Court Opinion

ID: 9497549
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:53:44.724876+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:15.492646
License: Public Domain

KOZINSKI, Circuit Judge,
with whom Judges RYMER and McKEOWN join,
dissenting:
We must never forget that it is “excusable neglect” we are expounding. Before Pioneer Investment Services Co. v. Brunswick Associates Ltd. Partnership, 507 U.S. 380, 113 S.Ct. 1489, 123 L.Ed.2d 74 (1993), four circuits had forgotten; they interpreted this phrase as “requiring a showing that the delay was caused by circumstances beyond the movant’s control.” Id. at 387 n. 3, 113 S.Ct. 1489. But how could circumstances beyond one’s control be neglect? A jurisprudence that refused to excuse anything one could fairly call “neglect” was inconsistent with the clear text of rules that, by their terms, provide exceptions for “excusable neglect.” Pioneer corrected the error and gave us a four-part test for recognizing when admitted neglect — inadvertence, miscalculation, negligence, carelessness — can nonetheless be excused.
But if excusable neglect must be neglect, it must also be excusable. Pioneer’s four-part test isn’t just a black box into which we throw (1) prejudice to the adverse party, (2) the length of the delay, (3) the reason for the delay, and (4) the good faith of the movant, and accept whatever comes out. When all the weighing and balancing is done, we must have something we can say with a straight face is excusable. Factors one, two and four will almost always cut one way: Delays are seldom long, so prejudice is typically minimal. Bad-faith delay is rare, given that we’re only dealing with “neglect,” not deliberate flouting of the rules, see Pioneer, 507 U.S. at 387-88, 113 S.Ct. 1489—though flouting does happen on occasion. See Laurino v. Syringa Gen. Hosp., 279 F.3d 750, 758 (9th Cir.2002) (Kozinski, J., dissenting). Most of the work, then, is done by factor three, the most important one, see, e.g., Lowry v. McDonnell Douglas Corp., 211 F.3d 457, 463 (8th Cir.2000), which may balance out any findings under the other factors: The greater the delay, the prejudice to the adverse party and the movant’s bad faith, the better a reason the movant must show for having missed the deadline.1 In this *862case, the district court found there was no prejudice to Pincay, the delay was short and there was no bad faith. Thus, defendants need not have offered a terribly good countervailing reason to make their neglect excusable.
But they needed to show something. Was this a class action that bristled with client “consultation difficulties”? See Marx v. Loral Corp., 87 F.3d 1049, 1053-54 (9th Cir.1996). Was the client distracted by a divorce and job change, and had he lost his lawyer to boot? See Laurino, 279 F.3d at 753. Was the rule confusing or notice of the deadline unusual? See Pioneer, 507 U.S. at 398, 113 S.Ct. 1489. No, no and no. The action was not complicated; the lawyer worked at a large, sophisticated law firm; and the rule is as clear as legal mies get:
In a civil case, except as provided in Rules 4(a)(1)(B), 4(a)(4), and 4(c), the notice of appeal required by Rule 3 must be filed with the district clerk within 30 days after the judgment or order appealed from is entered.
Fed. R.App. P. 4(a)(1)(A). As the text indicates, the rule only has three exceptions. The first is that the notice of appeal may be filed in 60 days instead of 30 if “the United States ... is a party.” Fed. R.App. P. 4(a)(1)(B). It isn’t. The second exception only applies if certain motions are filed. Fed. R.App. P. 4(a)(4). None were. The third exception applies to inmates, which defendant is not. Fed. R.App. P. 4(c). Thus, the number of days to file a notice of appeal was 30 — no ifs, ands or buts about it. There surely are complicated rules in the law, but this isn’t one of them. The majority agrees: “[A]ny lawyer or paralegal should have been able to read the rule correctly.” Maj. op. at 855.
Rather than present a reason for the neglect, defendants call the error “ ‘inexplicable,’ ” Appellees’ Br. at 32 (quoting Appellants’ Br. at 10), and “aberrational.” Id. But “inexplicable” and “aberrational” are not synonyms for excusable. In such circumstances, I have trouble seeing how the balance can tilt in favor of excusability.
Defendants do point to one exonerating circumstance, though it is not so much a “reason” for the delay as a proof of then-good faith, which we assume anyway: their lawyer’s “[cjarefully [djesigned and [sjtaffed,” “reliable] and successful ]” calendaring system. Appellees’ Br. at 7-8; see also id. at 10 (describing counsel’s additional efforts to avoid error). But this doesn’t help them: Extreme good faith has no exonerating power of its own; bad faith can sink an excusable neglect claim, and good faith is nothing but the absence of this negative. In any event, the calendaring system here did not fail. The wrong date was calendared with meticulous efficiency and accuracy. But the lawyer did fail by abdicating his basic duty — to determine the applicable appeal deadline based on a clear-as-day rule.
At bottom, what the sophisticated-calendaring-system excuse comes down to is that the lawyer didn’t bother to read the rule; instead, he relied on what a calendaring clerk told him. While delegation may be a necessity in modern law practice, *863it can’t be a lever for ratcheting down the standard for professional competence. If it’s inexcusable for a competent lawyer to misread the rule, it can’t become excusable because the lawyer turned the task over to a non-lawyer. Errors made by clerks performing lawyerly functions are probably less excusable than those made by the lawyer himself; they certainly can’t be more so.
The majority may be right that any competent lawyer or clerk should have been able to read the rule correctly, but that is quite different from saying that a lawyer and a non-lawyer would be equally likely to misread the rule. Studying and practicing law develops certain skills and habits of mind that, one hopes, make lawyers more careful than non-lawyers about reading rules. When a lawyer turns this function over to a non-lawyer, it increases the likelihood an error will be made. Had the lawyer in this case read the rule himself, rather than relying on what a clerk told him, he doubtless would have gotten it right. Indeed, the 30-day rule for appeals in federal court is so well known among federal practitioners that, had the lawyer but thought about the rule, rather than relying entirely on the calendaring clerk’s representation, he would surely have realized that the 60-day period is wrong. Instead, the lawyer delegated the calendaring issue to the calendaring “system,” which is made up entirely of non-lawyers. If turning large chunks of law practice over to para-professionals can itself be an excuse for misreading rules, then we’ll probably see more such delegation and misreading. It is the cold logic of the marketplace that conduct that is rewarded will be repeated.2
The Supreme Court told us in Pioneer that “inadvertence, ignorance of the rules, or mistakes construing the rules do not usually constitute ‘excusable’ neglect.” 507 U.S. at 392, 113 S.Ct. 1489. Pioneer forecloses any per se rule against “mistakes construing the rules.” Still, the word “usually” suggests that we should not apply the balancing test so that virtually no type of mistake is off limits for excusable negligence. Yet this is precisely what the majority has done here, because if this mistake is excusable, I can’t imagine a mistake that isn’t. See Prizevoits v. Ind. Bell Tel. Co., 76 F.3d 132, 134 (7th Cir.1996) (“If there was ‘excusable’ neglect here, we have difficulty imagining a case of inexcusable neglect.”). No circuit has taken a position as charitable to lawyer errors as we do today; the majority is at odds with decisions in at least six other circuits. See Silivanch v. Celebrity Cruises, Inc., 333 F.3d 355, 369-70 (2d Cir.2003); Midwest Employers Cas. Co. v. Williams, 161 F.3d 877, 879 (5th Cir.1998); Prizevoits, 76 F.3d at 134; Lowry, 211 F.3d at 464; United States v. Torres, 372 F.3d 1159, 1163-64 (10th Cir.2004); Advanced Estimating Sys., Inc. v. Riney, 130 F.3d 996, 998-99 (11th Cir.1997).3
Identifying classes of cases where Pioneer balancing cannot excuse neglect is not, as the majority suggests, Maj. op. at 860, adopting a per se rule. It is merely *864providing the sort of guidance that we are entitled and required to give district courts. This is, in fact, what the Supreme Court did in Pioneer: It re-weighed the factors assessed by the bankruptcy court and found an abuse of discretion. If a finding that neglect is not excusable can be an abuse of discretion (as the Supreme Court held in Pioneer), it surely makes no sense to hold that a finding of excusable neglect can never be an abuse of discretion (as the majority holds today). See id. at 860 (“[W]e leave the weighing of Pioneer’s equitable factors to the discretion of the district court in every case.”). To do so abdicates our responsibility of appellate review and, if taken literally, results in as many rules as there are district judges.4
I would hold that the error here— whether made by the lawyer, the calendaring clerk or the candlestick-maker — is inexcusable and dismiss the appeal as untimely.

. We know from the Supreme Court’s opinion in Pioneer that not all excuses are created equal. Respondents in Pioneer offered two excuses for failing to file a timely proof of *862claim: (1) "[R]espondents' counsel ... was experiencing upheaval in his law practice at the time of the bar date,” 507 U.S. at 398, 113 S.Ct. 1489; and (2) the notice of the bar date contained a "dramatic ambiguity,” id. (quoting Brunswick Assocs. Ltd. P’ship v. Pioneer Inv. Servs. Co. (In re Pioneer Inv. Servs. Co.), 943 F.2d 673, 678 (6th Cir.1991)) (internal quotation marks omitted). The Court dismissed the first excuse as carrying "little weight,” id., but found the second one compelling. This passage in Pioneer, where the Court performed precisely the kind of review we are doing today, precludes the majority’s argument that any excuse, or no excuse, can be sufficient to support a finding of excusable neglect.

. Judge Berzon suggests that "even the complete misfiring of a generally well-conceived calendaring system” is a better excuse than, say, "letting court orders pile up on desks, with no effort to read them or calculate appeal deadlines.” Concur, op. at 860-61. But it’s not clear why Judge Berzon believes the lawyer who procrastinates his professional duties is acting inexcusably while the lawyer who foists them off onto a non-lawyer is not. Procrastination and delegation are different ways of shirking professional obligations. They both occasionally result in missed deadlines, for more or less the same reason: The lawyer paid insufficient attention to his cases.

. The D.C. Circuit has upheld a district court finding of excusable neglect for missing a deadline, but this was in the context of "a case-management decision in a complex class action, in which district court discretion is at *864its greatest.” In re Vitamins Antitrust Class Actions, 327 F.3d 1207, 1210 (D.C.Cir.2003).

. Imagine what will happen the next time we get a case on materially indistinguishable facts, except that the district court found the delay inexcusable. Will it be just to tell the litigant that his case is lost because he happened to draw the wrong district judge?