Five of the lawsuit's six counts claimed various breaches of contract by the Amax benefits plan, which would entitle plaintiffs to a jury trial. The trial judge allowed a jury. Amax filed an interlocutory appeal. An interlocutory appeal occurs before the end of a trial. Appellate courts discourage them because they don't want to hear appeals piecemeal.
Courts prefer to deal with one appeal from a single case.
Rights to jury trial are important. People in your community will decide a case, rather than a single judge whose factual understanding may be much less than that of a panel of jurors. Lawyers believe, as an article of faith, that jurors award more money than do judges. Tenth Circuit judges decided whether the 39 plaintiffs would have a jury when their case came to trial. The court first looked at the governing statute, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, to figure out what kind of rights the statute created.