Opinion ID: 3035968
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Application to This Appeal

Text: We have construed the statute to require a procedural framework that is not readily apparent from the statutory text or its legislative history, and have changed the statutory deadline for seeking to appeal to the opposite of what the plain language of the statute says. Under our interpretation, plaintiffs’ timely notice of appeal is ineffectual and their subsequent petition for permission to appeal was filed too late. To avoid the serious unfairness and potential due process violation that applying our holdings to this case might raise, we exercise our authority under FRAP 2 to suspend for good cause the requirements of FRAP 5(a)(1), (b)(1) and (c) in this case, and construe plaintiffs’ timely notice of appeal and untimely petition for permission to appeal as together constituting one timely and proper petition for permission to appeal. As the Supreme Court has recently clarified in Eberhart v. United States, 126 S. Ct. 403, 404-05 (2005) (per curiam), and Kontrick v. Ryan, 540 U.S. 443, 452-53 (2004), claimprocessing rules of court, such as FRAP 5(a)(1), (b)(1) and (c), are not “jurisdictional.” See Kontrick, 540 U.S. at 453 (“[I]t is axiomatic that [procedural rules adopted by the courts] do not create or withdraw federal jurisdiction.”) (internal quotation marks omitted). In addition, in this case our duty to dismiss for failure to comply with these particular rules is not mandatory, given our authority to suspend the rules for good cause. See Fed . R. App. P. 2; cf. Eberhart, 126 S. Ct. 5 As with the issue of the applicability of FRAP 5, see supra, n.2, our decision in Bush, 425 F.3d at 685, appears to have assumed without discussion that the deadline for filing a petition for permission to appeal is seven calendar days, which is not supported by the language of the statute. We therefore do not consider Bush controlling authority on the issue of whether intermediate holidays and weekends are excluded. 1096 AMALGAMATED TRANSIT UNION v. LAIDLAW TRANSIT at 406 (describing as “mandatory” a court’s duty to dismiss an untimely appeal when untimeliness is raised by the opposing party). We emphasize that we are not improperly extending the time for filing a petition for permission to appeal, because the “petition,” as we construe it, was filed not more than seven days after entry of the district court’s order. Rather, we are waiving the requirements that the timely petition filed on October 11, 2005, be filed in this court, that it explain the details of the appeal, and that plaintiffs file the proper number of copies. To the extent the cases relied on by First Transit in its motion to dismiss are still good law after Eberhart and Kontrick, they are either inapposite or not controlling. In Stone v. Heckler, 722 F.2d 464 (9th Cir. 1983), the sole decision of this court First Transit cites, we merely noted that the government had not filed a petition for permission to appeal, at any time, and that therefore we had no jurisdiction to review its appeal under § 1292(b). See id. at 466. It is not clear that the government had even attempted to invoke our jurisdiction under § 1292(b), and we went on to conclude that jurisdiction existed under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 as an appeal from a final order. See id. at 466-67. Thus, reliance on Stone for a jurisdictional rule that would prevent us in this case from construing plaintiffs’ notice of appeal in conjunction with their later filing as a timely and proper petition for permission to appeal is simply unwarranted, even if the Supreme Court had not recently clarified the “non-jurisdictional” nature of the appellate rules.