Rule 809.Notice of Orders or Judgments

Rule 809 is about how people learn a judgment exists — and what happens when they do not.

The proposed document

The prevailing party, or whoever the court designates to draft, must serve a copy of the proposed order or judgment on each party and provide the clerk sufficient copies for service on all parties, together with envelopes addressed to each party with sufficient postage attached, unless the court orders otherwise. The drafter supplies the clerk's mailing materials.

The clerk's duty

Immediately after entering an order or judgment, the clerk must serve a copy on every party, bearing the filing stamp showing the date of filing. It may be served by mailing, emailing, or delivering to the attorney of record, or, for a party without counsel, by mailing to the address designated by the prevailing party as most likely to give notice.

That is the same certification Rule 302(c) requires on a default judgment application. The prevailing party names the address; the clerk uses it.

The clerk must make a note in the court records of the mailing, and mailing is sufficient notice for all purposes for which these rules require notice of entry.

Lack of notice

The hard part. Lack of notice of entry does not affect the time to appeal or to file a post-judgment motion, and does not relieve — or authorize the court to relieve — a party for failing to appeal or move in time.

So the 14-day windows in Rules 801(b), 804(b) and 804(e), and the appeal period under Rule 813, run from entry, not from when the party found out.

The one exception

Unless there is no showing of mailing by the clerk in the court records and the affected party had no actual notice. Both must be true. A party who learned of the judgment another way cannot rely on the missing clerk's note; and a party with no actual notice still needs the record to show the clerk's note is absent.

Which is why the clerk's note is worth checking before assuming a deadline is lost.