Opinion ID: 4524974
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: jurisdiction

Text: Plaintiff requested that the district court enter a final judgment so that it could appeal the district court’s grant of summary judgment to two defendants— the Menchions and Best Service. Yet, now Plaintiff also seeks to litigate on appeal 2 Moreover, in making a “money had and received” claim, Plaintiff is proceeding under the equitable principle that a person should not be allowed to unjustly enrich himself at the expense of another. Here, Plaintiff was aware that Best Service had sued the Menchions on the underlying note. Nevertheless, it made no effort to intervene in that litigation or formally stake any claim; to the contrary, it dismissed its own legal action against the Menchions. Plaintiff then watched as Best Service expended time and resources to litigate and collect on the Menchion account, pursuing a claim only after Best Service’s efforts had yielded dividends. Under these circumstances, Plaintiff’s equitable argument—that considerations of equity and good conscience should allow it to wrest from Best Service the portion of the recovered proceeds allocated to Best Service by the Collection Agreement—is not a compelling argument. 18 Case: 16-10380 Date Filed: 04/14/2020 Page: 19 of 24 the district court’s denial of its motion for summary judgment against defendant Prime Asset: a ruling from which the district court did not issue a final judgment warranting an appeal. Prime Asset has filed a motion for us to dismiss Plaintiff’s appeal of the denial of its motion for summary judgment against Prime Asset, arguing that we lack jurisdiction to hear the appeal. We grant the motion. There are multiple reasons why the present appeal is not the appropriate vehicle for this review. But first we set out the broad outline of Plaintiff’s appellate argument that the district court incorrectly denied its motion for summary judgment on its claim against Prime Asset. Plaintiff repeats its argument that Section 6 of the Loan Sale Agreement between it and Prime Asset should not be enforced because that section is unreasonable. As set out above, and like the district court, we have rejected that argument. On appeal, however, Plaintiff introduces a new reason why summary judgment should have been granted against Prime Asset. Plaintiff argues that even accepting that Section 6 precludes any remedy other than repurchase of the Menchion account based on the breach of warranty arising from Prime Asset’s prior assignment of that loan to Best Service, other sections of the Loan Sale Agreement provide Plaintiff some relief. Specifically, Section 2.1(a) obligated Prime Asset to “transfer and assign . . . interest of any type or kind in the Unsecured Loans.” (emphasis added) Article I defines “Unsecured Loans” as the 19 Case: 16-10380 Date Filed: 04/14/2020 Page: 20 of 24 individual loans, “including all Claims and all Proceeds arising therefrom.” (emphasis added) Section 3.4(e), which addresses Prime Asset’s “Post-Closing Obligations,” states that “[a]ny and all payments received by Seller on and after the Closing Date, shall belong to Buyer and any such amounts received by Seller shall be promptly remitted to Buyer within ten (10) Business Days.” (emphasis added) Putting all this together, we read Plaintiff to be arguing that even though Prime Asset’s false representation to Plaintiff that the Menchion loan was not encumbered only gives rise to Prime Asset’s duty to repay Plaintiff the purchase price of that loan account under Section 6, this limitation does not erase Prime Asset’s duties under Sections 2.1(a) and 3.4(e). Further fleshing out what we perceive to be Plaintiff’s argument, Section 2.1(a) required Prime Asset to transfer any interest it had in the loan at the time of closing. Given its prior assignment of the loan to Best Service and the corresponding Collection Agreement, Prime Asset no longer had a 100% interest in that loan, but it still retained a 60% interest, based on the Collection Agreement’s allocation of the proceeds of a collection by Best Service. Stated another way, Prime Asset’s breach of warranty only extended to the 40% of the loan proceeds that it had assigned to Best Service; Prime Asset still maintained a 60% interest in the loan that was not encumbered. Adding Section 3.4(e) to the mix, the Loan Sale Agreement imposed post-closing obligations on Prime Asset, providing that ” [a]ny and all payments received by” Prime Asset 20 Case: 16-10380 Date Filed: 04/14/2020 Page: 21 of 24 after the Closing Date, belonged to Plaintiff and that Prime Asset was required to “promptly remit[]” these payment to Plaintiff. Following its closing with Plaintiff, Prime Asset received $90,000 from Best Service’s successful collection efforts, which represented 60% of the money that Best Service had collected. As we read Plaintiff’s argument, the above provisions of the contract require that Prime Asset remit that $90,000 to Plaintiff. Certainly, this is not a frivolous argument by Plaintiff. We cannot, however, consider it on this appeal for two reasons: (1) we lack jurisdiction to consider Plaintiff’s appeal of the district court’s denial of its motion for summary judgment against Prime Asset on Plaintiff’s claims for breach of contract and money had and received and (2) Plaintiff never raised this argument before the district court. As to the absence of jurisdiction, Prime Asset did not move for summary judgment on those claims and the district court did not include them in its Rule 54(b) Final Judgment from which Plaintiff appeals. Nor did Plaintiff request that the court include the denial of summary judgment against Prime Asset in that final judgment. “By definition, entry of partial judgment under Rule 54(b) results in some claims in a case being immediately appealable while other claims remain pending in the district court.” Lloyd Noland Found., Inc. v. Tenet Health Care Corp., 483 F.3d 773, 779 (11th Cir. 2007). Moreover, “[i]t is well established that the denial of a motion for summary judgment is not a final decision under 21 Case: 16-10380 Date Filed: 04/14/2020 Page: 22 of 24 28 U.S.C.A. § 1291.” Pitney Bowes, Inc. v. Mestre, 701 F.2d 1365, 1368 (11th Cir. 1983). “An order denying summary judgment amounts to a decision that the claim remains pending for trial and is therefore interlocutory.” Id. Thus, we do not have jurisdiction to hear Plaintiff’s claims against Prime Asset. We decline Plaintiff’s request that we exercise pendent jurisdiction over the district court’s denial of summary judgment on Plaintiff’s claims against Prime Asset. “Pendent appellate jurisdiction is present when a nonappealable decision is ‘inextricably intertwined’ with the appealable decision or when ‘review of the former decision [is] necessary to ensure meaningful review of the latter.’” King v. Cessna Aircraft Co., 562 F.3d 1374, 1379 (11th Cir. 2009), quoting Swint v. Chambers Cty. Comm’n, 514 U.S. 35, 51 (1995). “[T]he Supreme Court has signaled that pendent appellate jurisdiction should be present only under rare circumstances.” Id. No basis exists for exercising pendent jurisdiction over the district court’s denial of Plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment against Prime Asset. First, Plaintiff’s claim on appeal that Prime Asset breached provisions of the Loan Sale Agreement other than Section 6 (i.e., Sections 2.1 and 3.4) is not inextricably intertwined with our decision interpreting Section 6 and determining that it is enforceable. The remedy-limitation provision in the latter does not apply to 22 Case: 16-10380 Date Filed: 04/14/2020 Page: 23 of 24 alleged breaches of Sections 2 and 3; it only applies to breaches of the representations and warranties contained in Section 6. Plaintiff could have easily waited until the pending claims against Prime Asset had been finally resolved and appealed the district court’s entire judgment in one appeal. That it chose to jump the gun with a piecemeal appeal of only some rulings does not authorize us to consider an appeal of a ruling over which we have no appellate jurisdiction. Even if we had jurisdiction to consider Plaintiff’s attempted appeal of the district court’s denial of Plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment against Prime Asset, Plaintiff could not prevail because the arguments it now makes were never raised before the district court. Plaintiff did not argue before the district court that it was entitled to summary judgment based on Prime Asset’s breach of any provision other than Section 6. Nor was the argument we have fleshed out above even hinted at in Plaintiff’s litigation before the district court. “This Court has repeatedly held that an issue not raised in the district court and raised for the first time in an appeal will not be considered by this court.” Access Now, Inc. v. Sw. Airlines Co., 385 F.3d 1324, 1331 (11th Cir. 2004) (quotation marks omitted). Yet fortunately for Plaintiff, the absence of jurisdiction to review the district court’s denial of Plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment as to Prime Asset means that we do not reject Plaintiff’s appeal based on Plaintiff’s failure to raise this new 23 Case: 16-10380 Date Filed: 04/14/2020 Page: 24 of 24 issue before the district court. Plaintiff will live to fight another day against Prime Asset in the district court, at least as to any arguments not foreclosed by our ruling on Section 6. 3 Accordingly, we grant Prime Asset’s motion to dismiss Plaintiff’s appeal as to Prime Asset and we remand Plaintiff’s claims against Prime Asset for the district court to resolve them.4