Opinion ID: 452183
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Opaque and Unilluminating Summary Judgment Order

Text: 7 In granting the defendants' motion for summary judgment the district court stated no reasons, did not identify material disputed facts, and gave no hint of its conclusions of law. The court's order merely recites that no genuine issue of material fact remains, and we can find in the record no other statement, however informal, of the court's rationale. Clay contends that we should remand the case for the district court to issue findings of fact and conclusions of law in support of its judgment. 8 The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure do not require a district court acting on a motion for summary judgment to identify the materials it has considered in rendering its decision, its reasons for decision, the material and undisputed matters of fact on which the decision turns (if applicable), or the principles of law relied upon (if applicable). Consequently, in the hands of an appellate court the order appealed from may be an enigma. 9 Frequently the material that a district court has considered is not identified unless the court's order identifies it. The district court may consider pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, admissions on file, affidavits, oral testimony, matters subject to judicial notice, stipulations and concessions, and other materials admissible in evidence or otherwise usable at trial. 6 Moore Federal Practice Sec. 56.15. The court may draw legal presumptions as well. Id. Moreover, some district courts provide by local rule for factual statements by moving counsel, not sworn to, that are accepted if not controverted. 4 10 Review may be clouded by uncertainty concerning depositions. Procedures vary as to whether depositions must be filed with the clerk, and when, and whether they must be formally tendered to the court for its consideration. Similar questions may exist for transcripts of hearings. Consequently the appellate court may not know, and at times counsel are uncertain or in disagreement, as to what the court considered. Not infrequently briefs refer to matter that cannot be found in the record. 11 Secondly, both counsel and appellate court may be in the dark as to the district court's reason for decision. Reasons may be predicated on fact or law or both. The phrase findings of fact is often loosely used in connection with Rule 56. It is, however, a phrase singularly inappropriate because a premise of Rule 56 is that there is no genuine issue as to material facts, and the court is not required to find the facts specially and state its conclusions of law thereon as required in Rule 52(a). What is important in the summary judgment context is that the court, where relevant, identifies the undisputed facts on which its decision is based and identifies its conclusions of law as well. This can be done informally and even dictated to the court reporter. 12 When reviewing an unrevealing order granting or denying summary judgment, the appellate court is faced with several possibilities. The district court may have concluded that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact. Or it may have found that there is a genuine issue of fact but that the fact in question is not material. Under either of these alternatives, with fact issues out of the way, the court may have decided the case on a substantive legal ground. But, on the other hand, it may have concluded that there are material issues of fact and thus it may never have reached the substantive legal question at all. In some cases there will be more than one legal issue, with one a prerequisite for consideration of the other; for instance, there may be a choice of law issue and the court may have been required to choose the governing law and then apply the governing law. The reviewing court may be at a loss to know whether the district court based its decision on choice of law or on application of the law chosen. 13 There are numerous possible permutations. The appellate court, searching the summary judgment record and at times unsure of what that record is, must identify every possible ground that will support affirmance of the decision below and consider it, and if it rejects one ground then it must move to the next. Aerolineas Dominicanas S.A. v. Brown Aviation Services, Inc., 598 F.2d 416 (5th Cir.1979) demonstrates the confusion that can arise. 14 At the pretrial conference, Aerolineas's counsel conceded that the damages requested in Counts II and III were excessive. Apparently for this reason alone, the district court granted summary judgment for the defendants on those two counts. This was error. Although Aerolineas's counsel was lamentably confused about the amount of damages his client had sustained, he maintained throughout that Aerolineas had indeed been wronged and damaged. Under these circumstances the district court should at least have allowed Aerolineas to amend its complaint. 15 On the record before us there are no other justifications for summary judgment. To judge from the depositions and documents in the record, there is a genuine factual dispute about the truth of Aerolineas's assertions. The appellees argue that Aerolineas's claim is barred by the judgment rendered in another litigation, in Florida state court; but the district court seemed not to rest its grant of summary judgment on this ground, and the record does not disclose enough about the nature of the Florida proceeding to permit us to decide the question. On remand, the district court will have the full record before it and will be able to obtain other documentary evidence. It may or may not find sufficient reasons for granting summary judgment again. 16 Id. at 417 (footnotes omitted). 17 In the final analysis appellate review of what the district court did is largely an error-correcting function. Ordinarily the appellate court is given the tools to determine if the trial court acted correctly. The unexplained summary judgment order not only denies to the appellate court the tools of review but conceals what the court did and why and leaves the appeals court, like the proverbial blind hog, scrambling through the record in search of an acorn. This is antithetical to proper performance of the review function. 18 In a number of cases the Fifth Circuit has urged the district court to state the reason for its decision and the underlying predicate. United States v. Hardeman, 320 F.2d 115 (5th Cir.1963); Melancon v. Insurance Company of North America, 482 F.2d 1057 (5th Cir.1973) (findings of fact and conclusions of law are desirable and minimize duplication of judicial effort; material issue of fact identified, judgment reversed and remanded for trial on the merits); Huckeby v. Frozen Food Express, 555 F.2d 542, 545 (5th Cir.1977) (order did not reveal basis for district court's decision; court concluded that case was dismissed for want of jurisdiction; a concise statement by the district court of the grounds for its decision is desirable); Erco Industries, Ltd. v. Seaboard Coastline Railroad Co., 644 F.2d 424 (5th Cir.1981) (recognizes that Rule 52(a) requirements of findings and conclusions are not applicable but reiterates that the parties are entitled to know the reasons upon which the summary judgment was based in order to facilitate appellate review); Farbwerke Hoeschst A.G. v. M/V Don Nicky, 589 F.2d 795, 798 (5th Cir.1979) (If there was some rationalization or explanation which would have eliminated the apparent conflict in the affidavits here, an outline of the court's underlying reasoning could have prevented the necessity for reversal); Cooper v. General Motors Corp., 651 F.2d 249, 250 n. 1 (5th Cir.1981) (We note once again that it is difficult to fathom unspoken reasons, and that district courts would render better service to the litigants and facilitate the review of their actions if they would at least dictate into the record the reasons for their rendition of a summary judgment.); Jot-Em-Down Store, Inc. v. Cotter & Co., 651 F.2d 245, 247 (5th Cir.1981) (While the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure do not require a statement of reasons by a trial judge granting ... a summary judgment ... we have often stated that a reasoned statement is helpful not only to counsel but also to the appellate court [citations omitted]. In all but the simplest case such a statement usually proves not only helpful, but essential.) 19 The Supreme Court has vacated and remanded where the district court's order was opaque and unilluminating as to either the relevant facts or the law. Carter v. Stanton, 405 U.S. 669, 672, 92 S.Ct. 1232, 1234, 31 L.Ed.2d 569 (1972). 20 The Fifth Circuit has vacated and remanded to the district court for it to unravel the Gordian knot and enter an order permitting rational and orderly review. Montgomery v. Otis Elevator Company, 472 F.2d 243 (5th Cir.1973) (court had no way of knowing whether trial judge misapprehended the state of the facts or adopted a view of state law; since the state law was unclear, summary judgment vacated so that the case could be considered in the first instance by a federal judge from the state whose law applied and whose expertise would be entitled to deference); Steed v. Central of Georgia Railway Co., 477 F.2d 1303 (5th Cir.1973) (district court provided no key as to the important facts nor did it state its rationale for granting summary judgment; many complex and difficult questions of fact and law were left unsettled; case remanded for merits trial); Hanson v. Aetna Life & Casualty, 625 F.2d 573, 575 (5th Cir.1980), (court noted that prior admonitions calling for statements of reasons had been precatory in character but that nevertheless we have in practice insisted that district courts record--however informally--their reasons for entering summary judgment, at least where their underlying holdings would otherwise be ambiguous or inascertainable. The court found that to be the situation before it and vacated and remanded); Mosley v. Ogden Marine, Inc., 480 F.2d 1226 (5th Cir.1973) (court unable to ascertain which of several theories formed the basis for the entry of summary judgment; vacated and remanded for entry of reasons in support of the court's order). 21 Nonetheless, the paramount concern in determining whether to remand a summary judgment for entry of an order susceptible of better review is judicial economy. In this case--though not without difficulty--we have determined from an examination of the record and the briefs that summary judgment was proper. We therefore, do not direct a remand.