Appellate Practice and Procedure - K. Todd Butler

• Jurisdiction: United States,Federal
• Publication year: 2003
• Citation: Vol. 54 No. 4

Appellate Practice and Procedureby K. Todd Butler^*

I. Introduction

This Article reviews appellate procedural issues that the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals addressed in the cases it decided in 2002. It is divided into four general sections: Timeliness of Appeal, Appellate Jurisdiction, Certifications to State Supreme Courts, and Standards of Review. Section IV, Certifications to State Supreme Courts, which identifies cases the Eleventh Circuit has certified questions of law to the supreme courts of the various states, is a new feature that is being added to this annual Article. The Eleventh Circuit has indicated that because state courts should have the opportunity to interpret or modify existing state law, the Eleventh Circuit will take an approach that minimizes federal courts, making what it describes as "Erie 'guesses.'"¹ Accordingly, the Eleventh Circuit has held that a federal court should certify a question to the state's highest court whenever any doubt exists about the application of state law.²

II. Timeliness of Appeal

In Vencor Hospitals, Inc. v. Standard Life & Accident Insurance Co. , ³ the court of appeals rejected an attempt to use Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b)⁴ to circumvent the time limits for filing a notice of appeal as established in Federal Rule of Appellate procedure 4(a)(6).⁵ Defendant Standard Life had issued a Medicare supplement policy to plaintiff Vencor Hospital's patient, Etha Good. plaintiff argued that defendant should have reimbursed it for services rendered to Good at plaintiff's standard rates, and defendant argued that its policy provided reimbursement only at the discounted Medicare rate. The district court held that defendant's policy unambiguously limited defendant to reimbursement at the Medicare rate. Plaintiff filed a timely motion for the district court to reconsider its summary judgment order, and the district court issued an order denying plaintiff's motion for reconsideration, but neither plaintiff nor defendant ever received notice of the district court's order. Plaintiff filed its motion on October 26, 1999.⁶

On October 2, 2000, plaintiff filed a motion for relief from the summary judgment based on the opinion of the D.C. Circuit in Vencor, Inc. v. Physicians Mutual Insurance Co.,⁷ issued May 23, 2000.⁸ In its October 6, 2000 order denying relief from summary judgment, the district court held that the D.C. Circuit's ruling did not change the basis upon which it granted summary judgment to Standard Life⁹ and further noted that it had denied plaintiff's earlier motion for reconsideration of the order granting summary judgment.¹⁰ This was the first notice that plaintiff received that the motion for reconsideration had been denied, and on October 17, 2000, plaintiff filed its motion for relief from judgment under Rule 60(b).¹¹

The Eleventh Circuit stated that prior to 1991, it would have been appropriate to attempt to avoid the effect of the district court's summary judgment through Rule 60(b), which "allows a district court to relieve a party from final judgment for 'mistake, inadvertence, surprise, or excusable neglect, . . . or . . . any other reason justifying relieffrom the operation of the judgment.'"¹² If the court refused to grant relief from judgment, that refusal could then become the basis for an appeal, regardless of how much time had passed since entry of the order granting the judgment from which the party sought relief. After 1991, however, Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 4(a) imposed defined time limits on a party's opportunity to file a notice of appeal, even

"where the notice of entry of a judgment or order, required to be mailed by the clerk of the district court pursuant to Rule 77(d) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, is either not received by a party or is received so late as to impair the opportunity to file a timely notice of appeal."¹³

Rule 4(a)(6) gives a party an opportunity to reopen the time for filing a notice of appeal, but it allows a maximum of 180 days after entry of the judgment from which the party seeks appeal.¹⁴ Allowing a party to appeal a district court's denial of a motion for relief from judgment pursuant to Rule 60(b) more than 180 days after entry of judgment would have the effect of circumventing the intended purpose of Rule 4(a)(6).¹⁵

The Eleventh Circuit also addressed the effect of Rule 4 in Birmingham Fire Fighters Ass'n 117 v. Jefferson County.¹⁶ In this case, plaintiffs appealed the district court's denial of their motion requesting modification of a decree entered in the case five years earlier.¹⁷ The court stated that in the interests of efficiency and finality, the underlying policy ofRule 4 ofthe Federal Rules ofAppellate Procedure requires a timely appeal.¹⁸ As in Vencor Hospitals, the Eleventh Circuit held that a party cannot avoid the effect of Rule 4(a)(6) by asking the district court to undo an order it entered more than 180 days earlier and then seeking to appeal the district court's refusal to do so.¹⁹ The Court said that "[t]he time limits of Rule 4 have more steel in them than that."²⁰

III. Appellate Jurisdiction

In a case growing out of a common body of litigation and with the same name as a case discussed above, Birmingham Fire Fighters Ass'n 117 v. Jefferson County,²¹ the Eleventh Circuit addressed its jurisdiction to hear an appeal brought pursuant to 28 U.S.C Sec. 1292(a)(1),²² which allows the court to hear an appeal from an order if the order modifies an injunction.²³ Appellant class argued that the court had jurisdiction over its appeal under Sec. 1292(a)(1) because the district court's interpretation, or clarification, of language in an earlier decree ran so contrary to the earlier decree's plain language that it constituted a modification of the decree.²⁴ The court undertook a functional analysis of the district court's "clarification" to determine whether it constituted the functional equivalent of a modification.²⁵ An order will be held to functionally modify an earlier injunctive order ifit "actually changes the legal relationship of the parties to the [original] decree²⁶ . . . [by] 'chang[ing] the command of the earlier injunction, relax[ing] its prohibitions, or releas[ing] any respondent from its grip.'"²⁷ In conducting such an analysis of the district court's order, however, the court ofappeals is not interested in whether the district court may have simply erred in its interpretation ofthe earlier order. "'Congress did not intend for [Sec. 1292(a)(1)] to open the flood gates of piecemeal appeals.'"²⁸ The court will thus hold that an order interpreting or clarifying an earlier injunction is actually a modification only when the misinterpretation is so blatantly or obviously wrong that the misinterpretation leaps from the page.²⁹

The question of appellate jurisdiction is also raised if a party was improperly before the district court, such as in United States v. City of Miami,³⁰ in which the Eleventh Circuit reviewed the district court's denial ofthe Miami Community Police Benevolence Association's motion to intervene as a matter of right pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 24(a)(2).³¹ If a party that does not otherwise have standing fails to qualify as a party having the right to intervene, then the appellate court lacks jurisdiction to hear the party's appeal.³² Under its "anomalous rule," however, the Eleventh Circuit exercises provisional jurisdiction to determine whether the district court correctly denied the Association's motion to intervene.³³ The "anomalous rule" gives the court "jurisdiction to determine whether the district court erred in denying a motion to intervene."³⁴ If the court finds that the district court's determination was correct, then the Eleventh Circuit will be obliged to dismiss the appeal for want of jurisdiction.³⁵ If, on the other hand, the appellate court finds that the district court's decision was incorrect, then the order denying the motion to intervene as a matter of right will be reversed.³⁶ The court affirmed the district court in City ofMiami,³⁷ but presumably the case would have been remanded to the district court for further proceedings with the Association as a co-plaintiff if the court had found that the district court erred in denying the Association's motion.

The anomalous rule applies, however, only when the question on appeal is whether the district court improperly denied a motion to intervene as a matter of right pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 24(a).³⁸ The anomalous rule does not apply if the motion the district court denied was for permissive intervention under Rule 24(b).³⁹ Denial of a motion for permissive intervention "'is neither a final decision nor an appealable interlocutory order because such an order does not substantially affect the movant's rights.'"⁴⁰ The Eleventh Circuit thus lacks jurisdiction over a district court's denial of a motion for permissive intervention.

Federal appellate jurisdiction is typically limited to those cases in which a district court has entered a final order.⁴¹ In MCI Telecommu- nications Corp. v. BellSouth Telecommunications, Inc.,⁴² the district court's final order reversed the decision of a state administrative agency.⁴³ Typically, a decision remanded to an administrative agency that requires the agency to proceed under a "certain legal" standard or for further evidentiary considerations is not a final order over which the court of appeals would have jurisdiction.⁴⁴ Under the "collateral order" doctrine, however, an appellate court can exercise appellate jurisdiction over a remand order to an administrative agency if the order forces the administrative agency to conform its decision to the district court's mandate.⁴⁵ In MCI Telecommunications the Eleventh Circuit held that because the district court's order required the state administrative agency to conform its rulings to the district court's mandate, the collateral order doctrine applied.⁴⁶...