Opinion ID: 449269
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: jurisdiction

Text: 10 UCDMC reasserts its argument that we are without jurisdiction to hear this appeal because the district court's remand order is not an appealable final decision. 8 See 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1291 (1982). We disagree. 11 In Stone v. Heckler, 722 F.2d 464 (9th Cir.1983), we recently considered the finality of a remand order quite similar to that involved here. In Stone, we recognized that section 1291 must be given a practical rather than a technical construction, id. at 467 (quoting Cohen v. Beneficial Industrial Loans Corp., 337 U.S. 541, 546, 69 S.Ct. 1221, 1226, 93 L.Ed. 1528 (1949)), and that the finality determination necessitates an evaluation of competing policy considerations--the inconvenience and costs of piecemeal review on the one hand and the danger of denying justice by delay on the other. Stone, 722 F.2d at 467 (quoting Eisen v. Carlisle & Jacquelin, 417 U.S. 156, 171, 94 S.Ct. 2140, 2149, 40 L.Ed.2d 732 (1974)). We concluded that the district court's remand order, which instructed the Secretary to apply a legal standard significantly different from that which she had been using in determining disability, constituted an appealable final judgment. Stone, 722 F.2d at 467. We explained that refusing appellate jurisdiction might result in the agency's application of an incorrect legal standard. Id. Moreover, we pointed out that if the legal standard formulated by the district court were wrong, the administrative proceeding would be wasted. Id. Thus, we concluded that reviewing the correctness of the legal standard articulated by the district court will promote the least possible waste of judicial resources. Id. 9 12 Stone is controlling here. On remand the Secretary would have to determine the reasonableness of each of UCDMC's claimed expenses. As in Stone, if the legal standard propounded by the district court were incorrect, the Secretary would be required to engage in a wholly wasted proceeding. Moreover, if upon applying the incorrect legal standard on remand, the Secretary were to conclude that the expenses in question had not been reasonably incurred, the propriety of that standard might prove immune from our review. We find the remand order involved here to be identical in all material respects to that considered in Stone, and thus conclude that it is a properly appealable final judgment.