Opinion ID: 2733246
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Administrative Agency Remand Exception

Text: Reliastar argues that the district court’s remand order would be appealable if we adopted the Ninth Circuit’s approach. Applying its own precedents governing the finality of orders remanding matters to administrative agencies, the Ninth Circuit permits an immediate appeal of an otherwise nonfinal ERISA remand order if (1) the order “conclusively resolve[d] a separable legal issue,” (2) the order “forces the [plan administrator] to apply a potentially erroneous rule which may result in a wasted proceeding,” and (3) “review would, as a practical matter, be foreclosed if an immediate appeal were unavailable.” Hensley, 258 F.3d at 993.6 We decline Reliastar’s invitation to import the Ninth Circuit’s three-part test into our ERISA jurisprudence. As noted, we have our own test for determining the appealability of orders remanding to administrative agencies, see Perales v. Sullivan, 948 F.2d 1348, 1353 (2d Cir. 1991), which we have implied may be applicable in the ERISA context, see Crocco, 137 F.3d at 108-09. Thus, if we were to incorporate into the ERISA context a test for determining the appealability of an administrative remand order, it would be our own. This case, however, does not require us to decide definitively whether Perales applies to ERISA remand orders because, even assuming it does, the remand order here would not be appealable. Perales holds that although “[a] district court’s remand to an administrative agency . . . keeps the case alive and hence is ordinarily not appealable,” there is an exception to this rule “when the agency to which the case is remanded seeks to appeal, and that agency 6 The Third Circuit employs a somewhat similar test derived from its own precedent governing the finality of remands to administrative agencies. See Papotto, 731 F.3d at 270 (ERISA remand order appealable “when: (1) the remand finally resolves an issue, (2) the legal issue is important, and (3) denial of immediate review will foreclose appellate review in the future” (internal quotation marks omitted)). 20 would be unable to appeal after the proceedings on remand.” 948 F.2d at 1353; see also Occidental Petroleum Corp. v. SEC, 873 F.2d 325, 330 (D.C. Cir. 1989) (collecting cases and noting that nearly every circuit has adopted the general rule that agency remand orders are interlocutory and that most circuits have adopted the above exception to this rule). As we have discussed above, Reliastar will be able to obtain appellate review of the December 2010 remand order after the completion of the proceedings on remand by moving in the district court for the entry of a final judgment and then appealing that judgment. Accordingly, we leave for another day the question of whether the Perales rule permits an immediate appeal in circumstances when the district court’s remand order cannot be interpreted as having retained jurisdiction, leaving a separate civil action as the only mechanism to challenge the results of the proceedings on remand. Cf. Somoza, 538 F.3d at 113 n.5.