6, 2019. (See Doc. 357). Even if the
Motion to Reconsider the Court's July 23 Order Denying
Plaintiffs Motion to Reconsider June 20 Order was to be
construed as a motion to reconsider the Court's June 20,
2019 Order, Plaintiff does not provide a reason for his late
filing, much less one that would constitute good cause to
excuse it.[2] Accordingly, IT IS
ORDERED that the Motion to Reconsider the
Court's July 23 Order Denying Motion for Reconsideration
(Doc. 357) is DENIED.
---------
Notes:
[1] In his introductory paragraph,
Plaintiff briefly notes that his “requests per FRCP 60
are timely per FRCP 60(c)(1).” (Doc. 357 at 1). The
Court's July 23, 2019 Order denied relief under Rule 60
because Plaintiff failed to show good cause for filing a
motion that was fourteen pages beyond the allowable page
limits, to which Plaintiff later “supplemented”
with an additional five-page brief. (Doc. 353 at 2-3).
Plaintiff's Motion to Reconsider the Court's July 23
Order Denying Plaintiff's Motion to Reconsider June 20
Order does not argue manifest error with regard to the
Court's application of Local Rule 7.2(e)(1).
[2] Plaintiff previously sought to be
excused from filing his late Rule 59 requests because his
internet service went down on July 18, 2019, the day on which
his Rule 59 motions were due. (Doc. 350). Even if the Court
were to look to Doc. 350 for cause to excuse the delay in
filing this Motion, any difficulty Plaintiff may have had in
filing documents on July 18, 2019 does not excuse or explain
the delay in filing a Rule 60 ...