Overlooked & Effectively Resolved Claims in the Fourth Circuit

Sometimes a district court doesn’t resolve all the claims in an action. The district court might overlook one of a plaintiff’s many claims. Or the district court might forget about counterclaims or crossclaims. Regardless of what happened, the district court has explicitly resolved only part of an action. If the district court thereafter enters judgment and closes the case, is there a final, appealable decision under 28 U.S.C. § 1291?

Courts generally hold that the failure to resolve all claims means there is no final decision. But sometimes a court of appeals will say that the district court effectively (though not expressly) resolved all the claims, making its decision final.

There is, however, a third way: so long as the district court says it is finished with a case, a final decision exists. Granted, this might mean that some claims were not expressly resolved. But that’s a problem with the judgment, and it’s a problem that the parties can challenge on appeal.

Some recent decisions from the Fourth Circuit illustrate the various approaches to this issue.

Overlooked & Not Final

Consider Estate of Cunningham v. Mayor and City Council of Baltimore, in which the Fourth Circuit held that it lacked jurisdiction to review dismissal of a complaint because the district court had not actually resolved all the plaintiffs’ claims.

Simplifying only a bit, the case involved claims against three defendants. One moved to dismiss the complaint for failure to state a claim. The district court granted this motion. But rather than dismiss the claims against only the defendant that sought dismissal, the district court dismissed the entire action. In the course of doing so, the district court never addressed the claims against the other two defendants.

The plaintiffs appealed. But the Fourth Circuit thought that it lacked jurisdiction. The court noted that it “frequently confronts district court decisions … that fail to explicitly engage with all claims as to all parties.” Granted, “[t]his is not a hard and fast rule.” But in Cunningham, the district court’s decision did not acknowledge the claims against other defendants. And the rationale for the district court’s decision did not resolve the other claims. Because the district court had not resolved all claims, there was no final decision.

Effectively Resolved & Final

Contrast Cunningham with FX Aviation Capital LLC v. Guerrero, in which the Fourth Circuit held that the district court had effectively resolved all claims.

FX Aviation involved RICO claims against five defendants. The district court granted summary judgment to four of the defendants. The court then entered judgment against the plaintiff and closed the case.

The Fourth Circuit nevertheless held that it had jurisdiction. Granted, the district court expressly resolved claims against only four defendants. But the record made clear that the district court was aware of the claims against the fifth defendant, and the district court intended to resolve the case in its entirety. Indeed, the substance of the district court’s summary-judgment decision effectively resolved the claims against the fifth defendant. The district court determined that the defendants did not engage in a “pattern of racketeering activity.” That element of the RICO claim applied to the alleged scheme as a whole, not any individual defendant’s participation.

A Third Way: Final if Finished

I’ve argued that decisions like these should normally be final.

In these cases, the district court has indicated that it is done with the action. The district court might be wrong about that, and that might make the judgment defective. For example, the judgment in Cunningham was erroneous—the district court did not have any reason to dismiss the claims against two of the defendants. But that’s a merits problem, not a jurisdictional one. So long as the district court has washed its hands of a case, a final, appealable decision should exist. Indeed, the Fourth Circuit seemed to reach such a conclusion only last year.

To be sure, it is an accepted rule that a district court cannot make a decision final under § 1291 by fiat. But that rule stems from concerns with district courts that try to make a decision appealable before the district court has finished with a case. We sometimes see these efforts (and often see them rejected) in the manufactured-finality context. But once a district court thinks that it is done, a failure to expressly resolve a claim should not stand in the way of appellate jurisdiction.

Estate of Cunningham v. Mayor and City Council of Baltimore, 2025 WL 409790 (4th Cir. Feb. 6, 2025), available at the Fourth Circuit and Westlaw

FX Aviation Capital LLC v. Guerrero, 2025 WL 521303 (4th Cir. Feb. 18, 2025), available at the Fourth Circuit and Westlaw