Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/162

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UNITED STATES v. IBARRA Per Curiam

to run on the date of the initial order.2 In the course of its opinion, the Court of Appeals rejected the Government’s argument that this Court’s decisions in United States v. Healy, 376 U. S. 75 (1964), and United States v. Dieter, 429 U. S. 6 (1976) (per curiam), controlled the decision. In United States v. Healy, supra, we said: “The question, therefore, is simply whether in a criminal case a timely petition for rehearing by the Government filed within the permissible time for appeal renders the judgment not final for purposes of appeal until the Court disposes of the petition—in other words whether in such circumstances the 30-day period. . . begins to run from the date of entry of judgment or the denial of the petition for rehearing.” 376 U. S., at 77–78. The Court answered this question by saying that under the “well-established rule in civil cases,” id., at 78, the 30-day period begins with the denial of the petition for rehearing and by further observing that this Court’s consistent practice had been to treat petitions for rehearing as having the 2 The Court of Appeals’ decision discusses the issue as a matter of whether the motion for reconsideration “tolled” the 30-day period that, by assumption, began to run with the District Court’s first decision. We believe the issue is better described as whether the 30-day period began to run on the date of the first order or on the date of the order denying the motion for reconsideration, rather than as a matter of tolling. Principles of equitable tolling usually dictate that when a time bar has been suspended and then begins to run again upon a later event, the time remaining on the clock is calculated by subtracting from the full limitations period whatever time ran before the clock was stopped. See Cada v. Baxter Healthcare Corp., 920 F. 2d 446 (CA7 1990) (discussing principles of equitable tolling). Thus, in the present case for example, a motion to reconsider filed after 20 days, if it tolled the 30-day period to appeal, would leave at most only 10 days to appeal once the reconsideration motion was decided. However, we previously made clear that would-be appellants are entitled to the full 30 days after a motion to reconsider has been decided. United States v. Dieter, 429 U. S. 6, 7–8 (1976) (per curiam) (“[T]he 30-day limitation period runs from the denial of a timely petition . . . rather than from the date of the order itself ”).