In the case of Donald E. Nelson v. Adams USA, Inc., et al., 1999, the U.S Supreme Court ruled in favor of Nelson who had been sued by Adams for breach of contract and fraud. The lower court issued a default judgment against him because he failed to respond within the required time limit due to his lawyer's negligence. However, when Nelson learned about this, he promptly filed a motion to set aside the judgment which was denied by both trial and appellate courts on grounds that it wasn't served properly as per Rule 60(b)’s requirement (Federal Rules of Civil Procedure). On appeal, however, SCOTUS reversed these decisions stating that while serving under Rule 60(b) is indeed necessary for setting aside a final judgment or order; its purpose isn’t meant to be rigidly interpreted but rather should serve justice’s interests. Therefore since there was no prejudice caused towards Adams and considering other factors like prompt action taken by Nelson after learning about default judgement etc.; denying relief would not have been fair hence they remanded case back for further proceedings.

In the dissenting opinion for Donald E. Nelson v. Adams, USA, Inc., et al., Justice Ginsburg disagreed with the majority's view that a judgment on an unpleaded issue is always void and should be set aside without considering whether it caused any harm to the parties involved. She argued that this approach was too rigid and failed to take into account circumstances where no prejudice resulted from such a judgment. Instead, she proposed a more flexible rule which would allow courts to uphold judgments on unpleaded issues if they found no significant harm or unfairness had occurred as a result of not formally amending pleadings in court proceedings.