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Last week, the Ninth Circuit addressed whether a letter from the Drug Enforcement Agency amounted to an appealable “final decision of the Attorney General.” The Federal Circuit held that it could review an order enforcing a settlement agreement. And several courts had to deal with improper fact-based qualified-immunity appeals. Plus appeals involving refusals to reconsider decisions ordering arbitration and the scope of state-law immunity appeals.…

Short roundup this week. The First Circuit reviewed a refusal to enjoin a criminal prosecution. And the Fifth Circuit explained that administrative exhaustion was not required in extraordinary-ability visa cases. In the course of doing so, that court questioned its caselaw deeming administrative exhaustion jurisdictional in this context. Plus appeals involving an undetermined amount of liability, the denial of a Colorado River stay, and more.…

Last week saw two rare opinions on the discretionary appeals. The Ninth Circuit refused to hear a certified appeal under 28 U.S.C. § 1292(b) because the certified order did not include a question of law. And the Third Circuit accepted a Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(f) petition to appeal a class-certification decision, partly due to a perception that the district court judge was pressuring the defendants to settle.…

Last week, the Ninth Circuit held that defendants cannot use the collateral-order doctrine to immediately appeal from the denial of derivative sovereign immunity. The Eleventh Circuit concluded that a duty-to-defend order was an appealable injunction. The Sixth Circuit rejected an argument that a Rule 59(e) motion was not good enough to delay the start of the appeal clock.…

Last week produced several decisions of note. The most interesting to me was a divided motions panel decision from the Sixth Circuit. The majority refused to dismiss an appeal when the plaintiff asked the district court to grant summary judgment for the defendant. The case strikes me as odd, however, as the plaintiff apparently wants to appeal only an interlocutory class-certification decision—the plaintiff doesn’t seem to challenge its merits loss.…

I’m back from my annual holiday break with roundup covering the previous two weeks. There were a few decisions of note. The Third Circuit joined nearly every other circuit in holding that it cannot review a discretionary decision not to waive the Violence Against Women Act’s deadline for reopening immigration proceedings.…

It’s the last roundup of the year. And it’s a short one. The Third Circuit dismissed an appeal from an order concluding that factual disputes precluded a decision on judicial-proceedings privilege. The defendant had framed the appeal as one from the denial of absolute immunity. But even if it was, unresolved fact issues prevented the order from being appealable.…

I’m a little late with this week’s roundup, but there were several cases worth discussing. The Seventh Circuit applied the two (separate but seemingly identical) restrictions on reviewing a bankruptcy court’s remand orders. The Sixth Circuit rejected a factual challenge to the denial of qualified immunity and dismissed an appeal from a prevailing defendant who was unhappy with some of the district court’s analysis.…

There’s lots to talk about from last week. The Fifth Circuit weighed in on the split over whether a struck post-judgment motion could reset the appeal clock. The Sixth Circuit again split on the extent to which it could separate “factual” and “legal” arguments in qualified-immunity appeals. Two other courts dealt with appeals that challenged the factual basis for immunity denials.…

When a district court denies qualified immunity at summary judgment, defendants have a right to appeal. But the scope of that appeal is limited. With rare and narrow exceptions, the court of appeals lacks jurisdiction to review the genuineness of any fact disputes—i.e., the facts that (according to the district court) a reasonable jury could find.…