Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca9-10-56708/USCOURTS-ca9-10-56708-2/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Marblearch Trading, Ltd.
Appellee
Pentonville Developers, Ltd.
Appellee
Manuel Kevork Terenkian
Appellee
The Republic of Iraq
Appellant

Document Text:

FOR PUBLICATION 

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

MANUEL KEVORK TERENKIAN;

PENTONVILLE DEVELOPERS, LTD.;

MARBLEARCH TRADING, LTD.,

Plaintiffs-Appellees,

v.

THE REPUBLIC OF IRAQ and THE

REPUBLIC OF IRAQ, by and through

State Oil Marketing Organization,

Defendants-Appellants.

No. 10-56708

D.C. No.

2:03-cv-05485-

CBM-SH

ORDER

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Central District of California

Consuelo B. Marshall, Senior District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted

December 6, 2011—Pasadena, California

Filed January 3, 2013

Before: John T. Noonan, Ronald M. Gould,

and Sandra S. Ikuta, Circuit Judges.

Order;

Dissent by Judge Noonan

Case: 10-56708 01/03/2013 ID: 8459177 DktEntry: 52 Page: 1 of 7
2 TERENKIAN V. REPUBLIC OF IRAQ

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

*

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

SUMMARY

*

Transfer of Venue

The court denied a petition for rehearing en banc in a case

in which the panel reversed the district court’s order

(1) denying a motion to dismiss an action against the

Republic of Iraq for breach of contracts to buy oil under the

auspices of the United Nations Oil for Food Program and

(2) transferring venue to the District Court for the District of

Columbia. 

Judge Noonan dissented from the denial of the petition for

rehearing en banc. He wrote that the panel’s decision

(1) treats as timely an appeal made to a court, the D.C.

Circuit, lacking jurisdiction to hear the appeal, and (2) departs

from well-settled authority by splitting a whole case into two.

COUNSEL

Edward L. Powers (argued), Zukerman Gore Brandeis &

Crossman, LLP, New York, New York; Susan L. Hoffman

and Robert A. Brundage, Bingham McCutchen, LLP, Los

Angeles, California, for Appellant.

Melinda W. Ebelhar (argued), Edward C. Hsu, Edward D.

Vaisbort, and G. David Rubin, Litchfield Cavo LLP,

Pasadena, California; Alan Gura, Gura & Possessky, PLLC,

Alexandria, Virginia, for Appellees.

Case: 10-56708 01/03/2013 ID: 8459177 DktEntry: 52 Page: 2 of 7
TERENKIAN V. REPUBLIC OF IRAQ 3

ORDER

A majority of the panel has voted to deny Appellees’

Petition for Rehearing En Banc. The petition for rehearing en

banc was circulated to the judges of the court, and no judge

requested a vote for en banc consideration.

The petition for rehearing en banc is DENIED.

NOONAN, Circuit Judge, dissenting from denial of the

petition for rehearing:

I. The Transfer Of The Whole Case

April 9, 2010. The District Court for the Central District

of California filed an order denying Iraq’s motion to dismiss

for lack of subject matter jurisdiction due to sovereign

immunity and denying Iraq’s motion to dismiss for failure to

arbitrate. The Order also found that the Central District of

California was not the proper venue for this action and

transferred it to the District Court for the District of

Columbia.

April 13, 2010. The Order was entered on the docket for

the Central District of California. The Order stated:

The United States District Court for the

Central District of California is not the proper

venue. Moreover, a substantial part of the

events or omissions did not take place in New

York. Thus, the proper venue is the United

States District Court for the District of

Columbia.

Case: 10-56708 01/03/2013 ID: 8459177 DktEntry: 52 Page: 3 of 7
4 TERENKIAN V. REPUBLIC OF IRAQ

The Court transfers venue to the United States

District for the District of Columbia.

Iraq appealed this order to the D.C. Circuit.

II. The Law

According to the treatise generally accepted as

authoritative, a transfer of a case from one circuit to another

is treated as a transfer of the whole case. Wright and Miller

write:

When a motion for transfer under 28 U.S.C.

Section 1404(a) has been granted, and the

papers lodged with the clerk of the transferee

court, it is well settled that the transferor

court—and the appellate court that has

jurisdiction over it—loses all jurisdiction over

the case and may not proceed further with

regard to it.

Wright & Miller, 15 Fed. Prac. & Proc. Juris 3846 (3d ed).

The April 2012 Supplement to Wright and Miller cites

more cases applying the well-settled rule.

Only two exceptions to the “well-settled” rule are noted:

(1) an appeal has been filed in the appellate

court of the transferor before the transfer takes

place;

(2) the transfer is to a court lacking

jurisdiction to hear the case. Id.

Case: 10-56708 01/03/2013 ID: 8459177 DktEntry: 52 Page: 4 of 7
TERENKIAN V. REPUBLIC OF IRAQ 5

Neither of these exceptions apply here.

Why should this court in this case break from the wellsettled rule? The reasons offered for doing so are not

persuasive. I set out in italics these unpersuasive points.

(1) The losing party in the transferor district court would

have had to appeal quickly. Promptness does not strike me

as a penalty. If the rule is not followed, a real problem is

created by the creation of two jurisdictions dealing with one

case. In any event, this argument is not relevant here where

the appeal of the transfer was not timely because the appeal

was made to the wrong court.

(2) The Fourth Circuit provides contrary precedent. Wye

Oak v. Republic of Iraq, 666 F.3d 805 (4th Cir. 2011) rests its

authority on TechnoSteel, LLC v. Beers Construc. Co.,

271 F.3d 151 (4th Cir. 2001). There, the district court used

its discretionary authority to transfer a case to a district court

in the Eleventh Circuit. Under its law, the Eleventh Circuit

would have had no authority to review the case. TechnoSteel

v. Beers, 271 F.3d at 156. The case was appealable only to

the Fourth Circuit. Id. Appellate review would have been

altogether unavailable if the transfer was effective. Such a

result would have been fundamentally unfair.

In Wye Oak, the district court transferred the case to the

D.C. Circuit. The D.C. Circuit stayed the transfer. The

appellant then appealed to the circuit court embracing the

transferor district court, the Fourth Circuit, which then

accepted the appeal. Wye Oak speaks specifically of an

“appealable, and timely appealed, decision[] of [a] district

court.” 666 F.3d at 209. The appeal was timely, so

Case: 10-56708 01/03/2013 ID: 8459177 DktEntry: 52 Page: 5 of 7
6 TERENKIAN V. REPUBLIC OF IRAQ

distinguishing Wye Oak from our case. In our case the appeal

was to the wrong court. The difference is not a small detail.

Neither Wye Oak nor TechnoSteel is relevant here. Here,

Iraq had the opportunity to appeal to the circuit embracing the

transferor court, the Ninth Circuit. It did not do so.

Two additional but unpersuasive points may be

considered. First, the rule in question is not strictly

jurisdictional. Therefore, as the Supreme Court stated in

Bowles v. Russell, 551 U.S. 205, 212 (2007), the rule can be

relaxed by the Supreme Court. The difficulty with this

argument is that the Supreme Court has not relaxed the rule

in this case.

Second, 28 U.S.C. § 2107 gives Iraq 30 days to appeal.

But Iraq appealed the order to the wrong court. An appeal to

the transferee court is not an appeal to the transferor court.

Iraq’s appeal to the wrong court did not give jurisdiction to

this court.

Conclusion. The decision of our court treats as timely an

appeal made to a court lacking jurisdiction to hear the appeal.

The decision of our court is unsupported by Fourth

Circuit authority.

Departing from well-settled and unchallenged authority,

the decision of our court splits a whole case into two.

Solomon challenged two litigants before him to split the

whole baby each claimed. When one refused, Solomon knew

that she must be the mother. This ancient story comes to

mind as the Republic of Iraq seeks to split a whole case in

Case: 10-56708 01/03/2013 ID: 8459177 DktEntry: 52 Page: 6 of 7
TERENKIAN V. REPUBLIC OF IRAQ 7

two. One doesn’t need to be a Solomon to know that a single

lawsuit should not be split in half.

Case: 10-56708 01/03/2013 ID: 8459177 DktEntry: 52 Page: 7 of 7