Vincent McCalla v. Royal MacCabees Life Insurance Company

The primary question in this case is whether revising a judgment to include mandatory prejudgment interest is a correction of a clerical error within the meaning of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(a), which sets no time limit within which correction must occur. We hold that such a motion is not a correction of a clerical error, but is instead an alteration or amendment of the judgment under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 59(e), which requires that the motion be filed no later than ten days after entry of the judgment.

Here, the district court granted Vincent McCalla’s postjudgment motion for prejudgment interest although the motion was made nearly three years after judgment was entered. We reverse the order granting prejudgment interest.

I

The facts underlying the substantive dispute in this case are unimportant to the present appeal. Briefly: McCalla purchased a disability insurance policy from Royal MacCabees in 1992 but omitted seemingly important information during the application process. When McCalla contracted Lyme disease in 1996, Royal MacCabees sought to rescind the policy on the ground that McCalla’s omissions were fraudulent; under the policy, nonfraudu-lent…