Court of Appeals counts small-claims time limit tightly, though statutes suggest looser approach
How do small-claims parties count time? It seems like a small question that should have a simple answer, but in practice it has proven a vexing one. In Team Property Management, LLC v. Reiss, No. 2016AP2163 (Wis. Ct. App. May 24, 2017) (unpublished), the Wisconsin Court of Appeals determined that the ten-day window after a commissioner issues an oral ruling in a small-claims action for a party to request a trial rather than have the ruling mature into a judgment does not exclude weekends and holidays. While this opinion accords with another recent appellate decision, it appears to be at odds with the plain text of the Wisconsin Statutes and other related authority.
Team Property began as a small-claims action in which a circuit court commissioner ruled that Reiss owed $6,879.50 to Team Property Management. Fourteen calendar days later, Reiss requested a circuit court trial. The circuit court granted that request, and after a trial, determined that Reiss owed a smaller amount of $5,250.50. Team Property Management appealed, arguing that Reiss’s request for a trial was untimely and therefore that the judgment should reflect the initial, higher award determined by the commissioner.
Small-claims procedures are set out in chapter 799 of the Wisconsin Statutes. Section 799.207(2) gives a party ten days from the date of a commissioner’s oral decision (or fifteen days from the date of a written decision) to request a trial. But the statute does not specify how to calculate the passage of time. The question in Team Property was thus whether the ten-day window excluded weekends and holidays, as is the default civil procedure rule, or whether small-claims proceedings have a different counting mechanism.
Under Wis. Stat. § 801.15(1)(b), “[w]hen the period of time prescribed or allowed is less than 11 days, Saturdays, Sundays and holidays shall be excluded in the computation.” This general counting rule appears to be incorporated into small-claims procedure by Wis. Stat. § 799.04(1), which explicitly allows the general provisions of Wisconsin civil procedure to fill the gaps where Chapter 799 is silent: “except as otherwise provided in this chapter, the general rules of practice and procedure in chapters 750 to 758 and 801 to 847 shall apply to actions and proceedings under this chapter.”
The interaction between sections 799.04(1) and 801.15(1) notwithstanding, the Team Property court concluded that weekend days should have been counted in calculating Reiss’s deadline for requesting a trial. Team Property, ¶3. On this basis, the court held that Reiss’s trial request, filed on the tenth business day—but the fourteenth calendar day—after the commissioner’s oral ruling was not timely and should not have been honored. Id. In reaching this determination, the Court of Appeals relied on Hoeller v. Kula, 2015 WI App 68 (unpublished). In that case, which also concerned a request for a trial after a small-claims ruling, the court declared—without any consideration of section 799.04(1)—that section 801.15(1)(b)’s exclusion of weekends and holidays “does not apply to calculations of time under § 799.207(2).” Hoeller, ¶7.
The Team Property decision does acknowledge that the small-claims chapter incorporates chapters 801-847 unless a “different procedure is prescribed by statute or rule,” but it sidesteps that incorporation by observing that chapter 799 “is the exclusive procedure to be used in actions where the amount claimed is $10,000 or less.” ¶3. Based on that exclusivity, the court held that section 801(1)(b) does not apply to chapter 799: “Wisconsin Stat. § 799.207(2)(b) prescribes the procedure to be exclusively applied in this case.” Id.
This conclusion fails to recognize that the statutes it considers do not conflict. Chapter 799 specifies the time period in which a party may request a trial, but it is silent regarding how the end of that period should be calculated. By contrast, section 801.15 directs how periods of time are to be calculated but says nothing about what those periods of time are. Thus, with respect to calculating the end of a given time period, no “different procedure prescribed by statute or rule” is “otherwise provided” in chapter 799.
Further, additional persuasive authority suggests that both Team Property and Hoeller reached the wrong conclusion. The Wisconsin Judicial Benchbook—published by Wisconsin Supreme Court’s Office of Judicial Education—advises judges that the time to demand a trial after an oral ruling in a small-claims action runs “10 days from date of oral decision, (Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays excluded in the computation).” Wis. Office of Judicial Educ., Wisconsin Judicial Benchbook, Vol. II § 41.33 (5th ed. 2016). The Benchbook cites both section 799.207 and section 801.15(1)(b). Additionally, a federal court has concluded that the counting methodology of section 801.15(1)(b) applies to time periods established in chapter 799. See DKCLM, Ltd. v. Eagle Movers, Inc., No. 11-C-933, 2014 WL 4954460, at *5 (E.D. Wis. Sept. 30, 2014).
On a more practical note, courts are closed on weekends and city holidays. With the Court of Appeals’ recent ruling, an order issued on, say, November 22 of this year (the Wednesday before Thanksgiving) would have until December 2 to request de novo review. However, the court is closed November 23 (Thanksgiving), November 24 (“Thanksgiving Holiday”), November 25 (Saturday), November 26 (Sunday), and December 2 (Saturday). So, to be absolutely safe, the party would have only until December 1 to request a jury trial. That equates to five actual working days—only half the time afforded by statute.
While the statutory basis for the rulings in Hoeller and Team Property is questionable, practitioners and litigants should take note. Until a Wisconsin appellate court says otherwise, the short clock on requests for a trial after a small-claims ruling will continue to tick on weekends and holidays.
Law clerk Charles Ureña assisted in researching and writing this post.
