UN PUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

No. 19
- 2147

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, and the State of North Carolina, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin, ex rel,
Plaintiffs

– Appellees, DR. MICHAEL MAYES, Relator; SCARLETT LUTZ, Relator; KAYLA WEBSTER, Relator; CHRIS RIEDEL, Plaintiffs,

v.

HUNTER GARRETT DENT; HAILEY SHANNON DENT; L. D., minor child,
Parties

- in

- Interest

– Appellants,

and LATONYA MALLORY; HEALTH DIAGNOSTIC LABORATORY INC.; SINGULEX INC.; LABORATORY CORPORATION OF AMERICA HOLDINGS; BLUEWAVE HEALTHCARE CONSULTANTS, INC.; PHILIPPE J. GOIX, PhD; FLOYD CALHOUN DENT, III; ROBERT BR ADFORD JOHNSON; BERKELEY HEARTLAB, INC.; QUEST DIAGNOSTICS, INCORPORATED,
Defendants.2 Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina , at Beaufort

. Richard Mark Gergel , District Judge. ( 9:11

- cv
- 01593

- RMG; 9:14

- cv
- 00230

- RMG; 9:15

- cv
- 02485

- RMG )
Argued : December 8, 2020 D ecided: February 17, 2021

Before MOTZ, WYNN and FLOYD , Circuit Judges.

Dismissed by unpublished per curiam opinion

.

ARGUED: Sarah Jean Michaelis Cox, BURNETTE SHUTT & MCDANIEL, PA, Columbia, South Carolina, for Appellants. Jack E. Starcher, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Washington, D.C., for Appellees. ON BRIEF: Nekki Shutt, BURNETTE SHUTT & MCDANIEL, PA, Columbia, So uth Carolina; Kirsten E. Small, NEXSEN PRUET, LLC, Greenville, South Carolina, for Appellants. Joseph H. Hunt, Assistant Attorney General, Andy J. Mao, Patricia L. Hanower, Alicia J. Bentley, Michael Kass, Christopher Terranova, Civil Division, UNITED STA TES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Washington, D.C.; A. Lance Crick, Acting United States Attorney, Johanna C. Valenzuela, Assistant United States Attorney, James C. Leventis, Assistant United States Attorney, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Columbia, South Carolina, for Appellees.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this Circuit.3 PER CURIAM : After a jury verdict resulted in an award of $114,148,661.86 against Floyd Calhoun Dent, III for violations of the False Claims Act , t he district cour t granted his motion to stay
execution of that judgment pending appeal if he posted a $30,000,000 supersedeas bond.
Three of Dent’s children

— Hunter G. Dent, Hailey S. Dent, and minor child L.D.

— moved to exclude their custodial bank accounts from the Dent assets subject to the supersedeas bond . T he district court denied that motion , and the three children now appeal.
Because the order denying the children’s motion does not constitute a final app ealable order, we lack jurisdiction to consider their ch allenge . Accordingly, we dismiss the appeal

.

I.
Dent co

- founded and co

- owned BlueWave Healthcare Consultants, Inc. T he
Government alleged that Dent, BlueWave, and others violated both the common law and several federal statutes, including the False Cla ims Act

. After the jury returned a unanimous verdict against Dent and two of his co

- defendants on the False Claims Act
claims , t he district court entered judgment against Dent for a total of $ 114,148,661.86

. The Government filed for writs of execution on bank accounts in which Dent had a substantial, non

- exempt interest. After t he district court granted the writs , Dent and
members of his family moved to stay and quash the writs of execution. The court granted
a p artial stay of execution pending appeal , subject to Dent posting a $30,000,000 supersedeas bond

. In this order, the court required Dent to deposit with the court the4 contents of several bank accounts in which the court found that Dent had a substantial, n on
exempt interest. Included among these bank accounts are three custodial accounts in the names of
the three Dent children who now bring this appeal. 1 At a hearin g before the district court, the Dent children objected to the inclusion of these accounts. The children argued that the
writs of execution were overbroad , that the funds in the bank accounts belonged to them, and thus Dent lacked a substantial, non

- exempt interest in the funds. The district court
asked the parties to brief this issue on cross

- motions for summary judgment

. While the
writs remained stayed pending appeal t he parties did so , and t he court awarded summary judgment on this issue to the Government. The Dent children now seek to appeal that
order.

II. The parties principally disagree over the degree of control that Dent retained over
the funds in the custodial accounts that he had opened under the South Carolina Uniform
Gifts to Minors Act

. The Government, however, preliminarily argues that the district court’s gr ant of summary judgment with respect to inclusion of these accounts as security for the supersedeas bond does not constitute a final appealable judgment

. Because this

1 Dent and his co

- defendants have separately appealed the judgment against them , and their appeal is pending before us. See United States v . Mallory , No. 18

- 1811 (4th Cir. 2021). In that appeal, Dent challenges not only the underlying verdict against him , but also the court’s prejudgment attachment of other assets

. The case at hand does not concern prejudgment attachment of any assets, but only use of the children’s accounts as security for the supersedeas bond.5 argument challenges o u r jurisdiction to hear this case, we must resolve it before reac hing the merits of the appeal. See Steel Co. v. Citizens for a Better Env ’t , 523 U.S. 83, 94

– 95 (1998). The only potential basis for the exercise of our jurisdiction that the parties advance

— and the only potential basis that we can ascertain

— is 28 U.S.C. § 1291. 2 That statute provides that federal appellate courts “have jurisdiction of appeals from all final decisions
of the district courts of the United States.” Id.
W e have held in a previous appeal , raising similar questions in the same case , that we lacked jurisdiction to consider an interlocutory appeal from the denial of a motion to quash a prejudgment attachment. United States ex rel. Lutz v. United States , 853 F.3d 131, 136 (4t h Cir. 2017) . While the case at hand concerns different assets and comes to us in a different posture, we reach the same conclusion for much the same reasons. Like the order challenged in Lutz , t he order at issue here is not final

— it does not resolve a ll of the claims
and issues in the case. To be sure, there has been a final judgment and an award against Dent for millions
of dollars

. But the children’s claim s in this action do not challenge that judgmen t

— instead, the ir arguments concern the inclusion of their accounts as part of a supersede a s bond securing that judgment, execution upon which has not yet taken place. Such litigation
is treated as “a separate lawsuit from the action which produced the underlying judgment .”

2 T here are several exceptions to the final

- judgment rule codified in 28 U.S.C. § 1291, but none applies here . For example, as the Government correctly notes , the collateral order doctrine p rovides no basis for jurisdiction

. See Cunningham v. Hamilton C ounty , 527 U.S. 198, 202 (1999)

.6 In re Joint E. & S. Dists. Asbestos Litig ., 22 F.3d 755, 760 (7th Cir. 1994). For this reason , “the requirements of finality must be met without reference to [the] underlying judgment.”
Id

. The question before us , then, is whether the challenged ord er ended the litigation concerning execution , leaving nothing left for the district court to do.
F ar from doing so , the order granting summary judgment left important issues
unresolved. The district court’s order determined only that the assets in the De nt children’s accounts should be transferred to the court as part of Dent’s supersedeas bond. In its motion for summary judgment, the Government repeatedly emphasized that it did “not seek a determination of the ultimate ownership of these accounts, an issue which ” it recognized
was “ more properly adjudicated following the resolution of [Dent’s] pending appeal.” The district court similarly limited its order to consideration of “whether the children’s bank accounts are subject to the supersede a s bond.” An appeal chal lenging the court’s resolution
of the rightful ownership of the custodial accounts will not be available until the district

court enters an order fully and finally resolving the ownership of these accounts.
Thus , our decision here does not deny the Dent children ( or any other interested part y ) the opportunity to assert challenges to the writs of execution

— it just delays that opportunity. T he district court ordered that the assets in the Dent children’s accounts be placed in the District Court Registry Account as part of Dent’s supersedeas bond. The Government has represented that all of those funds remain there ; the Dent children do not contend to the contrary

. If Dent does not prevail on appeal and the Government seeks to
return to writs of execution to collect the funds in these accounts, the children and any other
i nterested parties can then challenge the writs of execution

.7 Thus, this case is in a different posture than United States v. Parker , 927 F.3d 374 (5th Cir. 201 9), on which Dent relies. There , the Fifth Circuit held that denials of motions to quash writs of execution were immediately appealable , explaining that otherwise the parties would have no “right to challenge the writ of execution at any later point.” Id. at
380. Because th e present case concerns only inclusion of funds in a supersedeas bond and
writs of execution that were stayed rather than sustained , the children will have an opportunity to challenge these writ s of execution at a “later point

. ” Our decision here
therefore does not reach the question in Parker . We hold only that at this preliminary stage

— when the district court has resolved questions of a party’s interest in an account solely for purposes of a supersedeas bond

— we lack jurisdiction to consider an appeal.
III.
Because the challenged order does not constitute a “final decision” for purposes of § 1291 , w e lack jurisdiction over this appeal. Accordingly, th e appeal is
DISMISSED

.