Opinion ID: 777320
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Appeal of the Latin America Cases

Text: 8 This court is without jurisdiction to consider the appeal of the Latin America Cases. The orders of the district court return those cases to the state court from which they were removed on the ground that the court did not have federal subject matter jurisdiction over them. When it appears that a district court lacks subject matter jurisdiction over a case that has been removed from a state court, the district court must remand the case, 28 U.S.C. § 1447(c), and the court's order remanding the case to the state court whence it came is not reviewable on appeal or otherwise, id. § 1447(d). See also Quackenbush v. Allstate Ins. Co., 517 U.S. 706, 711-12, 116 S.Ct. 1712, 135 L.Ed.2d 1 (1996) (remands based on grounds specified in § 1447(c) are immune from review under § 1447(d)). 9 The tobacco companies claim that, notwithstanding the unambiguous bar of the statute, some courts have said the prohibition of § 1447(d) is not as broad as it seems. Poore v. American-Amicable Life, 218 F.3d 1287, 1291 (11th Cir.2000). In each case they cite, however, the court was describing not the prohibition in § 1447(d) but the exception thereto allowing review of a remand order that is not predicated upon either a lack of subject matter jurisdiction or a defect in the removal process. See Poore, 218 F.3d at 1289; Liberty Mut. v. Ward Trucking, 48 F.3d 742, 745-46 (3d Cir.1995). Because the district court remanded the Latin America Cases for want of federal subject matter jurisdiction, the exception does not apply here, and the cases cited by the companies are not on point. 10 The tobacco companies argue also that their appeals raise the substantial question whether Congress intended by § 1447(d) to make a district court the final arbiter of ... an important issue of constitutional dimension, namely, whether, under our constitutional scheme, claims by foreign governments of this nature fall within the adjudicatory authority of the federal courts based upon federal common law. We are tempted to say, as Wolfgang Pauli once said of a colleague's idea, the contention is not even wrong. JAMES GLEICK, GENIUS: THE LIFE AND SCIENCE OF RICHARD FEYNMAN 115 (1992). For starters, the appeal does not raise an issue of constitutional dimension. The district court decided a pleading point: whether a complaint alleging various torts under the law of Florida raises issues of federal law. Chicago v. International Coll. of Surgeons, 522 U.S. 156, 163, 118 S.Ct. 523, 139 L.Ed.2d 525 (1997). There is no provision in the Constitution, and the companies do not cite to any, that suggests this mundane inquiry takes on a constitutional dimension when the plaintiff is a foreign sovereign. 11 Furthermore, the companies err in suggesting there is an exception to the prohibition of appellate review in § 1447(d) when the remand order does raise a constitutional question. As long as the district court orders a case remanded for want of subject matter jurisdiction, the Congress has insulated the decision to remand from review whether or not that order might be deemed erroneous by an appellate court. Thermtron Prods., Inc. v. Hermansdorfer, 423 U.S. 336, 351, 96 S.Ct. 584, 46 L.Ed.2d 542 (1976). The decision of the Third Circuit In re TMI Litig. Cases Cons.II, 940 F.2d 832 (1991), which the companies offer for the proposition that in extraordinary circumstances [§ 1447(d) does not prohibit] appellate consideration of certain categories of remand orders, is not to the contrary. TMI holds that 1447(d) was not intended to preclude appellate consideration of a section 1292(b) certified question concerning the constitutionality of an Act of Congress — in that case the very statute upon the basis of which the plaintiff had invoked federal jurisdiction. Id. at 836. The decision recognizes that § 1447(d) precludes appellate review of an order remanding a case to a state court when, as here, the order is based upon a finding that removal was not authorized by Congress. Id. at 845; accord Rio de Janeiro v. Philip Morris Inc., 239 F.3d 714, 716 n. 6 (5th Cir.2001). 12 The plaintiffs argue that the court may not hear the appeals for the additional reason that the records of the cases have been transferred back to the state court. See Starnes v. McGuire, 512 F.2d 918, 935 (1974) (en banc), a habeas corpus case in which we said that once a record is transferred to a permissible forum in another district, this court loses jurisdiction over the matter. The companies respond that Starnes governs only those cases that have been transferred to another federal court, see Kimbro v. Velten, 30 F.3d 1501, 1504 n. 2 (D.C.Cir.1994), and that we should not extend its holding to cases that have been remanded to state court. Having already held that § 1447(d) precludes review, however, we need not resolve this side dispute in order to decide the present cases.