Rule 63.Judge's inability to proceed

Trials sometimes outlast the judge who presided over them. Rule 63 covers what happens when the judge who heard a case cannot finish the job after a jury returns a verdict or after findings of fact and conclusions of law are filed, because of death, illness, or some other disability. Rather than starting over automatically, the rule allows another judge who regularly sits on or is assigned to that court to step in and carry out the remaining duties, such as ruling on post-trial motions or entering judgment.

That substitution has a limit. If the replacement judge decides they cannot properly perform those duties, perhaps because the record does not let them fully grasp what happened at trial, the judge must order a new trial instead of trying to finish the case blind. The rule protects the parties from a rushed or uninformed outcome while still avoiding needless retrials whenever a substitute judge can pick up where the original judge left off.