NOT FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

EHM PRODUCTIONS, INC., DBA TMZ, a 

California corporation; WARNER BROS. 

ENTERTAINMENT INC., a Delaware 

corporation, 

Plaintiffs-Appellees, 

 v. 

STARLINE TOURS OF HOLLYWOOD, 

INC., a California corporation, 

Defendant-Appellant.

No. 19-55288 

D.C. No. 

2:16-cv-02001-SJO-GJS 

MEMORANDUM*

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Central District of California

S. James Otero, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted August 10, 2020

Pasadena, California

Before: WARDLAW and CLIFTON, Circuit Judges, and HILLMAN,** District 

Judge.

Starline Tours of Hollywood, Inc. (Starline) appeals the district court’s 

* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent 

except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.

** The Honorable Timothy Hillman, United States District Judge for the 

District of Massachusetts, sitting by designation.

FILED

AUG 28 2020

MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK

U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
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orders dismissing its First Amended Counterclaim (FACC) and denying its motion 

for leave to amend. We dismiss this appeal for lack of appellate jurisdiction.

1. Under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, the courts of appeals have jurisdiction over

“final decisions of the district court.” Nat’l Distrib. Agency v. Nationwide Mut. 

Ins. Co., 117 F.3d 432, 433 (9th Cir. 1997). Generally, “a voluntary dismissal 

without prejudice is ordinarily not a final judgment from which the plaintiff may 

appeal.” Galaza v. Wolf, 954 F.3d 1267, 1270 (9th Cir. 2020) (cleaned up). A 

limited exception to this rule—which Starline seeks to invoke—permits an appeal 

“when a party that has suffered an adverse partial judgment subsequently dismisses 

its remaining claims without prejudice with the approval of the district court, and 

the record reveals no evidence of intent to manipulate our appellate jurisdiction.” 

James v. Price Stern Sloan, Inc., 283 F.3d 1064, 1070 (9th Cir. 2002) (cleaned up). 

We recently reemphasized that this exception applies only if the dismissing party 

secures “the approval and meaningful participation of the district court.” Galaza, 

954 F.3d at 1272. 

Here, “there was no meaningful district court participation in” the parties’ 

“voluntary dismissal” of their surviving claims. Id. at 1271. The parties effected 

this dismissal through a “Joint Stipulation re Dismissal of Action Without 

Prejudice” under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41(a)(1)(A)(ii). Rule 

41(a)(1)(A) is a mechanism for voluntary dismissal “Without a Court Order,” and 
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the parties’ joint dismissal did not request an order or entry of partial judgment. 

The district court issued no further orders in this case. Because the district court 

played no role in the parties’ voluntary dismissal of the claims, that dismissal did 

not produce a final, appealable order. Galaza, 954 F.3d at 1272.

2. Starline’s arguments to the contrary are unavailing. 

First, while the joint stipulation stated that the voluntary dismissal was “at 

the suggestion of the Court,” it also noted that this suggestion was “to avoid an 

unnecessary appearance at the pre-trial conference,” rather than a substantive 

direction as to the remaining claims. In any event, even if “the district court 

approved the stipulation to . . . dismiss, such approval cannot be said to involve 

meaningful consideration or participation by the district court inasmuch as the 

parties were entitled to do so without leave of the court.” Am. States Ins. Co. v. 

Dastar Corp., 318 F.3d 881, 888 (9th Cir. 2003) (cleaned up). 

Second, the clerk of court’s entry of the “Report on the Filing or 

Determination of an Action Regarding a Patent or Trademark” on the district court

docket is irrelevant. Clerks of court are required by statute to transmit certain 

information in this form to the United States Patent and Trademark Office. 15 

U.S.C. §§ 1116, 1127. That the clerk fulfilled this reporting requirement after the 

parties dismissed their claims does not signify that the district judge meaningfully 

participated in the voluntary dismissal.
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3. Finally, the record does not contain “unambiguous evidence” that the 

parties intended their stipulation of voluntary dismissal to serve as a dismissal with 

prejudice. Romoland Sch. Dist. v. Inland Empire Energy Ctr., LLC, 548 F.3d 738, 

751 (9th Cir. 2008). Unlike in some of our prior cases, see id. at 750, the

stipulation here expressly stated that the dismissal was “without prejudice.” Nor 

did the stipulation “permit . . . appeal of the underlying order they considered

determinative” or serve some other function that would counsel in favor of treating 

their stipulation as effecting a “dismissal with prejudice.” Concha v. London, 62 

F.3d 1493, 1508 (9th Cir. 1995) (cleaned up).

DISMISSED.