Beddoes v. Giffin

2007 UT 35
This opinion is subject to revision before final
publication in the Pacific Reporter.
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF UTAH
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William G. Beddoes, No. 20060389
Plaintiff and Petitioner,
v.
F I L E D
Gary Giffin,
Defendant and Respondent. April 20, 2007
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Third District, Salt Lake
The Honorable Anthony B. Quinn
No. 040907525
Attorneys: William P. Morrison, Grant W. P. Morrison, Salt Lake
City, for petitioner
Sean A. Monson, Jared L. Inouye, Salt Lake City, for
respondent
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On Certiorari to the Utah Court of Appeals
DURRANT, Justice:
INTRODUCTION
¶1 We granted certiorari in this case to decide whether a
motion for an award of costs, filed after the entry of judgment,
delays the entry of judgment for purposes of appeal until the
motion is resolved. We conclude that it does not. Because the
substance and character of a judgment is not affected by the
resolution of costs disputes, such disputes do not delay the
entry of a final judgment for purposes of appeal.
BACKGROUND
¶2 On April 12, 2004, William Beddoes filed a complaint
against Gary Giffin alleging malicious prosecution. Giffin
thereafter filed a motion for summary judgment. The district
court granted summary judgment in Giffin’s favor, dismissing

1 Beddoes v. Giffin, 2006 UT App 130U, para. 4 (per curiam).
2 Id.
3 State v. Brake, 2004 UT 95, ¶ 11, 103 P.3d 699.
4 Utah R. App. P. 4(a).
5 Id. 3(a).
6 Loffredo v. Holt, 2001 UT 97, ¶ 11, 37 P.3d 1070.
No. 20060389 2
Beddoes’s complaint, and entered an order and judgment to this
effect on September 22, 2005. On September 29, 2005, Giffin
filed a request for costs, which the district court denied in an
order dated November 28, 2005. On December 22, 2005, more than
thirty days after the September 22 judgment was entered, Beddoes
filed a notice of appeal.
¶3 Beddoes originally filed his appeal with this court.
We transferred the case to the Utah Court of Appeals, with whom
Giffin filed a motion for summary disposition, asserting that
Beddoes’s notice of appeal was not timely filed. The court of
appeals granted Giffin’s motion and issued a memorandum decision
holding that “[t]he September 22, 2005 order granting summary
judgment and dismissing Beddoes’s claims was the final,
appealable judgment” and that “[t]he addition of costs to the
judgment, if the request had been granted, would not have
affected the finality of the . . . order for purposes of
appeal.”1 The court dismissed Beddoes’s appeal for lack of
jurisdiction because his “notice of appeal was not filed within
thirty days after entry of final judgment.”2
¶4 We granted certiorari to assess the effect of a costs
motion on the finality of a judgment. On certiorari, we review
for correctness the decision of the court of appeals, granting
the court of appeals no deference.3 We have jurisdiction
pursuant to Utah Code section 78-2-2(3) and (5).
ANALYSIS
¶5 Rule 4(a) of the Utah Rules of Appellate Procedure
provides that a party must file a notice of appeal “within 30
days after the date of entry of the judgment or order appealed
from.”4 And rule 3(a) requires that the judgment or order
appealed from be “final.”5 This “final judgment rule” “prevents
a party from prematurely appealing a non-final judgment, and
thereby preserves scarce judicial resources.”6 We have addressed
this rule in a series of cases, described below, involving

7 185 P.2d 264 (Utah 1947).
8 Id. at 268.
9 888 P.2d 130 (Utah Ct. App. 1994).
10 Id. at 132.
11 Id. at 133.
12 Id.
3 No. 20060389
modifications to judgments where attorney fees, court costs, or
both were involved. We now hold that disputes regarding court
costs need not be resolved in order to have a final judgment for
purposes of appeal.
¶6 In Adamson v. Brockbank,7 we explained how amendments
to a judgment or order affect the time allowed for an appeal to
be filed:
[W]here a belated entry merely constitutes an
amendment or modification not changing the
substance or character of the judgment, such
entry is merely a nunc pro tunc entry which
relates back to the time the original
judgment was entered, and does not enlarge
the time for appeal; but where the
modification or amendment is in some material
matter, the time begins to run from the time
of the modification or amendment.8
¶7 In Neilson v. Gurley,9 the Utah Court of Appeals
applied this language to a situation in which the trial court
entered a judgment awarding the plaintiff damages and attorney
fees and, twenty days later, amended the judgment to reflect that
the plaintiff was also entitled to recover costs.10 The court
held that “[t]he effect of the amendment did not create a new
judgment for purposes of determining the timeliness of appeal,
and the time in which [the defendant] could appeal commenced to
run from the date of the original judgment.”11 The court
determined that the “amendment was purely clerical in nature” and
did not “change the character of the judgment” or “affect any
substantive rights running to the litigants.”12

13 2000 UT 4, 998 P.2d 254.
14 Id. ¶ 15.
15 Id. ¶¶ 8-9.
16 Id. ¶ 9.
17 Id. ¶¶ 9-10.
18 Id. ¶ 11.
19 Id.
20 Id. ¶ 12.
No. 20060389 4
¶8 We followed this reasoning in ProMax Development Corp.
v. Raile,13 where we held that “a trial court must determine the
amount of attorney fees awardable to a party before the judgment
becomes final for the purpose of an appeal under Utah Rule of
Appellate Procedure 3.”14 In that case, the trial court, having
found in favor of the defendants after a bench trial, amended its
judgment twice.15 The first amendment, entered two months after
the original judgment, awarded attorney fees and court costs to
the defendants; the second amendment increased the amount of
attorney fees awarded, without mentioning costs.16 Four days
after the court entered the second order amending the judgment,
the plaintiffs filed a notice of appeal, which the defendants
challenged as untimely.17
¶9 We refused to dismiss the plaintiff’s appeal as
untimely.18 Finding that both amendments were “amendments in a
‘material matter,’” we recognized that they “were materially
different from the amendment made in Neilson v. Gurley, where the
modification or amendment was to recite that the prevailing party
was entitled to court costs.”19 We further explained as follows:
Where attorney fees are awarded to a party,
. . . there is no final judgment for the
purposes of appeal until the amount of the
fees has been ascertained and granted.
However, when, as in Neilson, no attorney
fees are involved but only court costs, which
are usually small statutory amounts or
liquidated amounts, such costs can be added
later to a judgment without affecting its
finality.20

21 2001 UT 97, 37 P.3d 1070.
22 Id. ¶ 8.
23 Id. ¶ 13.
24 Id. ¶ 14.
25 Id. ¶ 10.
5 No. 20060389
¶10 We decided Loffredo v. Holt21 consistent with ProMax.
In Loffredo, the district court made a number of summary judgment
rulings but did not completely dispose of all the claims,
including a claim by one party for attorney fees and costs.22 We
stated that “[o]ur holding in ProMax governs the outcome of this
case”23 and that the final judgment rule “requires that all
claims . . . be decided in order for a decision to be
appropriately appealed.”24 Because the claim for attorney fees
and costs was still pending before the district court, we
concluded that the appeal was not taken from a final judgment,
and we dismissed the case for lack of jurisdiction.25
¶11 We stress that Loffredo does not stand for the
proposition that a judgment is not final until both attorney fees
and court costs have been resolved. Rather, Loffredo
acknowledges that ProMax is the governing law with respect to the
finality of judgments involving disputes over attorney fees and
court costs. And as we explained in ProMax, disputes as to
attorney fees must be resolved in order to have a final judgment
for appeal, but disputes as to court costs need not. Loffredo
did not change this; had we intended to overrule ProMax in
Loffredo, we would have done so explicitly.
¶12 The question before us in this case is whether a motion
for an award of costs filed after the entry of judgment delays
the entry of judgment for purposes of appeal until the motion is
resolved. As the cases just described make clear, the answer is
no. Only material matters that affect the substance and
character of a judgment must be resolved before a judgment is
final. Court costs and other matters clerical in nature are not
material and do not need to be resolved for a judgment to be
final for the purposes of an appeal. In the case at hand, the
district court’s order of November 28 addressed only court costs.
The original judgment of September 22 is therefore the final,
appealable judgment. Accordingly, Beddoes’s appeal filed on
December 22 is untimely under rule 4(a) of the Utah Rules of
Appellate Procedure.

No. 20060389 6
CONCLUSION
¶13 We hold that a motion for an award of costs filed after
the entry of judgment does not delay the entry of judgment for
purposes of appeal until the motion is resolved. Because Beddoes
filed his appeal more than thirty days after the entry of the
final judgment, his appeal is untimely. We therefore affirm the
court of appeals’ judgment.
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¶14 Chief Justice Durham, Associate Chief Justice Wilkins,
Justice Parrish, and Justice Nehring concur in Justice Durrant’s
opinion.