Rule 60.Relief from a Judgment or Order

Rule 60(a) covers clerical mistakes and mistakes arising from oversight or omission in a judgment, order, or other part of the record. The court can fix these on its own or on motion, with or without notice, at any point — except that once an appeal has been docketed and is pending, correcting the mistake requires the appellate court's leave.

Rule 60(b) is the rule's core provision, letting a party or its legal representative get relief from a final judgment, order, or proceeding on motion and just terms. The six grounds are specific: (1) mistake, inadvertence, surprise, or excusable neglect; (2) newly discovered evidence that reasonable diligence could not have uncovered in time to support a Rule 59(b) new-trial motion; (3) fraud, whether previously labeled intrinsic or extrinsic, misrepresentation, or misconduct by an opposing party; (4) that the judgment is void; (5) that the judgment has been satisfied, released, or discharged, rests on an earlier judgment that has since been reversed or vacated, or should no longer apply prospectively because that would no longer be equitable; and (6) any other reason that justifies relief. That last, catch-all ground gives the court room to act on circumstances the first five categories do not squarely address.

Timing follows Rule 60(c): a motion must be made within a reasonable time, and for the first three grounds — mistake or excusable neglect, newly discovered evidence, and fraud or misconduct — no more than a year after entry of the judgment or order, or the date of the proceeding being challenged. Filing the motion does not, by itself, affect the judgment's finality or suspend its operation; the judgment stays in force while the motion is pending unless the court says otherwise.

Rule 60(d) preserves two powers this rule does not limit: bringing an independent action to obtain relief from a judgment, and setting aside a judgment for fraud on the court itself, distinct from the fraud-by-an-opposing-party ground in Rule 60(b)(3). Rule 60(e) then abolishes a set of older common-law devices outright — bills of review, bills in the nature of bills of review, and writs of coram nobis, coram vobis, and audita querela — folding whatever function they once served into the modern motion practice this rule sets out. DC's version also omits a federal cross-reference to lien-action relief under 28 U.S.C. § 1655, since that provision has no counterpart in Superior Court practice.