Opinion
Case No. 14 C 5898
06-22-2017
PAULA EMERSON, Plaintiff, v. THOMAS J. DART, et al., Defendants.
MEMORANDUM ORDER
This is one of two cases, in each of which a motion by a prisoner plaintiff seeks to rehash his or her unsuccessful efforts for relief from a state court conviction and the resulting sentence that he or she is serving, has landed on this Court's desk at the same time. In this instance Paula Emerson ("Emerson") has filed a "Plaintiff's Fed. Rule Civ. P. 59(e) Motion To Reconsider Order of May 17, 2017 Granting Defendants' Motion For Summary Judgment" (the "Motion"), in which her attempted attack calls into play the principle stated in felicitous terms more than three decades ago by Judge Dortch Warriner in Above the Belt, Inc. v. Mel Bohannan Roofing, Inc., 99 F.R.D. 99, 101 (E.D. Va. 1983):
The motion to reconsider would be appropriate where, for example, the Court has patently misunderstood a party, or has made a decision outside the adversarial issues presented to the Court by the parties, or has made an error not of reasoning but of apprehension. A further basis for a motion to reconsider would be a controlling or significant change in the law or facts since the submission of the issue to the Court. Such problems rarely arise and the motion to reconsider should be equally rare.
Here Emerson's counsel has failed that test. His reassertion of the earlier contentions made in response to Emerson's motion for summary judgment is no more persuasive than those contentions were the first time around, when this Court then issued its memorandum opinion and order granting defendants' summary judgment motion and dismissed the Complaint and this action with prejudice (Dkt. No. 104). Accordingly Emerson's current Motion (Dkt. No. 107) is denied.
/s/_________
Milton I. Shadur
Senior United States District Judge Date: June 22, 2017