Bankruptcy in Brief: U.S. Supreme Court Rules that Requests to Set Aside Void Judgments Must Be Made Within a "Reasonable Time"

Rule 60(a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure ("Fed. R. Civ. P.") provides that a federal court can, on the request of a litigant or its own initiative, correct clerical mistakes or mistakes arising from oversight or omission in its judgments orders. Under Rule 60(b), a court has the power, "on motion or just terms," to relieve litigants from final judgments, orders, or proceedings under certain specified circumstances, including: 

• mistake, inadvertence, surprise, or excusable neglect;
• newly discovered evidence that, with reasonable diligence, could not have been discovered in time to move for a new trial under Rule 59(b);
• fraud (whether previously called intrinsic or extrinsic), misrepresentation, or misconduct by an opposing party;
• the judgment is void;
• the judgment has been satisfied, released, or discharged; it is based on an earlier judgment that has been reversed or vacated; or applying it prospectively is no longer equitable; or

(6) any other reason that justifies relief.

Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(b).

Rule 60(c)(1) provides that a motion under Rule 60(b) "must be made within a reasonable time—and for reasons (1), (2), and (3) no more than a year after the entry of the judgment or order or the date of the proceeding.

Rule 7055 of the Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure ("Fed. R. Bankr. P.") provides that Fed. R. Civ. P. 55 applies in bankruptcy adversary proceedings. Rule 55(c) in turn states that "[t]he court may set aside an entry of default for good cause, and it may set aside a final default judgment under Rule 60(b)." Fed. R. Bankr. P. 9024 provides that Rule 60 applies in a bankruptcy case, with certain exceptions not relevant here.

Despite the unambiguous language of Rule 60(c)(1), nearly all federal circuit courts of appeals have concluded that Rule 60(c)(1)'s "reasonable time" limitation does not apply to motions seeking relief from void judgments under Rule 60(b)(4). See, e.g., Jackson v. FIE Corp., 302 F.3d 515 (5th Cir. 2002); U.S. v. One Toshiba Color Television, 213 F.3d 147 (3d Cir. 2000); Sea-Land Serv., Inc. v. Ceramica Europa II, Inc., 160 F.3d 849 (1st Cir. 1998); Hertz Corp. v. Alamo Rent-A-Car, Inc., 16 F.3d 1126 (11th Cir. 1994); Rodd v. Region Const. Co., 783 F.2d 89 (7th Cir. 1986); V. T. A., Inc. v. Airco, Inc., 597 F.2d 220 (10th Cir. 1979); Austin v. Smith, 312 F.2d 337 (D.C. Cir. 1962); see generally 11 C. Wright, A. Miller, & M. Kane, Federal Practice and Procedure § 2862, pp. 431–433 (3d ed. 2012).

In so ruling, many of these courts have reasoned that no time limit should apply to a Rule 60(b)(4) motion in accordance with the Supreme Court's ruling in United Student Aid Funds, Inc. v. Espinosa, 559 U.S. 260, 270 (2010), that a "void judgment is a legal nullity."

On January 20, 2026, the Court resolved a circuit split on this issue in Coney Island Auto Parts Unlimited Inc. v. Burton, No. 24-808, 2026 WL 135998 (U.S. Jan. 20, 2026).

In that case, the bankruptcy trustee for a chapter 7 debtor sued an auto parts company several times to collect $50,000 in unpaid invoices but did not properly serve the defendant with the complaints. The defendant did not respond to the complaints, after which the bankruptcy court entered a default judgment against it. After attempting to enforce the judgment for six years, the trustee finally succeeded in seizing funds from the defendant's bank account to satisfy the judgment. The defendant then filed a motion to vacate the judgment under Rule 60(b)(4), arguing that the judgment was void because the defendant was never properly served. 

The bankruptcy court denied the motion, finding that the defendant had not sought relief from the judgment within a "reasonable time," as required by Rule 60(c). A district court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed that ruling on appeal. See Coney Island Auto Parts Unlimited, Inc. v. Vista-Pro Auto., LLC, 2023 WL 5917401 (M.D. Tenn. Sept. 8, 2023), aff'd, 109 F.4th 438 (6th Cir. 2024). The Supreme Court agreed to review the case in June 2025 to resolve the resulting circuit split. 

The unanimous Court (with one concurrence) affirmed the Sixth Circuit's ruling, thereby abrogating the majority position among the circuits on the issue. 

Writing for the Court, Justice Samuel Alito explained that the unambiguous text of Rule 60(c)(1) establishes a one-year time limit for relief from a judgment or order under Rules 60(b)(1), (b)(2), and (b)(3), but specifies that a request for relief under any of the other grounds delineated in Rule 60(b) must be made "within a reasonable time." Justice Alito rejected the argument that the passage of time cannot turn a null and void judgment into an enforceable judgment: 

Even if the passage of time cannot cure voidness, the same principle holds true for most legal errors. Nevertheless, statutes and rules routinely limit the time during which a party can seek relief from a judgment infected by error. Therefore, a party in [the petitioner's] position would need to show that some principle of law, such as the Due Process Clause, gives a party the right to allege voidness at any time…. [The petitioner] disclaims any such argument, and we cannot divine any principle requiring courts to keep their doors perpetually open to allegations of voidness. Giving a party a "reasonable" time to seek relief from an allegedly void judgment may well be all that due process demands. By contrast, the argument that a party may allege voidness at any time, if taken to its logical conclusion, would have extreme implications. For example, if a federal district court erroneously concluded that it possessed subject-matter jurisdiction and proceeded to enter a judgment, the adversely affected party could wait as long as it wanted before filing a notice of appeal. But see Fed. Rule App. Proc. 4(a)(1). Similarly, if a federal court of appeals erroneously asserted subject-matter jurisdiction, the adversely affected party would not be required to comply with the deadline for filing a petition for a writ of certiorari imposed by this Court's Rule 13. It is hard to accept the proposition that due process requires such a regime. 

 Coney Island Auto Parts, 2026 WL 135998, at *3 (endnotes omitted).

According to Justice Alito, although courts have historically granted relief from void judgments long after they have been entered, particularly if the court lacked jurisdiction over the defendant, "there was no historical consensus that a party could request such relief at any time." In any case, he wrote, "for Rule 60(b) motions, the Rule's 'text and structure' take priority over historical practice." Id. at *4 (citations and endnotes omitted).

Finally, Justice Alito dismissed policy concerns, the legislative history of Rule 60, and "the canon of constitutional avoidance" invoked by the petitioner, concluding that such things did not carry any weight based on the unambiguous language of Rule 60, which "clearly requires parties to make Rule 60(b) motions within a reasonable time." Id.

In a brief concurring opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor agreed with the Court's rationale but criticized it for wading unnecessarily into constitutional issues.