Page:Nutraceutical Corporation v. Troy Lambert.pdf/8

6 “plain and unambiguous,” the Court held that the District Court lacked that authority. Ibid. Likewise, in Robinson, the Court held that an earlier iteration of Rule 45(b) that said “ ‘the court may not enlarge… the period for taking an appeal’ ” prohibited a court from accepting a notice of appeal that was untimely filed. 361 U. S., at 224 (quoting Fed. Rule Crim. Proc. 45(b)).

Because Rule 23(f) is not amenable to equitable tolling, the Court of Appeals erred in accepting Lambert’s petition on those grounds.

Lambert resists the foregoing conclusion on a variety of grounds. None withstands scrutiny.

Most pertinently, Lambert argues that the above-mentioned Rules are less emphatic than they first appear. Rule 26(b)’s general grant of authority to relax time limits, he notes, refers both to “extend[ing]” the time to file a petition for permission to appeal and “permit[ting]” a petition to be filed after the deadline. See Fed. Rule App. Proc. 26(b) (“For good cause, the court may extend the time prescribed by these rules… to perform any act, or may permit an act to be done after that time expires” (emphasis added)). Rule 26(b)(1) then prohibits courts only from “extend[ing] the time to file,” while making no further mention of “permit[ting] an act to be done after that time expires.” In Lambert’s view, Rule 26(b)(1)’s prohibition on “extend[ing] the time to file” a petition for permission to appeal therefore should be understood to foreclose only formal extensions granted ex ante, and to leave courts free to excuse late filings on equitable grounds after the fact.

Whatever we would make of this contention were we writing on a blank slate, this Court has already rejected an indistinguishable argument in Robinson. There, Rule 45(b) generally authorized both “ ‘enlarg[ing]’ ” a filing