Opinion ID: 3166989
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: jurisdiction

Text: Occidental brings this appeal pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291, relating to “final decisions” of the district court, and not under 28 U.S.C. § 1292, relating to interlocutory decisions. Because the district court did not dismiss the action 7 Case: 15-30100 Document: 00513327219 Page: 8 Date Filed: 01/04/2016 No. 15-30100 but “retained jurisdiction for a later disposition of the merits,” 5 the district court’s stay order on its face does not appear final. Occidental points to a few purported exceptions to the final decision rule, including the argument that under Hines v. D’Artois, 6 the district court’s order resulted in Occidental being “effectively out of court” and therefore functioned as a final decision. The Hines plaintiffs, African-Americans who had allegedly been discriminated against by a police department, filed suit asserting claims under 42 U.S.C. §§ 1981 and 1983. 7 About one year into the suit, the district court disposed of a number of pretrial motions and sua sponte “ordered that the case would be stayed pending the filing by the plaintiffs of Title VII proceedings before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and that plaintiffs would be required to ‘carry their application for relief to final conclusion by the Commissioner before undertaking any further proceedings herein.’” 8 The plaintiffs attempted to appeal the order mandating a stay until they initiated and pursued to completion EEOC actions. 9 The initial question was whether the Fifth Circuit even had appellate jurisdiction over the superficially non- “final decision,” and the court examined four potential routes to jurisdiction, including the “effectively out of court” exception to the “final decision” rule, which is based on the Supreme Court’s decisions in Idlewild Bon Voyage Liquor Corp. v. Epstein, 370 U.S. 713 (1962), and Cohen v. Beneficial Industrial Loan Corp., 337 U.S. 541 (1949). 10 The Hines court explained that in Idlewild, the district court had “denied a motion to convene a three-judge court and stayed the federal proceedings 5 Hines v. D’Artois, 531 F.2d 726, 729 (5th Cir. 1976). 6 Id. 7 Id. at 728. 8 Id. 9 Id. at 729. 10 531 F.2d at 729-32. 8 Case: 15-30100 Document: 00513327219 Page: 9 Date Filed: 01/04/2016 No. 15-30100 until the state courts ruled on the central issue in the case,” even though “[n]o state court litigation was then pending.” 11 The case made its way to the Second Circuit and then to the Supreme Court, which explained: [T]he Court of Appeals properly rejected the argument that the order of the District Court “was not final and hence unappealable under 28 U.S.C. [§§] 1291, 1292,” pointing out that “(a)ppellant was effectively out of court.” 289 F.2d at 428. 12 Thus, Idlewild is the origin of the “effectively out of court” rule, but as Hines explained, the rule is “reinforced by Supreme Court cases dealing more generally with the question of what district court orders are ‘final,’” most notably Cohen. Hines quoted from a 1964 Supreme Court opinion summarizing the Cohen line of cases: [A] decision “final” within the meaning of s 1291 does not necessarily mean the last order possible to be made in a case . . . [.] And our cases long have recognized that whether a ruling is ‘final’ within the meaning of s 1291 is frequently so close a question that decision of that issue either way can be supported with equally forceful arguments, and that it is impossible to devise a formula to resolve all marginal cases coming within what might well be called the “twilight zone” of finality. Because of this difficulty this Court has held that the requirement of finality is to be given a “practical rather than a technical construction.” . . . (i)n deciding the question of finality the most important competing considerations are ‘the inconvenience and costs of piecemeal review on the one hand and the danger of denying justice by delay on the other.’ (citations omitted) 13 The Hines court noted that other circuits had applied the Cohen rationale to find appellate jurisdiction to review orders staying federal proceedings under the primary jurisdiction doctrine to allow federal agencies 11 Id. at 730. 12 Id. (quoting Idlewild, 370 U.S. at 715 n.2). 13 Id. (quoting Gillespie v. United States Steel Corp., 379 U.S. 148, 152-53 (1964) (alterations and omissions in Hines)). 9 Case: 15-30100 Document: 00513327219 Page: 10 Date Filed: 01/04/2016 No. 15-30100 to address the relevant issues. 14 Based on the Idlewild “effectively out of court” rationale and the more general reasoning of Cohen, the Hines court concluded that appellate jurisdiction existed, and its reasoning is instructive: In the circumstances of this case, we believe we are justified in treating the stay order entered below as a ‘final’ order for the purposes of § 1291. No EEOC complaint had been filed by any party in relation to this action when the district court entered its order staying the litigation pending completion of EEOC proceedings. We noted in 1972 that ‘it takes the EEOC a minimum of eighteen months to two years to process a charge of discrimination,’ Chromcraft Corp. v. EEOC, 5 Cir. 1972, 465 F.2d 745, 747. The uncontradicted affidavit of plaintiffs’ counsel, presented to the district court in support of a motion to modify order, attested to his experience that the length of time the New Orleans EEOC office (where this complaint would be heard) has taken to investigate and attempt reconciliation of discrimination charges was 1 1/2 to 5 1/2 years. The EEOC, in its amicus brief in this case, makes the following uncontested statement: As of December, 1974, there were 2,195 charges pending in the Commission’s New Orleans District Office, with 215 new charges filed each month. The average period of time elapsing between the filing of a charge until conciliation is attempted is 40.2 months. Whatever the absolute judicial validity of the above sources of information, it seems beyond cavil that the effect of the stay order in this case was to put plaintiffs “effectively out of court,” see [Idlewild], supra, for a protracted and indefinite period—at least eighteen months, and possibly much longer. For the purposes of expedition and certainty, the parties here would have been served just as well by a stay pending the arrival of Godot. 15 Thus, the primary focus of Hines is the length of time it might take for an administrative agency to reach a decision, with 18 months deemed 14 Id. at 731 (citing C. A. B. v. Aeromatic Travel Corp., 489 F.2d 251 (2d Cir. 1973) (Civil Aeronautics Board), and Ringsby Truck Lines, Inc. v. United States, 490 F.2d 620 (10th Cir. 1973) (Interstate Commerce Commission)). 15 Id. at 731-32 (footnotes omitted). 10 Case: 15-30100 Document: 00513327219 Page: 11 Date Filed: 01/04/2016 No. 15-30100 sufficient to constitute effectively putting the plaintiffs out of court under Idlewild. In the instant case, Occidental filed its Integration Complaint with FERC in January of 2013, and the only action it has taken to date was ordering Occidental to supplement the record, which Occidental timely did in April of 2014. FERC has taken no action since the district court entered the stay order in this case, and there is no indication of when FERC might do so. Thus, it has already been nearly two years without FERC action and might take substantially longer, as all parties acknowledged at oral argument in this case. Under the rationale of Hines, it is reasonable to conclude that the district court’s stay order effectively put Occidental out of court and therefore gives this court appellate jurisdiction to review the order. Thus, if Hines remains good law, it appears we have appellate jurisdiction. The standard for overturning Hines is quite high: Because a previous panel has resolved this question, we cannot overturn its decision “absent an intervening change in the law, such as by a statutory amendment, or the Supreme Court or by our en banc court.” In particular, for a Supreme Court decision to change our Circuit’s law, it “must be more than merely illuminating with respect to the case before [the court]” and must “unequivocally” overrule prior precedent. 16 The LPSC and Entergy argue that Hines has been effectively overruled by the Supreme Court’s decision in Moses H. Cone, 17 which they argue limited the “effectively out of court” exception under Idlewild/Cohen to situations in which the stay operates in favor of a state forum. We must reject that argument. First, Moses H. Cone does not limit the Idlewild/Cohen rule on its face. Although Moses H. Cone applied the rule in the context of a stay order deferring federal action in favor of state proceedings, it did so because those 16 Tech. Automation Servs. Corp. v. Liberty Surplus Ins. Corp., 673 F.3d 399, 405 (5th Cir. 2012) (citations omitted). 17 Moses H. Cone Mem’l Hosp. v. Mercury Const. Corp., 460 U.S. 1 (1983). 11 Case: 15-30100 Document: 00513327219 Page: 12 Date Filed: 01/04/2016 No. 15-30100 were the facts before it, and the opinion on its face does not limit the rule to only those circumstances. 18 Second, and more important, the Supreme Court cited Hines with approval along with other appellate cases applying the “effectively out of court” rule. After discussing Idlewild, the Court explained: Here, the argument for finality of the District Court’s order is even clearer. A district court stay pursuant to Pullman abstention is entered with the expectation that the federal litigation will resume in the event that the plaintiff does not obtain relief in state court on state-law grounds. Here, by contrast, the District Court predicated its stay order on its conclusion that the federal and state actions involved “the identical issue of arbitrability of the claims of Mercury Construction Corp. against the Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital.” That issue of arbitrability was the only substantive issue present in the federal suit. Hence, a stay of the federal suit pending resolution of the state suit meant that there would be no further litigation in the federal forum; the state court’s judgment on the issue would be res judicata. Thus, here, even more surely than in Idlewild, Mercury was “effectively out of court.” Hence, as the Court of Appeals held, this stay order amounts to a dismissal of the suit. 19 In a footnote to that final sentence, the Court cited Hines with approval without limiting its application. 20 Although the same footnote also contains ambiguous language suggesting the Idlewild/Cohen rule might be limited to deferrals in favor of a state forum, 21 it is impossible for us to say that the decision “unequivocally” overrules Hines given its approving citation to Hines in a key passage. For this reason, although some later opinions have called 18 See generally id., 460 U.S. at 8-13 (addressing appellate jurisdiction). 19 Id. at 10 (citations omitted, emphasis added). 20 Id. at 10 n.11. 21 After citing Hines with approval, the Court stated that “Idlewild’s reasoning is limited to cases where (under Colorado River, abstention, or a closely similar doctrine) the object of the stay is to require all or an essential part of the federal suit to be litigated in a state forum.” Id. Of course, the focus on state deferrals in this sentence may have been prompted by the facts of Moses H. Cone, which concerned a state deferral. 12 Case: 15-30100 Document: 00513327219 Page: 13 Date Filed: 01/04/2016 No. 15-30100 Hines’s validity into question, no controlling opinion has concluded it has been overruled, 22 and one opinion expressly concluded it remains good law: “We furthermore note that the Supreme Court itself cited Hines with approval in [Moses H. Cone], thus making clear its view that the two cases are reconcilable.” 23 In short, we conclude Hines remains good law following Moses H. Cone, and this case is sufficiently close to the facts of Hines to give us appellate jurisdiction under the “effectively out of court” rule. Because we possess appellate jurisdiction under Hines, we decline to address Occidental’s alternative arguments that we possess jurisdiction under the collateral order doctrine or that we should treat this purported appeal as a petition for writ of mandamus.