Opinion ID: 2758262
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Personal Jurisdiction Over Transferees

Text: First, Hutchens argues the district court erred in finding the court could exercise personal jurisdiction over the transferees. A district court’s decision denying a motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction “is not an immediately appealable collateral order.” Van -44- Cauwenberghe v. Biard, 486 U.S. 517, 527 (1988). To be sure, we have the authority to exercise pendent appellate jurisdiction over decisions related to personal jurisdiction when we have an otherwise valid interlocutory appeal before us. But our use of pendent appellate jurisdiction “is generally disfavored.” Vondrak v. City of Las Cruces, 535 F.3d 1198, 1205 (10th Cir. 2008). Indeed, “[i]t is appropriate to exercise pendent appellate jurisdiction only where resolution of the appealable issue necessarily resolves the nonappealable issue, or where review of the nonappealable issue is necessary to ensure meaningful review of the appealable one.” Buck v. City of Albuquerque, 549 F.3d 1269, 1293 (10th Cir. 2008) (internal quotation marks omitted). As the Supreme Court has cautioned, the narrow category of issues that deserve pendent review “includes only decisions that are conclusive, that resolve important questions separate from the merits, and that are effectively unreviewable on appeal from the final judgment in the underlying action.” Swint v. Chambers Cnty. Comm’n, 514 U.S. 35, 42 (1995). Despite the parties’ stipulation regarding our power to exercise jurisdiction over the district court’s decision to take personal jurisdiction over the transferees, we decline to do so. Quite clearly, the question is beyond the scope of a traditional Rule 23(f) review, and the parties have completely failed to explain why pendent appellate jurisdiction is appropriate under the circumstances. At bottom, the personal jurisdiction issue and the class certification decision are not -45- so “inextricably intertwined . . . that review of the former decision [is] necessary to ensure meaningful review of the latter.” Swint, 514 U.S. at 51. And Rule 23 does not permit a party to shoehorn every decision that went against it into its petition for interlocutory review. Under the circumstances, we refuse to permit an end-run around the general rule disfavoring interlocutory appeals on this issue.