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In In re Esteva, the Eleventh Circuit dismissed an appeal after concluding that a Rule 41(a)(1)(A) voluntary dismissal was ineffective. The stipulated dismissal purported to dismiss all unresolved claims. But according to the Eleventh Circuit, that’s not allowed—Rule 41(a)(1)(A) permits the voluntary dismissal of only entire actions, not individual claims. With the voluntary dismissal ineffective, the unresolved claims were still pending in the district court.
Most (if not all) courts of appeals hold that litigants cannot dismiss individual claims via Rule 41(a)(1)(A) dismissals. But I’m not so sure about that reading of the rule.
In Graber v. Doe II, a panel of the Third Circuit split on whether federal officials could immediately appeal the Bivens question without a qualified-immunity appeal. It’s the second decision in recent memory to reject a pure Bivens appeal. And this time, at least one judge was willing to hold that the Bivens issue was immediately appealable via the collateral-order doctrine.
Since the Supreme Court’s 2020 decision in Guerrero-Lasprilla v. Barr, several courts of appeals have reexamined the scope of their jurisdiction in immigration appeals. Last week produced another example. In Hernandez v. Garland, the Sixth Circuit held that it could review “good moral character” determinations in immigration appeals, as those determinations involve a mixed question of law and fact.
In Pettibone v. Russell, the Ninth Circuit categorically held that it could address the Bivens question as part of a qualified-immunity appeal. In the course of doing so, the court rejected its older cases holding to the contrary.
In Bradley v. Village of University Park, the Seventh Circuit determined that defendants had waived an issue by conceding it in a prior appeal. In doing so, the court explained the difference between conceding an issue for purposes of an appeal and waiving the issue such that it could not be disputed on remand.
I’ve put the weekly roundup on hiatus for a now. In its place, I’m going to try (emphasis on try) more individual posts and monthly roundups.
So here is the first monthly roundup, covering the appellate-jurisdiction highlights of January 2023. It features a cert grant on a long-simmering circuit split, a new circuit split on contempt appeals, some pendent appellate jurisdiction, and a new cert petition on another split.
Immigration law generally strips the courts of appeals of jurisdiction to review a variety of factual and discretionary issues. But a savings clause preserves jurisdiction to review legal and constitutional issues. And in 2020’s Guerrero-Lasprilla v. Barr, the Supreme Court held that appellate jurisdiction exists to review mixed questions of law and fact—i.e., the application of the law to the facts.
Before Guerrero-Lasprilla, most (if not all) courts of appeals held that they lacked jurisdiction to review whether an immigration petitioner had shown the “exceptional and extremely unusual hardship” necessary for cancellation of removal. Guerrero-Lasprilla sparked some re-examination of the issue, and a circuit split quickly developed.
A new cert petition gives the Supreme Court the chance to resolve this split. The case is Wilkinson v. Garland, and the government’s response is due February 21, 2023.
In In re Grand Jury Subpoena, the Eleventh Circuit explained that it could not review a contempt decision without a sanction.
The Supreme Court held in Ortiz v. Jordan that parties cannot appeal evidence-sufficiency issues raised in a denied summary-judgment motion after a trial on the merits. Parties must instead raise issues with the sufficiency of the trial evidence via a motion under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 50. But Ortiz left open the possibility that a denied summary-judgment motion could preserve purely legal issues for appeal. And that’s an issue on which the courts have split.
Last month, the Supreme Court finally decided to address the issue. The case is Dupree v. Younger, and it’s scheduled for argument on April 24, 2023.
It’s the fourth annual winter-break edition of the weekly roundup. As I have in previous years, I took a few weeks off from Final Decisions. But I’m back with a roundup covering the last three weeks of 2022. Those weeks saw a pair of collateral-order decisions, the effect of Nasrallah v. Barr on other kinds of immigration appeals, an en-banc decision on the timeliness of government appeals, and an appeal from the refusal to quash a grand-jury subpoena. Plus two qualified-immunity appeals in which the defendants challenged the factual basis for the immunity denial.
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