What happens if a court does not receive a motion for new trial by the time deadline for the judge to rule on the motion?

• A. The motion is granted
• B. The court may extend the deadline
• C. The motion is denied on the merits
• D. The motion is overruled by operation of law

Answer: (D)

When a post-trial motion for a new trial must be filed within a set deadline and the court does not receive the motion by that deadline, the motion is overruled by operation of law. In other words, the failure to timely file results in an automatic denial, so the court does not issue a substantive ruling on the merits. This preserves finality of the judgment and typically governs when the time to appeal begins.

Extensions or discretionary grants of relief aren’t triggered simply because the motion wasn’t filed on time, and there’s no merits-based denial to issue since there was no timely motion to review.