The Month in Federal Appellate Jurisdiction: September 2025

Last month saw the Ninth Circuit apply its rule that a minute order can count as a separate document for purposes of starting the appeal clock. The Sixth Circuit explained when it cannot review contract-formation issues in an arbitration appeal. And the Fourth Circuit declined to exercise pendent appellate jurisdiction over standing and ripeness issues in a sovereign-immunity appeal. Courts also held that litigants could not appeal from a denial of the good-faith defense in § 1983 suits or a Rule 37(b) sanction that barred a law firm from serving in an MDL leadership role. Plus some improper qualified-immunity appeals—as well as splits over whether qualified-immunity appeals were improper—and more.

• Minute Orders as Separate Documents
• Contract Formation in Arbitration Appeals
• No Pendent Appellate Jurisdiction over Standing & Ripeness
• No Immediate Appeals of the Good-Faith Defense in § 1983 Actions
• No Immediate Appeals from Rule 37(b) Sanctions
• The Month’s Improper Qualified-Immunity Appeals
• Quick Notes

Minute Orders as Separate Documents

In Rajabian v. Mercedes-Benz USA, LLC, the Ninth Circuit applied its rule that a minute order on a district court’s docket can qualify as a “separate document” for purposes of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 58.

The time to appeal does not begin running until entry of a judgment. In most civil cases, that entry comes when the judgment is set out in a separate document. The Ninth Circuit has held that minute orders can count as the required separate document. To do so, the minute order must exhibit a “clear and unequivocal manifestation by the trial court of its belief that the decision made, so far as it is concerned, is the end of the case.”

In Rajabian, the district court entered an order setting forth its reasons for issuing a Colorado River stay. The district court then separately entered a minute order that “clearly signaled, in unadorned fashion, that the matter was fully closed”:

IT IS ORDERED staying the case on all claims pending the outcome of the state court litigation.

The minute order thereby signaled the end of federal litigation in favor of state litigation. So the minute order was a separate document that started the appeal clock.

Rajabian v. Mercedes-Benz USA, LLC, 2025 WL 2656582 (9th Cir. Sep. 17, 2025), available at the Ninth Circuit and Westlaw

Contract Formation in Arbitration Appeals

In Schnatter v. 247 Group, LLC, the Sixth Circuit held that it could not review whether parties entered into a valid contract in an appeal from an order denying arbitration.

Schnatter involved a dispute over the alleged breach of a non-disclosure agreement that contained an arbitration provision. The parties litigated their dispute for years in federal court. After the district court denied summary judgment on one of the plaintiff’s theories of relief, the defendant moved to compel arbitration. The district court denied that request, concluding (1) the parties had entered into an enforceable agreement to arbitrate and (2) the defendant had defaulted on its arbitration rights by litigating the case in federal court. The defendant then appealed from the district court’s order.

The Sixth Circuit had jurisdiction to review the determination that the defendant had defaulted on its arbitration rights. But the court did not have jurisdiction to review the contract formation issue. That part of the district court’s decision was “pro-arbitration.” And the Federal Arbitration Act’s list of appealable interlocutory orders does not include any pro-arbitration decisions. Nor does an appeal from the denial of arbitration bring with it all related issues. Jurisdiction exists “to review decisions that prevented the district court from compelling arbitration.” So while the court of appeals could review a decision on contract formation that “supplied the basis for the district court’s denying a motion to compel arbitration,” it could not review that issue when it was not the grounds for denying arbitration.

Schnatter v. 247 Group, LLC, 2025 WL 2612017 (6th Cir. Sep. 10, 2025), available at the Sixth Circuit and Westlaw

No Pendent Appellate Jurisdiction over Standing & Ripeness

In Albert v. Lierman, the Fourth Circuit limited a sovereign-immunity appeal to sovereign-immunity issues. Following its 2023 decision in Industrial Services Group, Inc. v. Dobson—see this post for my discussion of Dobson—the Fourth Circuit held that it could not address the defendant’s standing and ripeness arguments.

The appeal stemmed from a challenge to Maryland’s laws on recovering abandoned property. Maryland law makes the state the temporary custodian of seemingly abandoned property. Owners can seek to reclaim that property, but the state does not pay interest accrued during the state’s custodianship. The plaintiff in Albert argued that the failure to pay interest amounted to an unconstitutional taking. Maryland’s comptroller moved to dismiss the suit on standing, ripeness, and sovereign-immunity grounds. The district court denied that motion, and the comptroller appealed.

The Fourth Circuit had jurisdiction to immediately review the denial of sovereign immunity. But that jurisdiction did not extend to the comptroller’s standing and ripeness arguments. The only possible jurisdictional hook was pendent appellate jurisdiction. And although standing and ripeness are threshold jurisdictional issues in any action, neither was part of the sovereign-immunity inquiry. The sovereign-immunity analysis asked whether the plaintiff sought prospective or retrospective relief. Standing and ripeness asked different questions concerning the plaintiff’s interest in abandoned property, what steps the plaintiff needed to take before suing, and whether the comptroller had reached a final decision on the plaintiff’s property. In short, the standing and ripeness issues did not “rest on the same specific question that will necessarily resolve or would be necessary to review the Eleventh Amendment immunity issue.” (Quotation marks omitted.)

Albert v. Lierman, 2025 WL 2608433 (4th Cir. Sep. 10, 2025), available at the Fourth Circuit and Westlaw

No Immediate Appeals of the Good-Faith Defense in § 1983 Actions

In Estate of Esche v. Bunuel-Jordana, the Ninth Circuit held that a private health-care provider acting under state law could not immediately appeal the denial of its good-faith defense.

The defendant in Esche was a hospital that held a pregnant patient against her will for a month. The hospital had petitioned a Nevada court to involuntarily commit the patient for mental-health treatment under Nevada’s involuntary-commitment statute. The patient’s treatment during that month was abhorrent:

While the petition was pending, hospital staff—assertedly pursuant to the same statutory scheme—repeatedly declared that Esche had not been “medically cleared” to appear at her commitment hearing, kept her in the hospital, and administered psychiatric drugs and other medical treatments to Esche, often over her objection. According to Esche’s medical records, staff confined her to one room; restricted her phone use; precluded her from having visitors until the birth; never told her that a public defender had been appointed to represent her in the commitment proceeding; and instructed her not to raise with her boyfriend (the father of her child) or mother her desire to contact a lawyer.

Shortly after the patient gave birth, the hospital withdrew its commitment request. The patient left the hospital a few days later and, only hours after that, was found dead on a porch near the hospital.

The patient’s estate and survivors sued the hospital and its employees. The plaintiffs relied on (among other sources of law) 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The defendants responded with a “good-faith” defense. Private defendants acting under color of state law cannot invoke qualified immunity. But they might be able to raise a good-faith defense based on “general principles of equality and fairness”—“in other words, the innocence of [the defendant’s] actions.” (Quotation marks omitted.) The district court rejected the defendant’s motion for summary judgment on good-faith grounds. The defendants then tried to appeal.

The Ninth Circuit held that defendants cannot immediately appeal from the denial of the good-faith defense. The only proffered ground for appellate jurisdiction was the collateral-order doctrine. And the court’s analysis focused almost entirely on whether the good-faith defense is an immunity from litigation. The Ninth Circuit concluded that it is not—the defense is a protection from liability, not litigation. After all, the concerns underlying qualified immunity—“ensur[ing] the effective operation of government”—do not apply to private actors.

Estate of Esche v. Bunuel-Jordana, 2025 WL 2751169 (9th Cir. Sep. 29, 2025), available at the Ninth Circuit and Westlaw

No Immediate Appeals from Rule 37(b) Sanctions

In In re Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001, the Second Circuit dismissed an appeal from an order removing a law firm from its leadership role in multidistrict litigation. The district court had sanctioned the firm under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(b) for violating a protective order by leaking documents to a reporter. The Second Circuit held that this decision was not an immediately appealable collateral order. The order was not separate from the merits, as the district court had to consider the importance of the leaked documents to the underlying case. Nor was the issue presented important, as it turned on the case-specific application of settled law. Nor was the order effectively unreviewable, as the Supreme Court has held regarding similar orders disqualifying counsel.

In re Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001, 2025 WL 2609490 (2d Cir. Sep. 10, 2025), available at CourtListener and Westlaw

The Month’s Improper Qualified-Immunity Appeals

Here are last month’s improper, fact-based qualified-immunity appeals:

• Ratcliff v. Williams, 2025 WL 2588999 (9th Cir. Sep. 8, 2025), available at the Ninth Circuit and Westlaw
• Miller v. Jackson, 2025 WL 2611944 (1st Cir. Sep. 10, 2025), available at the First Circuit and Westlaw
• Hoover v. Due, 2025 WL 2658617 (6th Cir. Sep. 17, 2025), available at the Sixth Circuit and Westlaw
• Cornelius v. Luna, 2025 WL 2753713 (2d Cir. Sep. 29, 2025), available at CourtListener and Westlaw

There were also two Sixth Circuit decisions in which the Court split over whether defendants’ factual challenges deprived the court of appellate jurisdiction. In both Feagin v. Mansfield Police Department and Johnson v. Russell, a majority of the court thought that it could (in Feagin’s terms) “separate the legal wheat from the factual chaff and proceed.” (Quotation marks omitted.) Judge Clay dissented in Feagin, contending that the defendants’ “vigorous[ ] dispute” with the plaintiff’s version of events deprived the court of jurisdiction. Judge Bloomekatz dissented in Johnson on similar grounds.

Thanks to Michael Solimine for sending both cases to me.

Feagin v. Mansfield Police Department, 2025 WL 2621665 (6th Cir. Sep. 11, 2025), available at the Sixth Circuit and Westlaw

Johnson v. Russell, 2025 WL 2778579 (6th Cir. Sep. 30, 2025), available at the Sixth Circuit and Westlaw

Quick Notes

In Bobrick Washroom Equipment, Inc. v. Scranton Products, Inc., the Third Circuit said that a post-judgment order sealing all case filings was an appealable final decision. But the court nevertheless lacked jurisdiction because the would-be appellant had waived all rights to appeal in settling the underlying action. The court also noted an incongruity in its treatment of appeal waivers: although the court declines to exercise jurisdiction after such a waiver, it nevertheless “affirms” the underlying order. Perhaps it would be better to treat appeal waivers as non-jurisdictional.

Bobrick Washroom Equipment, Inc. v. Scranton Products, Inc., 2025 WL 2739027 (3d Cir. Sep. 26, 2025), available at the Third Circuit and Westlaw

In Fantasia v. Diodato, the Ninth Circuit held that a bankruptcy court’s order reimposing an automatic stay was final and thus immediately appealable. The bankruptcy court had initially granted relief from the automatic stay and abstained from adjudicating claims so that they could be pursued in state court. A year later, the bankruptcy court reversed course, vacated its stay and abstention order, and reimposed the stay. Because this decision altered the status quo—requiring that claims pending in state court instead proceed in bankruptcy—the decision resolved a discrete dispute in the bankruptcy case and was therefore final.

Fantasia v. Diodato, 2025 WL 2639885 (9th Cir. Sep. 15, 2025), available at the Ninth Circuit and Westlaw

In Gray Media Group, Inc. v. Loveridge, the Fourth Circuit reviewed a sealing order via mandamus. A television station had sought access to court filings only after the district court had denied a defendant’s motion seeking qualified immunity. The defendant’s appeal from that order deprived the district court of jurisdiction to consider the television station’s motion to intervene. And the television station could not appeal as a non-party, as it had not participated in the underlying proceedings. That left mandamus as the only avenue for the station to challenge the sealing order.

Gray Media Group, Inc. v. Loveridge, 2025 WL 2679331 (4th Cir. Sep. 19, 2025), available at the Fourth Circuit and Westlaw

In United States v. Jelen, the Third Circuit held that it lacked jurisdiction to review a non-final writ of garnishment. Those writs are appealable once the district court “resolves any objections on the merits and disposes of the property in issue.” In Jelen, the district court had only issued the writ, and no further proceedings—such as service of the writ on the relevant parties, answers to the writ from those parties, or an order disposing of the property—had occurred.

United States v. Jelen, 2025 WL 2709376 (3d Cir. Sep. 23, 2025), available at the Third Circuit and Westlaw

And in United States v. Stacy, the Tenth Circuit held that it had jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1292(a)(1) to review an order refusing to enjoin a criminal prosecution. Although some courts have been reluctant to apply § 1292(a)(1) to criminal cases, the Tenth Circuit pointed out that the statute says nothing about applying only to civil cases.

United States v. Stacy, 2025 WL 2739108 (10th Cir. Sep. 26, 2025), available at the Tenth Circuit and Westlaw