The Week in Federal Appellate Jurisdiction: September 13–19, 2020

Last week saw several qualified-immunity appeals, most of which were dismissed for lack of jurisdiction. Beyond that, the week was relatively uneventful. The Eleventh Circuit heard an appeal from a voluntarily dismissed claim, as the district court had made an interlocutory decision that required the voluntary dismissal. The Seventh Circuit treated bankruptcy’s 14-day appeal deadline as jurisdictional, following that circuit’s caselaw on the issue. And the Third Circuit excused the failure to designate a decision on attorneys’ fees in a notice of appeal.

• Oodles of Improper Qualified-Immunity Appeals
• The Eleventh Circuit on Appealing a Voluntary Dismissal
• The Seventh Circuit Treated Bankruptcy’s Appeal Deadline as Jurisdictional
• The Third Circuit Excused an Incomplete Notice of Appeal

Oodles of Improper Qualified-Immunity Appeals

Improper qualified-immunity appeals—in which the defendants appeal to challenge the factual basis of the immunity denial and not the clearly established law—are a regular feature of these weekly roundups. Last week saw a number of them:

• According to the district court in Stojcevski v. Macomb County, a reasonable jury could find that an imprisoned decedent suffered “alarming changes” in his last 51 hours of life, which he spent naked and convulsing on his cell floor. The jail employees conceded that they needed to seek medical care for an inmate as that inmate’s condition worsened. They nevertheless appealed the denial of qualified immunity to argue that the inmate’s condition had not worsened in those last 51 hours.
• According to the district court in Hall v. Flourney, a reasonable jury could conclude that a deputy sheriff planted drugs in the plaintiff’s property. The deputy sheriff conceded that planting drugs violated clearly established law. She nevertheless appealed the denial of immunity to ague that the drugs were not planted.
• According to the district court in Estate of Matthews v. City of Dearborn, a reasonable jury could find that (1) an officer was in no fear of having his gun taken from him and (2) the decedent was lying on his side or back when the officer shot him nine times. Again, the officer did not appear to dispute that shooting someone who posed no threat violated clearly established law. But the officer appealed the denial of immunity to argue that the decedent was going for the officer’s gun and standing over him at the time of the shooting.
• And according to the district court in Vasquez v. Landon, a plaintiff did not pose a sufficient threat of harm when of officer hit him with a “distractionary strike” that allegedly broke the plaintiff’s nose. The case is short on details, but it again appears that the defendant appealed only to dispute the facts.

The court dismissed each of these appeals for lack of jurisdiction. But the defendants never should have appealed, and their doing so added wholly unnecessary difficulty, delay, and expense to the underlying civil-rights suits.

Then there was El v. City of Pittsburgh, in which the Third Circuit applied the “blatant-contradiction” exception to the general limit on reviewing the factual basis of a qualified-immunity denial. Because most courts have recognized that exception, the appeal in El was not improper. But the blatant-contradiction exception is a profoundly unpragmatic rule that the courts should reject.

Each of these opinions illustrate the extra procedural hurdles that come with civil-rights litigation. Each is also another example of why, if qualified immunity is not abolished, the special appellate procedures that accompany qualified immunity require reform. In particular, appeals from the denial of qualified immunity should be discretionary.

Read more at my post from yesterday, More Improper Immunity Appeals

Stojcevski v. Macomb County, 2020 WL 5569676 (6th Cir. Sep. 17, 2020), available at the Sixth Circuit and Westlaw.

Hall v. Flourney, 2020 WL 5555082 (11th Cir. Sep. 17, 2020), available at the Eleventh Circuit and Westlaw.

Estate of Matthews v. City of Dearborn, 2020 WL 5520638 (6th Cir. Sep. 14, 2020), available at the Sixth Circuit and Westlaw.

Vasquez v. Landon, 2020 WL 5580463 (5th Cir. Sep. 17, 2020), available at the Fifth Circuit and Westlaw.

El v. City of Pittsburgh, 2020 WL 5541155 (3d Cir. Sep. 16, 2020), available at the Third Circuit and Westlaw.

The Eleventh Circuit on Appealing a Voluntary Dismissal

In Zamor v. United States, the Eleventh Circuit held that a post-conviction petitioner could appeal from the voluntary dismissal of his action.

Ten months after pleading guilty to conspiracy to distribute cocaine, the petitioner in Zamor moved to reopen the time to appeal. The district court construed this motion as one to vacate the conviction under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 and—because this construal would preclude a future § 2255 motion—offered the petitioner a chance to voluntarily dismiss his motion. But the petitioner did not want his motion to be treated as a § 2255 motion. He wanted it to be a motion to reopen the time to appeal. Concluding that the motion was necessarily one under § 2255, despite the petitioner’s wishes, the district court dismissed it without prejudice.

The Eleventh Circuit held that it had jurisdiction to review the district court’s decision to treat the post-conviction motion as a § 2255 motion. Granted, parties normally may not appeal from decisions they consent to, such as voluntary dismissals. So the court could not address the petitioner’s substantive challenges to his sentence; the district court had treated this substantive challenge as voluntarily dismissed.

But the voluntary dismissal did not preclude an appeal from the district court’s characterization of the petitioner’s motion. The petitioner did not agree to that characterization. He “agreed” to the ultimate voluntary dismissal only after the district court insisted on characterizing his motion as one under § 2255. The voluntary dismissal was thus a necessary outcome of the district court’s decision on how to characterize the motion. The petitioner could accordingly appeal that characterization.

Zamor v. United States, 2020 WL 5507812 (11th Cir. Sep. 14, 2020), available at the Eleventh Circuit and Westlaw.

The Seventh Circuit Treated Bankruptcy’s Appeal Deadline as Jurisdictional

In Pansier v. United States, the Seventh Circuit enforced bankruptcy’s 14-day deadline for filing a notice of appeal, despite the government’s not invoking it.

The bankruptcy court in Pansier determined that the IRS had not violated bankruptcy’s automatic stay, and the debtors appealed to the district court. They filed their appeal 42 days after the bankruptcy court’s decision. Normally, appeals from the bankruptcy court to the district court must be filed within 14 days, so the debtors’ notice of appeal was late. But the government did not raise the timeliness of the notice in the district court. The district court overlooked the timeliness issue and rejected the debtors’ appeal on its merits.

On further appeal to the Seventh Circuit, the court of appeals determined that the late notice deprived the district court of jurisdiction. The court did so despite the government’s never raising the issue in the district court because the Seventh Circuit treats the bankruptcy appeal deadline as jurisdictional. And parties cannot forfeit jurisdictional deadlines.

When it comes to the jurisdictionality of appeal deadlines, the Supreme Court has drawn a fairly clean line: deadlines found in statutes are jurisdictional, while deadlines found only in rules of procedure are not. Bankruptcy’s appeal deadline is unique. A statute—28 U.S.C. § 158—gives the district court’s jurisdiction to review bankruptcy decisions and requires that appeals be filed within the time set by Federal Rule of Bankruptcy Procedure 8002. Rule 8002, in turn, sets the 14-day limit. Bankruptcy’s appeal deadline is thus a hybrid appeal deadline—part statute, part rule.

So what to make of bankruptcy’s hybrid deadline? The Seventh Circuit has held that bankruptcy’s appeal deadline is jurisdictional. So the government’s failure to raise timeliness could not forfeit the issue, and the district court was without jurisdiction. The Seventh Circuit accordingly vacated the district court’s decision.

You can read more about the jurisdictionality of bankruptcy’s hybrid appeal deadline at my post Is Bankruptcy’s Hybrid Appeal-Filing Deadline Jurisdictional?

Pansier v. United States, 2020 WL 5587712 (7th Cir. Sep. 18, 2020), available at the Seventh Circuit and Westlaw.

The Third Circuit Excused an Incomplete Notice of Appeal

In Morning Sun Books, Inc. v. Division Point Models, Inc, the Third Circuit excused the failure to designate an order denying attorneys’ fees in a notice of appeal.

After the parties in Morning Sun Books settled their claims, a defendant sought attorneys’ fees. The district court initially denied that motion. The defendant moved for reconsideration, and the district court denied that motion, too. So the defendant filed a notice of appeal. But in that notice, the defendant designated only the denial of reconsideration.

Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 3(c) generally requires that an appellant designate the orders or judgments it is appealing. So failure to designate the initial denial of attorneys’ fees might leave the court without jurisdiction to review that decision; it would have to limit the appeal to the district court’s denial of reconsideration.

But the Third Circuit excused the incomplete designation. Courts of appeals can review non-designated orders when (1) there is a connection between the designated and non-designated orders, (2) the intention to appeal the non-designated order is apparent, and (3) review will not prejudice the appellee. All three requirements were satisfied in Morning Sun Books. The original and reconsideration decisions both addressed attorneys’ fees, the defendant apparently made clear its intention to appeal the original decision, and the plaintiff addressed the issue in its brief.

Morning Sun Books, Inc. v. Division Point Models, Inc, 2020 WL 5543036 (3d Cir. Sep. 16, 2020), available at the Third Circuit and Westlaw.