Page:United States Reports 546.pdf/230

 546US1

Unit: $$U4

[08-22-08 13:34:13] PAGES PGT: OPIN

Cite as: 546 U. S. 12 (2005)

19

Per Curiam

tional.’ ” 540 U. S., at 454–455. See also Scarborough v. Principi, 541 U. S. 401, 413–414 (2004) (relying on Kontrick to hold that time limitations on applications for attorney’s fees under the Equal Access to Justice Act, 28 U. S. C. § 2412(d)(1), did not implicate subject-matter jurisdiction). After Kontrick, it is difﬁcult to escape the conclusion that Rule 33 motions are similarly nonjurisdictional. By its terms, Rule 45(b)(2) has precisely the same effect on exten­ sions of time under Rule 29 as it does under Rule 33, and as we noted in Kontrick, Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 45(b) and Bankruptcy Rule 9006(b) are both “modeled on Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 6(b).” 540 U. S., at 456, n. 10. Rule 33, like Rule 29 and Bankruptcy Rule 4004, is a claim-processing rule—one that is admittedly inﬂexible be­ cause of Rule 45(b)’s insistent demand for a deﬁnite end to proceedings. These claim-processing rules thus assure re­ lief to a party properly raising them, but do not compel the same result if the party forfeits them. Here, where the Government failed to raise a defense of untimeliness until after the District Court had reached the merits, it forfeited that defense. The Court of Appeals should therefore have proceeded to the merits. We ﬁnally add a word about the approach taken by the Court of Appeals. Although we ﬁnd its disposition to have been in error, we fully appreciate that it is an error shared among the circuits, and that it was caused in large part by imprecision in our prior cases. Our repetition of the phrase “mandatory and jurisdictional” has understandably led the lower courts to err on the side of caution by giving the limi­ tations in Rules 33 and 45 the force of subject-matter juris­ diction. Convinced, therefore, that Robinson and Smith governed this case, the Seventh Circuit felt bound to apply them, even though it expressed grave doubts in light of Kontrick. This was a prudent course. It neither forced the issue by upsetting what the Court of Appeals took to be our settled precedents, nor buried the issue by proceeding