Opinion ID: 780118
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Ministry as Appellant

Text: 32 KBC did not name the Ministry as a party in its action to enforce the Swiss arbitral award in the Southern District of Texas. KBC, 190 F.Supp.2d at 939. Judge Atlas's final order names only Pertamina as a respondent. And the order certified in the Southern District of New York on February 22, 2002, again mentions Pertamina alone. Not until March 22, 2002, after the funds in the Bank of America trust accounts were attached, did the Ministry appear in the district court, then characterizing itself as a Non-Party with Interest. 33 At first blush, the Ministry's absence from the initial proceedings and its failure to intervene pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 24 seem to preclude its participation in this appeal. [O]nly parties to a lawsuit, or those that properly become parties, may appeal an adverse judgment. Marino v. Ortiz, 484 U.S. 301, 304, 108 S.Ct. 586, 98 L.Ed.2d 629 (1988) (per curiam). But, as the Supreme Court recently made clear, the Ministry is indeed a party to the district court's judgment for present purposes, and can therefore properly appeal. 34 In Devlin v. Scardelletti, 536 U.S. 1, 122 S.Ct. 2005, 2008, 2013, 153 L.Ed.2d 27 (2002), the Court held that an unnamed member of a class could appeal a class action settlement at a fairness hearing even though he had failed to intervene earlier. The Court cautioned that [t]he label `party' does not indicate an absolute characteristic, but rather a conclusion about the applicability of various procedural rules that may differ based on context. Id. at 2010. To determine who may appeal, courts must ascertain whether putative appellants are bound by the order from which they were seeking to appeal. Id. In Devlin, for instance, the appellant faced a final decision of [a] right or claim sufficient to trigger his right to appeal. Id. (citation and internal punctuation omitted). 35 Similarly, we have long allowed appeal when the nonparty has an interest that is affected by the trial court's judgment. United States v. Int'l Bhd. of Teamsters, 931 F.2d 177, 183-84 (2d Cir.1991) (quoting Hispanic Soc'y v. N.Y. City Police Dep't, 806 F.2d 1147, 1152 (2d Cir.1986), aff'd, Marino v. Ortiz, 484 U.S. 301, 108 S.Ct. 586, 98 L.Ed.2d 629 (1988)); accord West v. Radio-Keith-Orpheum Corp., 70 F.2d 621, 624 (2d Cir.1934). The question therefore is whether the putative appellant can identify an `affected interest.' Kaplan v. Rand, 192 F.3d 60, 67 (2d Cir.1999). The Ministry alleges that the Republic of Indonesia owns the property encompassed by the garnishment order. Under Devlin, Kaplan, and similar cases, this constitutes an affected interest, which entitles the Ministry to join this appeal. 36