Posts tagged “Dismissals Without Prejudice”

Federal courts of appeals have spent a lot of energy determining whether litigants can appeal after a dismissal without prejudice. Some courts have declared that these dismissals are final decisions and thus generally appealable. And some courts—sometimes the same courts, albeit in different opinions—announce the opposite rule: that dismissals without prejudice are not generally appealable.…

I’ve written a lot on this site about the finality trap in the last few years. Now I’ve published an essay on the trap in the New York University Law Review Online. I argue that the trap is asinine. And there’s an easy fix to it: let litigants disclaim the right to refile voluntarily dismissed claims.…

The courts of appeals continue to wrestle with their jurisdiction after dismissals without prejudice. The most recent example is Britt v. DeJoy, in which the Fourth Circuit sat en banc to address finality when a district court dismisses a complaint or action without prejudice but also does not grant or deny leave to amend.…

The last year or so has seen some significant judicial activity when it comes to the finality trap. The trap can arise after a party voluntarily dismisses some of its claims without prejudice and then tries to appeal. This scenario makes some courts of appeals suspicious, as parties sometimes use these voluntary dismissals to manufacture an interlocutory appeal.…

Many discussions of federal appellate jurisdiction focus on when litigants can appeal before the end of district court proceedings. But traditional end-of-proceedings appeals have their own issues, including uncertainty over when the time to file them begins to run. That uncertainty can lead to parties’ losing their right to appeal. So efforts to reform appellate jurisdiction cannot look only at interlocutory appeals.…

In Corley v. Long-Lewis, Inc., the Eleventh Circuit held that a district court’s resolution of all claims was final and appealable despite the plaintiffs’ voluntarily dismissing some of those claims without prejudice. In doing so, the court had to wade through its conflicting lines of authority in this area—one holding that the resolution of all claims is final despite the voluntary dismissal, the other holding that it’s not.…

The Fifth Circuit’s finality trap has another victim. In Firefighters’ Retirement System v. Citco Group Ltd., the court held that the district court had not issued a final, appealable decision when claims against one defendant had been dismissed without prejudice. To appeal, the plaintiffs needed to obtain a certification under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54(b) (and will presumably be allowed to do so).…

In Bing v. Brivo Systems, LLC, the Fourth Circuit clarified its law governing appeals from dismissals without prejudice due to insufficient pleadings. In a series of decisions, that court had laid out a framework for when those dismissals are final and appealable. Relevant considerations included whether the defects in a complaint could be cured, whether the district court dismissed the complaint or the entire action, and whether the plaintiff decided to stand on the dismissed complaint.…

Last week, in Williams v. Taylor Seidenbach, Inc., the Fifth Circuit failed to disarm its finality trap. This week, in CBX Resources, L.L.C. v. ACE American Insurance Co., a panel of the Fifth Circuit watched as another party fell into that trap. And unlike the plaintiffs in Williams, the plaintiff in CBX Resources had not obtained the post-proceedings Rule 54(b) certification that Williams held would cure any jurisdictional defects.…

When plaintiffs lose on some of their claims and then voluntarily dismiss the rest, they risk falling into the finality trap. If the remaining claims were voluntarily dismissed without prejudice, most courts of appeals will hold that the district court has not issued a final, appealable decision under 28 U.S.C. § 1291.…