## United States Court of Appeals FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

___________ No. 08-2499

___________ Walter Huggins, *
* Appellant, * * Appeal from the United States v. * District Court for the Eastern * District of Missouri. FedEx Ground Package System, Inc.; * Teton Transportation, Inc.; Swanston * Equipment Company, *
* Appellees. *

___________ Submitted: March 11, 2009 Filed: May 26, 2009

___________ Before GRUENDER, ARNOLD, and BENTON, Circuit Judges.

___________ ARNOLD, Circuit Judge. Walter Huggins filed an action in Missouri state court seeking damages for the injuries that he suffered in a motor vehicle accident. After defendant Teton Transportation, Inc., removed the case to fe deral district court, Teton and defendant FedEx Ground Package System, Inc., successfu lly moved for summary judgment. Mr. Huggins and the remaining defendant, Swan ston Equipment Company, then filed a motion to certify the summary judgment rulings as final judgments under Fed. R. Civ. P. 54(b), and the court granted the motion. Mr. Huggins appealed and we dismiss the

case sua sponte for lack of appellate jurisdiction.-2- Mr. Huggins was a passenger in a tract or-trailer driven by someone who he alleged was a FedEx employee when the accident occurred. (To simplify, we refer to this tractor-trailer as the FedEx vehicle in this opinion, though we do not consider whether FedEx employed its driver.) Bef ore the collision, the FedEx vehicle was traveling west on an interstate highway inMissouri behind a tractor-trailer that Teton operated. As the Teton driver topped a h ill, he immediately saw a Swanston truck in front of him on the left shoulder, perhaps s lightly into his lane; the truck bore a sign stating, "Left Lane Closed Ahead." The Teton driver slowed and eventually stopped behind another vehicle. Shortly afterward, the FedEx vehicl e ran into the back of the Teton tractor-trailer, resulting in Mr. Huggins's injuries.

We are obligated to consider sua sponte our jurisdiction to entertain a case where, as here, we believe thatjurisdiction may be lacking. Thomas v. Basham , 931 F.2d 521, 522-23 (8th Cir .1991). We ha ve jurisdiction over appeals "from all final decisions of district courts," 28 U.S .C. § 1291, and we gene rally consider only orders that dispose of all claims as final and appeal able under § 1291. Thomas , 931 F.2d at 523; see Fed. R. Civ. P. 54(b). Ru le 54(b), howev er, contains an exception, for it provides that "[w]hen an action presents more than one claim for relief ... or when multiple parties are involved, the court ma y direct entry of a final judgment as to one or more, but fewer than all, claims or parties only if the court expressly determines that there is no just reason for delay." Fed. R. Civ. P. 54(b). Here the district court entered a final judgm ent in favor of fewer than all parties and stated in its certification order that th ere was "no just reason for delay," though it provided no additional explanation.

When deciding whether to certify a ruli ng as a final judgment under Rule 54(b), a "district court must first determine that it is dealing with a 'final judgment.' It must be a 'judgment' in the sense that it is a decision upon a cognizable claim for relief, and it must be 'final' in the sense that it is 'an ultimate disposition of an individual claim entered in the course of a multiple claims action.' " Curtiss-Wright Corp. v. General-3- Electric Co. , 446 U.S. 1, 7 (1980) (quoting Sears, Roebuck & Co. v. Mackey , 351 U.S. 427, 436 (1956)). We have no doubt that the orders granting summary judgment to FedEx and Teton come within this definition of a final judgment.

But "[n]ot all final judgments on individual claims should be immediately appealable, even if they are in some se nse separable from the remaining unresolved claims," and the district court must determine that there is no just reason for delay. Curtiss-Wright , 446 U.S. at 8. We generally review this determination for an abuse of discretion, giving "substantia l deference" to the district court as the court " 'most likely to be familiar with the case and with any justifiable reasons for delay' ": we thus do not "reweigh the equities" or "reasse ss" the district court's factual findings, Curtiss-Wright , 446 U.S. at 10 (quoting Sears , 351 U.S. at 437). We have said, however, that such deference " 'rests on the assumption that the district court undertook to weigh and examine the competi ng interests involved in a certification decision,' " as the district court plainly did in Curtiss-Wright , 446 U.S. at 5-6. See McAdams v. McCord , 533 F.3d 924, 928 (8th Cir. 2008) (quoting Hayden v. McDonald , 719 F.2d 266, 268 (8th Cir. 1983) (per curiam)); cf. Federal Deposit Ins. Corp. v. Tripati , 769 F.2d 507, 508 n. 3 (8th Cir. 1985). If, as here, a district court's decision does not reflect an "evaluation of su ch factors as the interrelationship of the claims so as to prev ent piecemeal appeals," Curtiss-Wright , 446 U.S. at 10, or show a "familiar[ity] with the case and withany justifiable reasons for delay," Sears Roebuck & Co. v. Mackey , 351 U.S. 427, 437 (1956), we scrutinize its decision carefully. See McAdams , 533 F.3d at 928 (8th Cir. 2008); Hayden , 719 F.2d at 268-69; see also Curtiss-Wright , 446 U.S. at 10.

Though we may assume that the districtcourt in this instance relied on the reasons set out in the motion for certificati on, those reasons – "[t]o avoid the potential for multiple trials ... and ... inconsistent ju ry verdicts involving the same incident" – fail to distinguish Mr. Huggins's case from any civil action where some, but not all, of the defendants are dismissed before tria l. And we have repeatedly stated that-4- Rule 54(b) certifications "should neither be granted routinely nor as an accommodation to counsel." Guerrero v. J.W. Hutton, Inc. , 458 F.3d 830, 833 (8th Cir. 2006) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted); see Bullock v. Baptist Memorial Hosp. , 817 F.2d 58, 59 n.2 (8th Cir. 1987); Page v. Preisser , 585 F.2d 336, 339 (8th Cir. 1978). Furthermore, " '[c]ertification should be granted only if there exists some danger of hardship or injus tice through delay which would be alleviated by immediate appeal' "; but neither the district court nor movants have directed our attention to such a danger and none is apparent from the record. See McAdams , 533 F.3d at 928 (quoting Hayden , 719 F.2d at 268).

In some cases, a sufficient reason for Ru le 54(b) certification may be evident from the record, even though the court did notexplain its reasoning. But this does not appear to us to be such a case. We th erefore conclude that "[j]udicial economy will best be served by delaying appeal until all i ssues can be confronted by this court in a unified package. Such a course is particularly desirable where [as here] the adjudicated and pending claims are closely related and stem from essentially the same factual allegations." Hayden , 719 F.2d at 270) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted); see McAdams , 533 F.3d at 928.

We realize that 28 U.S.C. § 1292(b) allo ws an interlocutory appeal in some cases. But Mr. Huggins has not invoked this statute and neither of the procedural predicates for an appeal under this statut e has been met: The district court has not stated that the order sought to be appeal ed "involves a controlling question of law" on which there is "substantial ground for differe nce of opinion" and that "an immediate appeal from the order may advance the ultimate termination of the litigation," and Mr. Huggins has not sought permission to appeal. See id. Even if the district court had made the statements that the statute requires and Mr. Huggins had asked permission to appeal, we would not have assumed jurisdiction over this case. We believe that our rationale for rej ecting an interlocutory appeal in Bullock would have been applicable to the case before us:-5- This is simply a case where a number of defendants were sued and some of them have prevailed on a motion to dismiss. It is always true in such cases that there is a risk of ha ving two trials. If, on appeal, plaintiffs succeed in establishing that the District Court was wrong in dismissing the complaint as to some of the de fendants, then the case would have to be tried again. That is simply one of the costs of the final-judgment rule, costs which have already been wei ghed by Congress. The converse, of course, is that permitting appeals before final judgment causes delay, expense, and duplication of appellate process, esp ecially in view of the fact that, statistically speaking, mo st appeals result in affirmances. No special circumstances exist in this case to indicate that the legislative weighing of costs and benefits that le d to the final-judgment rule, a rule, incidentally, that has been the la w ever since 1789, Judiciary Act of 1789, ch. XX, § 22, 1 Stat. 73, 84, should not be respected here.

Bullock , 817 F.2d at 60.

In sum, we see nothing about this case that would distinguish it from a mine-run multi-party lawsuit in a way that would allo w us to assert jurisdiction over it. We therefore conclude that the district court abused its discretion indesignating its orders granting summary judgment to FedEx and Te ton as final judgments under Rule 54(b) and dismiss the appeal for lack of jurisdiction.

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