Two notices of appeal were late because the district court improperly let the case proceed, and a third designated the wrong decision.
March 9, 2020
In Automotive Alignment & Body Service, Inc. v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co., the Eleventh Circuit navigated several potential errors in the timing and contents of notices of appeal. For two groups of plaintiffs, the district court dismissed their complaints but then improperly accepted late-filed amended complaints. Those amended complaints were a nullity—the dismissals became final once the time for amending had passed—and the plaintiffs failed to timely appeal from the original dismissal. Another group’s notice of appeal did not specify the district court decision that dismissed their antitrust claims. That group of plaintiffs instead designated the district court’s denial of reconsideration and its final judgment. Fortunately for them, the Eleventh Circuit held that designating the final judgment was sufficient to appeal all decisions that merged into the final one.
The Automotive Alignment litigation
Automotive Alignment involved three attempted appeals from the Auto Body Shop Antitrust Litigation. Body shops sued automobile insurance companies for alleged antitrust violations. The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation consolidated these suits for pretrial proceedings in the Middle District of Florida. The appeal in Automotive Alignment involved suits by three groups of body shops—one each from Indiana, Mississippi, and Utah. The district court dismissed all three complaints for failure to state a claim. Only the Mississippi plaintiffs filed a timely amended complaint. The Indiana and Utah plaintiffs’ amended complaints were filed a few hours (for Indiana) or a few days (for Utah) late.
The insurance companies moved to strike the late-filed Indiana and Utah complaints. But the district court refused to do so. It instead construed the Indiana and Utah plaintiffs’ responses to the motions to strike as motions for “an after-the-fact extension of time to amend their complaints.” The district court granted those motions, and the case proceeded on all three complaints. Eventually, the district court again dismissed the complaints for failure to state a claim. All three groups of plaintiffs then appealed.
The Indiana & Utah plaintiffs’ late notices of appeal
The Eleventh Circuit held that it lacked jurisdiction over the Indiana and Utah plaintiffs’ appeals. The district court had dismissed their complaints with leave to amend by a specific date. Once that date arrived without an amended complaint, the dismissal became a final judgment. The Indiana and Utah plaintiffs then had 30 days to file their notices of appeal. They failed to do so. So their appeals were untimely.
The district court’s acceptance of the late-filed complaints did not change this. Once the dismissals became final, the district court lacked any authority to extend the time for filing an amended complaint. The Indiana and Utah plaintiffs never moved under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 59(e) or 60(b) to set aside that final judgment. And Rule 6(b)(1)(B)—which the district court relied on in accepting the late-filed complaints—does not apply after a final judgment has been entered. If it did, motions for an after-the-fact extension under Rule 6 would circumvent the time limits in Rules 59 and 60. Further, the Indiana and Utah plaintiffs expressly waived any argument that the district court’s decision should be treated as granting a post-judgment motion under Rules 59(e) or 60(b).
The content of the Mississippi plaintiffs’ notice of appeal
The Mississippi plaintiffs’ appeal was timely; their complaint had been properly amended. But the Eleventh Circuit saw a potential issue with the content of their notice.
Under Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 3(c), a notice of appeal must designate the order or judgment being appealed. Several courts have treated this order-designation requirement as a jurisdictional limit on the scope of the appeal. That is, they hold that they have have jurisdiction to address only the orders specified in the notice. And the Mississippi plaintiffs’ notice did not specify the district court’s decision dismissing their antitrust claims. They instead “designated only the order denying their motion for reconsideration of their antitrust claims and the final order dismissing their remaining claims under state law.”
The Eleventh Circuit nevertheless held that it had jurisdiction to review the dismissal of the antitrust claims. All interlocutory decisions merge into the final judgment. And the Mississippi plaintiffs’ notice of appeal designated that final judgment. In so holding, the Eleventh Circuit had to untangle some of its prior decisions in this area. Synthesizing those cases—and effectively overruling three panel decisions—the Eleventh Circuit held “that when a notice of appeal designates the final, appealable order—and does not identify specific parts of that order for appeal—[the court has] jurisdiction to review that order and any earlier interlocutory orders that produced the judgment.”
Automotive Alignment is a tough break for the defendants whose amended complaints were erroneously allowed. But the Mississippi plaintiff’s notice of appeal should have never presented any issues. There is little reason for courts to use the order-designation requirement to limit the scope of an appeal. And proposed amendments to Rule 3(c) will hopefully prevent courts from doing so in the future.
Automotive Alignment & Body Service, Inc. v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co., 2020 WL 1074420 (11th Cir. Mar. 6, 2020), available at the Eleventh Circuit and Westlaw.