Jurisdictional appeal deadlines, non-final judgments, pendent appellate jurisdiction in injunction appeals, and more.
September 30, 2020
Last week, the Fifth Circuit issued a new opinion in Edwards v. 4JLJ, L.L.C. and treated the standard 30-day civil-appeal deadline as jurisdictional. The previous opinion in Edwards—which held that the deadline was not jurisdictional—baffled me a few weeks ago.
In other news, the First Circuit dealt with a judgment that was neither final nor a judgment. The Second Circuit addressed its pendent appellate jurisdiction in an appeal from an injunction. The Third Circuit avoided answering whether the IRS’s presence in an action—which was due to the IRS’s holding a tax lien against one defendant—triggered the 60-day civil appeal deadline. It could do so because the district court had failed to enter a separate Rule 58 judgment, meaning the parties had lots of time to appeal. And in a copyright suit against Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, the Fifth Circuit held that the plaintiff’s lawyer could not appeal a sanction award because his name did not appear on the notice of appeal.
- The Fifth Circuit Corrected Itself on Jurisdictional Appeal Deadlines
- A Final Judgment That Was Neither Final Nor a Judgment
- The Second Circuit on Pendent Appellate Jurisdiction in an Injunction Appeal
- The Third Circuit on Rule 58’s Separate-Document Requirement
- The Fifth Circuit on the Failure to Name an Attorney in a Notice of Appeal
The Fifth Circuit Corrected Itself on Jurisdictional Appeal Deadlines
A few weeks ago, in Edwards v. 4JLJ, L.L.C., the Fifth Circuit held that an appellee could forfeit an objection to the timeliness of a civil appeal. That struck me as odd. Appeal deadlines that come from statutes are jurisdictional. The 30-day deadline for civil appeals comes from a statute: 28 U.S.C. § 2107(a). (Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 4(a)(1)(A) repeats that deadline.) And jurisdictional deadlines cannot be waived or forfeited.
So how did the Fifth Circuit hold that the appellee in Edwards forfeited any objection to a late notice? I asked this question a few weeks ago, and I’ve kept coming back to it since.
Now we have an answer. On Monday, the Fifth Circuit withdrew its earlier opinion and replaced it with one dismissing the appeal for lack of jurisdiction. It appears that everyone had overlooked § 2107(a). So although the appellee in Edwards had not adequately raised the timeliness issue, the deadline was jurisdictional, and the court still had to enforce it. Indeed, the court had an independent duty to assure itself of its jurisdiction and thus had to “eat a bit of jurisdictional crow” for overlooking § 2107(a).
Read more in my post Jurisdictional Deadlines & “Jurisdictional Crow”.
Edwards v. 4JLJ, L.L.C., 2020 WL 5628689 (5th Cir. Sep. 21, 2020), available at the Fifth Circuit and Westlaw.
A Final Judgment That Was Neither Final Nor a Judgment
The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure define a “judgment” as any decree or order from which an appeal lies. But just because a district court calls something a “judgment” does not mean that the court has entered a final, appealable decision. The First Circuit explained as much this week in WM Capital Partners 53, LLC v. Barreras. In a declaratory-judgment action, the district court granted summary judgment for the plaintiff and asked the plaintiff to propose language for a declaration. But before the plaintiff could do so, the district court entered a judgment in favor of the plaintiff. The defendant then appealed. But, the First Circuit explained, there was no appealable judgment—despite a document purporting to be a judgment—because the district court had not declared the parties’ rights.
Read more in my post A Judgment That Is Not Appealable (Or a Judgment)
WM Capital Partners 53, LLC v. Barreras, 2020 WL 5640265 (1st Cir. Sep. 22, 2020), available at the First Circuit and Westlaw.
The Second Circuit on Pendent Appellate Jurisdiction in an Injunction Appeal
In Paguirigan v. Prompt Nursing Employment Agency, LLC, the Second Circuit held that pendent appellate jurisdiction existed to review a declaratory judgment—but not other issues—alongside an injunction appeal.
Paguirigan involved claims by a class of Filipino nurses against the company that recruited the nurses to work in New York. At summary judgment, the district court determined that the company (1) paid below the contractually agreed amount; (2) included an unenforceable liquidated-damages provision in the contract; and (3) used the liquidated-damages provision to coerce the nurses to continue working, which violated human-trafficking laws. The district court entered a declaratory judgment deeming the liquidated-damages provision unenforceable and enjoined the company from enforcing or threatening to enforce it. The company then appealed from the injunction.
Although the district court had not yet determined the nurses’ damages—thereby making its decision non-final—the company could appeal from the injunction via 28 U.S.C. § 1292(a)(1). That meant the court of appeals could review the district court’s decision that the contracts included an unenforceable liquidated-damages provision. The question for the Second Circuit was what else was within the scope of the interlocutory appeal.
Invoking pendent appellate jurisdiction, the company sought review of all aspects of the district court’s decision. Pendent appellate jurisdiction allows for normally non-appealable issues to tag along with an interlocutory appeal. But courts often hesitate to exercise pendent appellate jurisdiction. Relying on the Supreme Court’s decision in Swint v. Chambers County Commission, most courts of appeals hold that they can review pendent issues only when (1) review of the pendent issue is necessary to resolve the appealable one, or (2) the pendent and appealable issues are “inextricably intertwined.”
The Second Circuit held that, in addition to the injunction, it could review the declaratory judgment. The declaratory judgment overlapped almost completely with the injunction; the declaratory judgment essentially stated the reasons for the injunction. Pendent appellate jurisdiction was therefore proper over that aspect of the district court’s decision.
The trafficking issue, in contrast, was not within the court’s pendent appellate jurisdiction. Although related to the injunction, the two did not sufficiently overlap. And the relationship between them was the opposite of what is normally required for pendent appellate jurisdiction. The district court’s decision that the liquidated-damages provision was unlawful influenced its decision that the company had violated human-trafficking laws. So the appealable issue (liquidated damages) was a prerequisite to review of the pendent issue (trafficking). For pendent appellate jurisdiction to be proper, the relationship should be the other way around.
The wage-underpayment issue and the propriety of class certification were also not within the Second Circuit’s pendent appellate jurisdiction. The wage issue bore little relation to the injunction or declaration. It was instead related to the trafficking issue. And the court had already held that it lacked jurisdiction over the trafficking issue. So there was no jurisdictional hook for pendent appellate jurisdiction over the wage claim. Similarly, class certification had little to do with the propriety of the liquidated-damages provision.
The Second Circuit thus had appellate jurisdiction over only the injunction and the declaratory judgment. On the merits, the court affirmed the district court’s decision.
Paguirigan v. Prompt Nursing Employment Agency, LLC, 2020 WL 5637783 (2d Cir. Sep. 22, 2020), available at CourtListener and Westlaw.
The Third Circuit on Rule 58’s Separate-Document Requirement
In DLJ Mortgage Capital,. Inc. v. Sheridan, the Third Circuit avoided deciding whether the IRS’s involvement in a suit triggers the 60-day civil-appeal deadline; the notice of appeal was timely due to the lack of a separate Rule 58 judgment.
The plaintiff in DLJ Mortgage brought debt and foreclosure claims against two private parties and the IRS (the IRS was included because of a federal tax lien it held against one of the defendants). After a bench trial, the district court found for the plaintiff and entered a written judgment containing factual findings, legal conclusions, and the ordered relief.
One of the defendants appealed, but he filed his notice of appeal more than 30 days after the district court entered its judgment. The plaintiff accordingly argued that the appeal was untimely. The defendant responded that the IRS’s involvement in the suit triggered the longer 60-day civil-appeal deadline for suits in which the United States is a party.
The Third Circuit avoided answering which appeal deadline—30-day or 60-day—applied. It instead noted that the district court failed to enter a separate Rule 58 judgment. With exceptions irrelevant to the present discussion, Rule 58 requires that “[e]very judgment and amended judgment . . . be set out in a separate document.” This document must be separate from the opinion, state the relief granted, and omit the explanation that would normally be found in an opinion. The district court’s judgment in DLJ Mortgage failed two of these requirements: it was not separate from the opinion, and it included the court’s reasoning.
Because a separate document was required but not entered, the time for filing a notice of appeal began running 150 days after the district court’s decision. The defendant filed his notice of appeal well within that period. So the appeal was timely, and the Third Circuit had jurisdiction.
DLJ Mortgage Capital,. Inc. v. Sheridan, 2020 WL 5638667 (3d Cir. Sep. 22, 2020), available at the Third Circuit and Westlaw.
The Fifth Circuit on the Failure to Name an Attorney in a Notice of Appeal
In Batiste v. Lewis, the Fifth Circuit held that an attorney’s failure to include himself in the notice of appeal deprived the court of jurisdiction to review a sanction against the attorney.
Batiste involved copyright claims against Macklemore and Ryan Lewis. The plaintiff was a jazz musician who claimed that the duo sampled the plaintiff’s music in five of their songs: “Thrift Shop,” “Can’t Hold Us,” “Same Love,” “Neon Cathedral” (couldn’t find an official YouTube link), and “Need to Know.” The district court granted summary judgment for Macklemore and Lewis. It also issued sanctions, concluding that the plaintiff’s claims were unreasonable and that the plaintiff had engaged in litigation misconduct. The district court held both the plaintiff and his attorney jointly liable for the sanctions.
Both the plaintiff and his attorney sought to challenge the sanction award on appeal. But only the plaintiff was named in the notice of appeal.
This was a problem, the Fifth Circuit said, because Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 3(c) requires that a notice of appeal name all appealing parties. The court of appeals will liberally construe a notice and may excuse the failure to name a party whose intent to appeal was otherwise clear. But unless the appellate court does so, the failure to name a party is a jurisdictional defect; the unnamed party forfeits the right to appeal.
In Batiste, failure to include the attorney’s name was inexcusable. The attorney was never named in the caption or the body of the notice of appeal. So “[n]othing in the notice suggest[ed] that [the attorney] intended to take part as an appellant rather than as [an] attorney.” The Fifth Circuit accordingly lacked jurisdiction over the attorney’s appeal.
Batiste v. Lewis, 2020 WL 5640589 (5th Cir. Sep. 22, 2020), available at the Fifth Circuit and Westlaw.