Appeal filed beyond 30-day limit must raise new facts

In dismissing an interlocutory appeal as untimely, the Indiana Court of Appeals told the appellants they still have the ability to attack the trial court’s interlocutory orders.

James Kindred, Thomas Kindred and Sam Kindred filed a motion to dissolve a preliminary injunction six months after the Owen Circuit Court entered an order granting the injunction.

The trial court denied the Kindreds’ motion to dissolve as well as their motion to reconsider. Within 30-days of the denial, they filed a notice of appeal from the trial court’s interlocutory order.

On appeal, the defendants claim the motion to dissolve was not based on any new facts or circumstances that had arisen since the trial court’s entry of the preliminary order. Instead it was based on arguments that were available at the time the preliminary injunction was entered.

 “If a party fails to do so (to challenge a preliminary injunction order within 30 days), it may not thereafter seek to dissolve the preliminary injunction based upon grounds that were known or knowable at the time of the entry of the preliminary injunction, as this would simply be a belated, collateral attack on the trial court’s initial decision to enter or deny the injunction,” Judge Paul Mathias wrote in James Kindred, Thomas Kindred, and Sam Kindred v. Betty Townsend and Harmon Crone, 60A01-1304-PL-156. “To hold otherwise would allow limitless appeals based on the same facts tried and decided to enter or deny a preliminary injunction.”

In a footnote, the Court of Appeals pointed out to the Kindreds that their appeal may not be dead. Citing Bojrab v. Bojrab, 810 N.E.2d 1008, 1014 (Ind. 2004), the COA noted the Kindreds may attack the trial court’s interlocutory orders on appeal from the final judgment.