Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca9-11-16714/USCOURTS-ca9-11-16714-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Adair
Appellee
Kelvin Allen
Appellant
Botello
Appellee
Meyer
Appellee
Trisha
Appellee
Zamora
Appellee
Zuniga
Appellee

Document Text:

FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

KELVIN ALLEN,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

MEYER, Correctional Officer;

BOTELLO; TRISHA; ZAMORA; ADAIR;

ZUNIGA,

Defendants-Appellees.

No. 11-16714

D.C. No.

1:09-cv-00729-

GBC

OPINION

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Eastern District of California

Gerald B. Cohn, Magistrate Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted

October 16, 2013—San Francisco, California

Filed June 20, 2014

Before: Sidney R. Thomas and M. Margaret McKeown,

Circuit Judges, and Mark W. Bennett, District Judge.*

Opinion by Judge McKeown

 

* The Honorable Mark W. Bennett, District Judge for the U.S. District

Court for the Northern District of Iowa, sitting by designation.

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2 ALLEN V. MEYER

SUMMARY**

Civil Rights/Jurisdiction

Determining that it had jurisdiction to review the validity

of a judgment entered by a magistrate judge who failed to

obtain the consent of both parties, as required by 28 U.S.C.

§ 636(c)(1), the panel remanded the action to the district court 

with instructions to vacate the invalid judgment and to

conduct further proceedings consistent with the panel’s

opinion.

COUNSEL

Caitlin Sinclaire Blythe (argued), George C. Harris, Morrison

&Foerster, San Francisco, California,forPlaintiff-Appellant.

Kenneth T. Roost (argued), Deputy Attorney General,

Kamala Harris, Attorney General of California, Jonathan L.

Wolff, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Thomas S.

Patterson, Supervising Deputy Attorney General, San

Francisco, California, for Defendants-Appellants.

** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has

been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

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ALLEN V. MEYER 3

OPINION

McKEOWN, Circuit Judge:

We must decide whether we have jurisdiction to review

the validity of a judgment entered by a magistrate judge who

failed to obtain the consent of both parties, as required by

28 U.S.C. § 636(c)(1). We conclude that we do. Because the

magistrate judge entered judgment on behalf of the district

court without the parties’ consent, the judgment was invalid. 

Accordingly, we remand this case to the district court with

instructions to vacate the invalid judgment and to conduct

further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

BACKGROUND

Kelvin Allen filed this pro se action under 42 U.S.C.

§ 1983, alleging that several correctional officers (the

“officers”) at Corcoran State Prison violated his rights under

the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution. 

After the magistrate judge dismissed the complaint with leave

to amend, Allen amended his complaint. The officers then

moved to dismiss Allen’s amended complaint for failure to

exhaust his administrative remedies as required by the Prison

Litigation Reform Act (“PLRA”), 42 U.S.C. § 1997e.

Allen consented to jurisdiction before a magistrate judge,

but the record confirms—and the parties concede—that the

officers never did the same. On two occasions during the

pendency of the motion to dismiss, the magistrate judge

ordered the officers to reject or consent to magistrate-judge

jurisdiction. After the magistrate judge’s first order, the

officers filed their reply brief but failed to address the consent

issue. Acknowledging that the officers had not yet consented

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4 ALLEN V. MEYER

to his jurisdiction, the magistrate judge then issued a second

order and set a deadline for the officers to respond. 

Inexplicably, without waiting for the officers’ response or for

this second deadline to pass, the magistrate judge granted the

officers’ motion to dismiss and entered judgment against

Allen. Allen timely appealed.

ANALYSIS

Under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, we have jurisdiction over

“appeals from all final decisions of the district courts of the

United States.” We also “have jurisdiction to determine

whether we have jurisdiction.” E.g., Aguon-Schulte v. Guam

Election Comm’n, 469 F.3d 1236, 1239 (9th Cir. 2006). 

Where, as here, a magistrate judge enters judgment on behalf

of the district court, our jurisdiction on appeal “depends on

the magistrate judge’s lawful exercise of jurisdiction.” 

Anderson v. Woodcreek Venture Ltd., 351 F.3d 911, 914 (9th

Cir. 2003); accord Kofoed v. Int’l Bhd. of Elec. Workers,

Local 48, 237 F.3d 1001, 1003 (9th Cir. 2001). Because our

jurisdiction to adjudicate the underlying merits of this appeal

hinges on the magistrate judge’s proper exercise of

jurisdiction, we have the authority to review the antecedent

question of whether the magistrate judge validly entered

judgment on behalf of the district court. See, e.g., Wilhelm v.

Rotman, 680 F.3d 1113, 1118 (9th Cir. 2012) (“We review de

novo whether a magistrate judge has jurisdiction.” (internal

quotation marks omitted)); Irwin v. Mascott, 370 F.3d 924,

929 (9th Cir. 2004) (same); Hajek v. Burlington N. R.R. Co.,

186 F.3d 1105, 1107–08 (9th Cir. 1999) (raising issue of

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ALLEN V. MEYER 5

appellate jurisdiction sua sponte and reviewing whether

magistrate judge had jurisdiction).1

Answering that question requires us to determine whether

the magistrate judge complied with the requirements of

28 U.S.C. § 636(c), which limits the authority of federal

magistrate judges. See Reynaga v. Cammisa, 971 F.2d 414,

416 (9th Cir. 1992). Under § 636(c), full-time federal

magistrate judges “may conduct any or all proceedings in a

jury or nonjury civil matter and order the entry of judgment

in the case, when specially designated to exercise such

jurisdiction by the district court” and “[u]pon the consent of

the parties.” 28 U.S.C. § 636(c)(1). Consent—whether

express or implied through conduct—is “the touchstone of

magistrate judge jurisdiction.” Wilhelm, 680 F.3d at 1119,

1121 (internal quotation marks omitted); see Roell v.

Withrow, 538 U.S. 580, 582 (2003).

It is undisputed that the officers furnished neither express

nor implied consent to jurisdiction before a magistrate judge. 

Consequently, the magistrate judge had no jurisdiction to

enter final judgment on behalf of the district court, and “any

purported judgment is a nullity.” Kofoed, 237 F.3d at 1004;

1 We recognize that there may be some tension in our precedent with

respect to our appellate jurisdiction. In our view, the cases in which we

acknowledge our jurisdiction to consider whether the magistrate judge

lacked jurisdiction are consistent with the Supreme Court’s precedent in

United States v. Corrick, 298 U.S. 435, 440 (1936), and with our wellestablished case law on jurisdiction. To the extent that any of our cases

disavow such jurisdiction, we note that those cases may unintentionally

conflate jurisdiction to determine our jurisdiction with jurisdiction to

review the merits, or may simply misapprehend the limited nature of the

jurisdictional undertaking. Cf. Holbert v. Idaho Power Co., 195 F.3d 452,

454 (9th Cir. 1999) (order).

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6 ALLEN V. MEYER

cf. Reynaga, 971 F.2d at 417 (holding that, absent consent of

all parties, magistrate judge’s stay order was “beyond his

jurisdiction and was, in essence, a legal nullity”).

Because the judgment entered by the magistrate judge

was invalid, we are left to fashion a remedy to undo it. Cf.

United States v. Corrick, 298 U.S. 435, 440 (1936) (“While

the District Court lacked jurisdiction, we have jurisdiction on

appeal, not of the merits, but merely for the purpose of

correcting the error of the lower court in entertaining the

suit.” (citing cases)). Our precedent paints no clear picture on

the appropriate remedy and presents a range of options to

address the magistrate judge’s invalid judgment. To some

degree, the remedy has depended on the nature and facts of

the case. For example, in some cases, we have dismissed the

appeal for lack of appellate jurisdiction because the

magistrate judge had no authority to enter judgment. See,

e.g., Holbert v. Idaho Power Co., 195 F.3d 452, 454 (9th Cir.

1999) (order) (dismissing appeal because “the magistrate

judge’s lack of jurisdiction a fortiori deprive[d] this court of

appellate jurisdiction” (internal quotation marks omitted));

Aldrich v. Bowen, 130 F.3d 1364, 1364–65 (9th Cir. 1997). 

In other cases, rather than dismiss the appeal, we have

transferred the case back to the district court in the interest of

justice pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1631.2See, e.g., In re San

Vicente Med. Partners Ltd., 865 F.2d 1128, 1131 (9th Cir.

1989) (“Rather than dismiss this appeal, however, we transfer

this matter in the interest of justice pursuant to 28 U.S.C.

§ 1631, to the district court for further action.”); Tripati v.

2 Under 28 U.S.C. § 1631, if a court determines “that there is a want of

jurisdiction, the court shall, if it is in the interest of justice, transfer such

action or appeal to any other such court in which the action or appeal

could have been brought at the time it was filed or noticed . . . .”

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ALLEN V. MEYER 7

Rison, 847 F.2d 548, 548–49 (9th Cir. 1988) (same). And in

at least one other case, we remanded the case to the district

court to decide whether the parties had voluntarily consented

to magistrate-judge jurisdiction and then instructed the

district court to vacate the judgment if it determined that

consent was lacking. See Anderson, 351 F.3d at 919.

The upshot is that our cases do not dictate a single remedy

to correct an obvious error involving a magistrate judge’s

lack of jurisdiction. Despite the absence of a uniform

remedy, our precedent supports two important principles that

guide our approach in this appeal. First, as explained above,

we have jurisdiction to consider the threshold issue of our

own jurisdiction by reviewing the validity of a magistrate

judge’s judgment, see Aguon-Schulte, 469 F.3d at 1239,

which is distinct from our jurisdiction to adjudicate the

underlying merits of the appeal. Second, and of equal

importance, we cannot countenance a magistrate judge’s

unauthorized judgment and have frequently taken steps to

correct such errors on direct appeal. See, e.g., Nasca v.

Peoplesoft, 160 F.3d 578, 580 (9th Cir. 1999) (dismissing

appeal for lack of appellate jurisdiction and directing

magistrate judge to withdraw unauthorized remand order and

fee award), overruled on other grounds by Roell, 538 U.S. at

582; In re San Vicente, 865 F.2d at 1131.

We are concerned that simply dismissing the appeal for

lack of jurisdiction provides no remedy at all. Doing so

would potentially deprive Allen a chance to appeal the

underlying merits and would leave intact the void judgment. 

Rather than dismiss or transfer this appeal and risk leaving in

place the magistrate judge’s infirm judgment, we remand this

matter to the district court with instructions to vacate the

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8 ALLEN V. MEYER

judgment.3 On remand, the district court may address the

officers’ motion to dismiss in the first instance, or,

alternatively, may construe the magistrate judge’s order as a

report and recommendation and afford the parties reasonable

time to file objections.

Each party shall bear its own costs on appeal.

REMANDED WITH INSTRUCTIONS.

3 The “drastic and extraordinary remedy” of mandamus requested by

Allen is not warranted. In re Van Dusen, 654 F.3d 838, 840 (9th Cir.

2011) (internal quotation marks omitted). Contrary to Allen’ssuggestion,

our approach in Reynaga does not support the issuance of a writ of

mandamus in this case. In Reynaga, we issued a writ of mandamus

because the magistrate judge entered an interlocutory stay order without

obtaining the consent of both parties. 971 F.2d at 415–16. Unlike in

Reynaga, Allen appeals the magistrate judge’s final, albeit unauthorized,

judgment rather than a stay. In any event, resorting to mandamus is

unnecessary in light of our remand, which has the effect of vacating the

magistrate judge’s invalid judgment.

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