We'll hear argument next in case 23-971 Watzig v. Halliburton Energy Services.

Mr. Levy?

Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the Court, as every Federal Circuit to have considered the question held until the decision below,

Rule 41 voluntary dismissals without prejudice may be reopened under Rule 60B because they are

final proceedings or final judgments. To start, a voluntary dismissal is a proceeding or a

judgment. The phrase judgment order or proceeding in Rule 60B was taken in 1937 from Section

473 of California's Codeota Civil Procedure.

And at the time, California Supreme Court had interpreted Section 473 to cover all

steps in litigation, and it had specifically applied Section 473 to voluntary dismissals.

These authoritative California decisions were carried into Rule 60B, and they are consistent

with dictionary definitions of the terms proceeding and judgment.

Next, a voluntary dismissal is also final.

Some courts, after adoption of the rule, initially read it to constrain their authority

to revise interlocutory matters,

and the advisory committee thought this was wrong.

So it added the word final to confirm that Rule 60B comes into play only when a court lacks

inherent authority to modify a matter as interlocutory.

But a dismissal terminates a case, so it cannot be modified

using a court the court's inherent of power, and it is therefore final for Rule 60B purposes.

And that conclusion, again, is confirmed by contemporing its dictionary definitions.

Respondents mostly avoids these points. It leads by asking the Court to affirm on the new theory that the district court lacked jurisdiction to vacate an arbitration award after reopening the case.

This objection is not covered by the question presented and presents no obstacle to resolving it, and the argument will fail on remand because it misreads Badgerow and

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