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Last week saw two decisions of note. The Ninth Circuit dismissed a fact-based qualified-immunity appeal, with Judge Fletcher dissenting to argue for the overruling of Johnson v. Jones. And the Third Circuit dismissed an appeal from the denial of a motion to dismiss the original and superseding indictments, even though a victim of the crime served on the grand jury that returned the original indictment.…

Jurisdiction over appeals from the denial of qualified immunity can be complex. In Mitchell v. Forsyth, the Supreme Court held that defendants can immediately appeal these denials via the collateral-order doctrine. Ten years later, in Johnson v. Jones, the Supreme Court limited that right to appeal when the district court denies immunity at the summary-judgment stage.…

Last week saw a variety of appellate-jurisdiction decisions. The Second Circuit effectively held that a denied summary-judgment motion does not preserve a purely legal issue for appeal. The Sixth Circuit weighed in on the split over jurisdiction to review hardship determinations in immigration cases. The Tenth Circuit held that a defendant could not appeal a without-prejudice denial of an anti-SLAPP motion.…

The appellate-jurisdiction provisions of immigration law can get complicated. The law generally strips the courts of appeals of jurisdiction to review a variety of issues. But a savings clause adds that they retain jurisdiction to review legal and constitutional issues. And in last year’s Guerrero-Lasprilla v. Barr, the Supreme Court held that appellate jurisdiction exists to review mixed questions—i.e.…

As a general rule, parties cannot appeal an order denying summary judgment after a case proceeds to a full trial. In such a case, the trial record supersedes the summary-judgment record. So any questions about the sufficiency of the evidence at summary judgment become more or less moot; what matters is the sufficiency of the trial evidence.…

I took a little break from Final Decisions over the holidays. And that means an extra-large roundup to start the new year—the last two weeks of 2020 produced a plethora of interesting appellate-jurisdiction decisions.

The First Circuit addressed another attempted appeal from the denial of a temporary restraining order in a COVID-related case.…

In 2017’s Microsoft Corp. v. Baker, the Supreme Court held that plaintiffs wanting to bring a class action cannot voluntarily dismiss their individual claims with prejudice and then appeal the denial of class certification. In doing so, the Supreme Court abrogated a line of Ninth Circuit decisions that allowed this voluntary-dismissal tactic.…

Appellate jurisdiction in bankruptcy cases can be tricky. The rules governing finality are different. And there’s an an extra tier of intermediate appellate review, with cases first going to a district court or Bankruptcy Appellate Panel before they can reach the courts of appeals. Litigants can skip this extra tier of review and proceed straight to the courts of appeals if the bankruptcy court certifies a decision for a direct appeal.…

This is the last weekly roundup of 2020. (I’ll be back after the new year with a post covering the two holiday weeks.) And it involves some pretty technical cases.

Two decisions—one from the Fourth Circuit and another from the Sixth—dealt with the jurisdictional impact of procedural rules. The Fourth Circuit held that Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 4(a)(4)(B)(ii) is jurisdictional.…

Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 4(a)(4) governs the effect of certain post-judgment motions on notices of appeal. Rule 4(a)(4)(A) provides that a variety of those motions can delay the start of the normal appeal clock. Rule 4(a)(4)(B)(i) says that a notice of appeal filed before the district court resolves any of those motions relates forward to the district court’s subsequent decision.…