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RECOMMENDED FOR FULL-TEXT PUBLICATION 

Pursuant to Sixth Circuit I.O.P. 32.1(b) 

File Name: 15a0211p.06 

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT 

_________________ 

THEODORE JACKSON, 

Petitioner-Appellant, 

v. 

BRIGHAM SLOAN, Warden, 

Respondent-Appellee. 

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Nos. 15-3775/3776 

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the Northern District of Ohio at Cleveland. 

No. 1:15-cv-00870—James S. Gwin, District Judge. 

Decided and Filed: August 26, 2015 

Before: BOGGS, SUHRHEINRICH, and SUTTON, Circuit Judges. 

_________________ 

ORDER

_________________ 

 SUTTON, Circuit Judge. Theodore Jackson, an Ohio state inmate, racked up a lengthy 

prison sentence by continually violating the terms of his parole. Facing up to 26 years behind 

bars, he filed a habeas petition in federal court to challenge his detention in 2013. It gained no 

traction. See Jackson v. Sloan, No. 14-3955 (6th Cir. Apr. 10, 2015) (unpublished order). 

Jackson tried again by filing two more habeas petitions in April and May 2015, but the district 

court thought they counted as second or successive and transferred them to our court. See

28 U.S.C. §§ 1631, 2244(b)(3)(A); In re Sims, 111 F.3d 45, 47 (6th Cir. 1997). Jackson did not 

like that. He filed “motion[s] for relief from” the judgments in each case asking the district court 

to reconsider the transfer orders. No. 15-3775, R. 6 at 1; No. 15-3776, R. 5 at 1. The district 

court denied both motions. Jackson appeals. 

>
Nos. 15-3775/3776 Jackson v. Sloan Page 2

Howard v. United States, 533 F.3d 472 (6th Cir. 2008), lays out our court’s general 

procedure for reviewing second-or-successive transfer orders. We “treat the transfer order as 

non-appealable” and “consider in the transferred case whether [the] transfer was necessary or 

appropriate.” Id. at 474; see, e.g., In re West, 402 F. App’x 77, 78–79 (6th Cir. 2010); McGhee 

v. Myers, 1999 WL 644374, at *1 (6th Cir. Aug. 18, 1999) (unpublished table disposition). That 

approach is a sound one, but it does not help us here. Why not? Because Jackson appeals the 

denial of his motion for relief from the transfer order, not the transfer order itself. This case thus 

presents a separate question, one that to our knowledge we have yet to address. See Keith v. 

Bobby, 618 F.3d 594, 602 (6th Cir. 2010) (Gibbons, J., concurring). Do appeals from the denial 

of motions to reconsider second-or-successive transfer orders face any jurisdictional barriers? 

The answer, we think, is yes. The problem stems not from our lack of jurisdiction, as 

with direct appeals from transfer orders, but rather from the district court’s lack of jurisdiction. 

When a district court transfers a second-or-successive habeas petition, the case travels from one 

court (here the Northern District of Ohio) to another (here the Sixth Circuit). See 28 U.S.C. 

§ 1631. Such inter-court transfers, to borrow the Supreme Court’s language from a similar 

context, are “event[s] of jurisdictional significance.” Griggs v. Provident Consumer Discount 

Co., 459 U.S. 56, 58 (1982) (per curiam). “Jurisdiction follows the file,” we have said, meaning 

that the one court loses jurisdiction and the other court gains it when a case file physically moves 

between courts. Miller v. Toyota Motor Corp., 554 F.3d 653, 654 (6th Cir. 2009); see also

Agostini v. Piper Aircraft Corp., 729 F.3d 350, 355 (3d Cir. 2013); Jones v. InfoCure Corp., 

310 F.3d 529, 533 (7th Cir. 2002); Wright & Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure § 3846 

(4th ed. 2014). 

This rule, it is true, usually arises with transfers under 28 U.S.C. § 1404. That statute 

allows “a district court [to] transfer any civil action to any other district or division where it 

might have been brought” “[f]or the convenience of parties and witnesses” and “in the interest of 

justice.” 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a). But we see no reason to adopt a different approach with secondor-successive transfers under 28 U.S.C. § 1631, which orders courts to “transfer [any] action or 

appeal” over which they lack jurisdiction “to any other [] court in which the action or appeal 

could have been brought” if doing so “is in the interest of justice.” Nothing in the text of the two 
Nos. 15-3775/3776 Jackson v. Sloan Page 3

statutes suggests that transfers under § 1404 should have jurisdictional consequences and those 

under § 1631 should not. If anything it should be the other way around. Transfers under § 1631 

exist after all to “cure [a] want of jurisdiction.” 

Using the same approach under both statutes makes things easier on judges and litigants 

alike. We already apply the same basic rule to the most common transition between a district 

court and a court of appeals—an appeal from a final judgment. See Griggs, 459 U.S. at 58; see 

also Fed. R. App. P. 3, 4. Granted, this case concerns transfers, not appeals, but the contexts are 

similar. Plus, applying this rule to second-or-successive transfer orders promotes efficiency. 

It saves district courts the trouble of reconsidering whether a habeas petition counts as second or 

successive while a panel of our court considers the same question at the same time. See Howard, 

533 F.3d at 474. 

The district court, as we see it, lost jurisdiction over Jackson’s habeas petitions when 

each petition was physically transferred to the Sixth Circuit. When exactly did the physical 

transfer occur? A simple rule of thumb provides the answer. A case is physically transferred as 

soon as the transferee court (that’s us) dockets the case. See Chrysler Credit Corp. v. Country 

Chrysler, Inc., 928 F.2d 1509, 1516–17 (10th Cir. 1991); Lou v. Belzberg, 834 F.2d 730, 733 

(9th Cir. 1987). We docketed Jackson’s potentially second-or-successive habeas petitions on 

May 19, 2015. Jackson filed his motions for relief from judgment on June 29, 2015. By then the 

case had left the district court’s hands, meaning it lacked jurisdiction to consider Jackson’s 

motions. 

That leaves one loose end. In one case (No. 15-3775), Jackson appealed from the district 

court’s order of “July 6, 2015.” R. 9 at 1. But no such order existed. The district court denied 

Jackson’s motion on July 8. “[F]unctional rather than formalistic compliance” with Appellate 

Rule 3 “is all that is required,” Isert v. Ford Motor Co., 461 F.3d 756, 759 (6th Cir. 2006), and 

we have no reason to believe that the incorrect date “misle[d] or prejudice[d]” the defendant. 

Foman v. Davis, 371 U.S. 178, 181 (1962); cf. Flieger v. Delo, 16 F.3d 878, 882 (8th Cir. 1994); 

Schneider v. Colegio de Abogados, 917 F.2d 620, 630 (1st Cir. 1990). 
Nos. 15-3775/3776 Jackson v. Sloan Page 4

For these reasons, we vacate the district court’s orders from July 8, 2015, and remand 

with instructions to dismiss Jackson’s motions for relief from the transfer orders for lack of 

jurisdiction.