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Nature of Suit Code: 422
Nature of Suit: Bankruptcy Appeals Rule 28 USC 158
Cause of Action: 

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' •• 

.FILED 

United States Court of Appeals 

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS Tenth Circuit 

FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT R 2 1991 

ROBERT L. HOECKER 

Clerk PEARL'S TEXAS JOINT VENTURE, NO. 1, 

Appellant, 

v. 

PAUL SIEKEL; PLAZA PARTNERS JOINT 

VENTURE, 

Appellees. 

) 

) 

) 

) 

) No. 90-6405 

) (D.C. No. CIV-90-1210-T) 

) (W.D. Okla.) 

) 

) 

) 

ORDER AND JUDGMENT* 

Before McKAY, BALDOCK, and EBEL, Circuit Judges. 

After examining the briefs and appellate record, this panel 

has determined unanimously that oral argument would not materially 

assist the determination of this appeal. See Fed. R. App. P. 

34(a); 10th Cir. R. 34.1.9. 

submitted without oral argument. 

The case is therefore ordered 

This appeal is taken from an order of the United States 

District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma reversing and 

remanding an order of the bankruptcy court which confirmed an 

amended plan of reorganization and further enjoined an unsecured 

* This order and judgment has no precedential value and shall 

not be cited, or used by any court within the Tenth Circuit, 

except for purposes of establishing the doctrines of the law of 

the case, res judicata, or collateral estoppel. 10th Cir. R. 

36.3. 

Appellate Case: 90-6405 Document: 010110031709 Date Filed: 04/02/1991 Page: 1 
' 

amended plan of reorganization and further enjoined an unsecured 

creditor of the debtor from pursuing its (the creditor's) claims 

against nondebtor guarantors after the confirmation of the plan. 

The district court determined that the injunction violated 

11 u.s.c. § 524(e), which states: "(e) Except as provided in 

subsection (a)(3) of this section, discharge of a debt of the 

debtor does not affect the liability of any other entity on, or 

the property of any other entity for, such debt.". 

The district court then reversed and remanded the case "for 

further proceedings consistent with this (the court's) opinion." 

We earlier directed the appellant to show cause why the appeal 

should not be dismissed for lack of jurisdiction in light of this 

court's decisions in In re Kaiser Steel, 911 F.2d 380 (10th Cir. 

1990); In re Atencio, 913 F.2d 814 (10th Cir. 1990); and In re 

Magic Circle Energy Corp., 889 F.2d 950, 954 (10th Cir. 1989). 

In Kaiser Steel, we determined that our jurisdiction to 

review district court's orders entered under 28 u.s.c. § 158(a) 

(the district court's appellate review of jurisdiction over 

bankruptcy court orders) rests exclusively under section 158(d). 

Kaiser Steel, 911 F.2d at 386. These sections read as follows: 

(a) The district courts of the United States shall 

have jurisdiction to hear appeals from final judgments, 

orders, and decrees, and, with leave of the court, from 

interlocutory orders and decrees, of bankruptcy judges 

entered in cases and proceedings referred to the 

bankruptcy judges under section 157 of this title. An 

appeal under this subsection shall be taken only to the 

district court for the judicial district in which the 

bankruptcy judge is serving. 

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.. 

(Emphasis added). 

The order at issue in Kaiser Steel was clearly interlocutory, 

and in fact had been certified to this court under 28 U.S.C. 

§ 1292(b). Likewise, in In re Atencio, we determined that a 

district court's order denying a stay pending appeal to that court 

of a bankruptcy court order is not final for purposes of section 

158(d); in In re Magic Circle Energy Corp., we held that denial of 

an application for writ of prohibition was not an adjudication on 

the merits constituting a final order. The court in Magic Circle 

also expressly considered the denial of the writ as a remand to 

the district court. In re Magic Circle, 889 F.2d at 954 (viewed 

this way and in light of court's opinions in In re Commercial 

Contractors, Inc., 771 F.2d 1373 (10th Cir. 1985) and In re 

Glover, 697 F.2d 907 (10th Cir. 1983), an order remanding a matter 

to the bankruptcy court is nonfinal). See also In re O'Connor, 

808 F.2d 1393, 1395 n.1 (10th Cir. 1987)(order of district court 

reversing bankruptcy court order is final unless district court 

remands case for "'further significant proceedings.'" 

Nor is our recent decision in Eddleman v. Department of 

Labor, 923 F.2d 782 (10th Cir. 1991) to the contrary. In 

Eddleman, we held that a district court order affirming a 

bankruptcy court's application of the Bankruptcy Code's automatic 

stay provisions to the Department of Labor was final under section 

158(d). Id. at 784. Because the district court's order upholding 

debtor's application for the stay also remanded the matter for 

consideration of the damages issue also raised by the debtors in 

the adversary proceeding, this court further considered whether 

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.,, 

the district court's order was final and appealable despite the 

remanded issues. Id. at 786. 

What is required is that a discrete dispute within a 

bankruptcy case "comes to this court in a posture which satisfies 

'traditional' finality principles." Id. at 786 n.7. Because 

Congress did not intend regulatory actions to be subject to the 

stay, we held that governmental exemption from the stay is 

analogous to governmental immunity. Thus, "an order applying the 

automatic stay to a government police or regulatory action is 

immediately appealable under the collateral order exception, as 

applied in Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511 (1985)." Id. at 787. 

We then determined that the collateral order exceptions to the 

finality rule as set forth in Cohen v. Beneficial Industrial Loan 

Corp., 337 U.S. 541 (1949), were satisfied in the case. 

This case does not present the issues addressed in Eddleman. 

Here, the purpose of the remand was to reenter an order confirming 

the debtor's plan of reorganization which is not in violation of 

11 u.s.c. § 524(e). The bankruptcy court may simply be able to 

reenter the order sans the injunction, or it may be forced to do a 

substantial refashioning of the plan. Thus, we cannot say that 

the anticipated proceedings in the bankruptcy court are 

insubstantial. For this reason, the district court order is a 

traditionally nonfinal order which is not immediately appealable. 

Accordingly, we lack jurisdiction over this appeal, and the appeal 

is DISMISSED. 

Entered for the Court 

PER CURIAM 

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