Court Opinion

ID: 9483889
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:34:34.902551+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:53.867036
License: Public Domain

MANION, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. I disagree that the remand is appealable as a collateral order or under the doctrine of practical finality. A brief review of the facts is appropriate. The Secretary of Health and Human Services denied Morris Travis Social Security benefits and he appealed to the district court. The case unfortunately languished at the district court for a number of years, and then was transferred to Judge Sharp. Prior to this, Travis had filed a motion for remand under sentence 6 of 42 U.S.C. section 405(g) so that he could present new evidence to the agency. Sentence 6 allows a district judge to remand a case to the agency to consider “additional evidence.” Judge Sharp took this authorization a step further — he ordered the Secretary “to conduct a full and fresh proceeding before a new and different [administrative law judge].” The Secretary appeals.
Generally, an order remanding a case to an administrative agency is “nonfinal and hence nonappealable”. Crowder v. Sullivan, 897 F.2d 252 (7th Cir.1990). Courts have construed two exceptions to this general rule: the doctrine of practical finality and the collateral order rule. The doctrine of practical finality applies where the district court resolves a legal issue in such a way that judgment becomes, as a practical matter, the dispositive order in the case. Thus in Crowder, we deemed final and appealable a district court order which invalidated a standard upon which the Secretary denied social security benefits, and remanded for consideration under a new standard. On remand the Secretary would have been left with the choice between awarding benefits under the new standard (an award the Secretary could not appeal), or refusing to award benefits because of the agency’s disagreement with the court’s interpretation of the applicable standard. We considered the district court’s judgment final for the purposes of 28 U.S.C. § 1291, because it “terminated the agency’s judicial remedies other than contempt.” Id. at 253; see also Sullivan v. Finkelstein, 496 U.S. 617, 110 S.Ct. 2658, 110 L.Ed.2d 563 (1990).
The collateral order rule, established in Cohen v. Beneficial Industrial Loan Corp., 337 U.S. 541, 69 S.Ct. 1221, 93 L.Ed. 1528 (1949), bears some resemblance to the doctrine of practical finality. An order remanding a case to the Secretary may be considered final as a collateral order if it: “(1) finally determines claims entirely collateral to and separable from the substance of the other claims in the action, (2) requires review because they present significant and unrelated questions, and (3) cannot be reviewed effectively once the case is finally decided.” Huie v. Bowen, 788 F.2d 698, 702 (11th Cir.1986). We have noted that the second and third prongs overlap in part, “but the two prongs essentially incorporate a requirement of irreparable harm stemming from a denial of immediate appeal.” In Re Klein, 940 F.2d 1075, 1078 (7th Cir.1991). Therefore, when assessing these factors, we look to whether “the appellant can point to ... rights irretrievably lost if we deny jurisdiction.” Id.
The district court’s remand order in this case does not address, let alone resolve, the merits of the case. The remand order simply nullifies the previous proceeding before the agency, and requires that the parties start from scratch. This is not like the Crowder, Finkelstein line of cases where the district court’s resolution of a legal issue became, for all practical purposes, the dispositive order in the case. Unlike those cases, the remand order in this case leaves the legal standards in place, and simply requires that the parties duplicate a previous effort.
Nor is this like the Cohen line of cases where the district court resolves an important collateral issue. Here, the district judge resolved no issues; he just remanded *926the case. The remand order in this case is like the one we reviewed in In Re Klein, which “did not resolve the substantive rights of the parties in any way, but merely decided one procedural question along the way.” 940 F.2d at 1077. There is no right irretrievably lost if we deny jurisdiction, and therefore no irreparable harm. The Secretary maintains the substantive right to litigate this dispute at the administrative level, and to defend any appeal at the district court. The remand order does not affect the substantive right to litigate or the standards under which it might be exercised.
While the remand produces no prejudice occasioned by the loss of a substantive right, it creates a possibility of inconvenience. But we should not expand our jurisdiction to address inconvenience, even if the result seems expensive or unfair. The duplication of effort engendered by this remand might well be unfair to the Secretary; it is not the agency’s fault that the case languished and was transferred. The Supreme Court has stated that, “the possibility that a ruling may be erroneous and may impose additional litigation expenses is not sufficient to set aside the finality requirement imposed by Congress. ‘If the expense of litigation were a sufficient reason for granting an exception to the final judgment rule, the exception might well swallow the rule.’ ” In Re Klein, 940 F.2d at 1078, quoting Richardson-Merrell Inc. v. Koller, 472 U.S. 424, 436, 105 S.Ct. 2757, 2764, 86 L.Ed.2d 340 (1985). The remand order in this case is analogous to a district court’s order granting a new trial. Even though such an order might cause undue hardship to one of the parties, and even though the result of the new trial might differ from the first trial, the order is still not appealable. Charles A. Wright & Arthur R. Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure § 2540 at 612 (1971).
This court’s expansion of our jurisdiction is a novel application of the limited exceptions embodied in the practical finality and collateral order doctrines. This appears to be the first time a federal appellate court has deemed a sentence 6 remand immediately appealable as a final order. The decision runs contrary to the Supreme Court’s reasoning in Melkonyan v. Sullivan, — U.S. -, 111 S.Ct. 2157, 2165, 115 L.Ed.2d 78 (1991), that sentence 6 remands are not final orders. The court’s resolution of this matter is essentially practical; it seeks to reverse an order which seems to overstep the authority vested in the district court. But our usual method “to confine an inferi- or court to a lawful exercise of its prescribed jurisdiction” is by granting a writ of mandamus. Will v. United States, 389 U.S. 90, 95, 88 S.Ct. 269, 273, 19 L.Ed.2d 305 (1967). There is no reason to decide whether a writ of mandamus is appropriate in this case; the Secretary has not complied with Appellate Rule 21 in seeking a writ. The Secretary asks only that if we deny jurisdiction, we consider the appeal a Petition for Writ of Mandamus. The record includes no Petition for Writ of Mandamus, and no evidence that the Secretary has served such a petition on the district judge. Without more, we should not consider mandamus relief.
To summarize, we only possess appellate jurisdiction over cases where the district court has entered a final order. Coopers & Lybrand v. Livesay, 437 U.S. 463, 467, 98 S.Ct. 2454, 2457, 57 L.Ed.2d 351 (1978). A final order is one that “ends the litigation on the merits and leaves nothing for the court to do but execute the judgment.” Catlin v. United States, 324 U.S. 229, 233, 65 S.Ct. 631, 633, 89 L.Ed. 911 (1945). The remand order in this case does not resolve or even address the merits of the case. Neither does the remand order threaten irreparable harm by resolving a collateral issue essential to the case. The remand order is not appealable. This appeal should be dismissed.