Court Opinion

ID: 9495977
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:14:41.382154+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:57:17.819343
License: Public Domain

WALLACE, Senior Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
While I appreciate the majority’s analysis, I must respectfully dissent from its decision to assume jurisdiction over this interlocutory appeal. The appeal should be dismissed.
The majority cannot be faulted for following circuit cases regarding appellate jurisdiction in this case. Some of our court’s interpretations of 28 U.S.C. § 158(d) justifies a “pragmatic approach to finality” which allows many interlocutory orders to slip through the gates to appellate review. Despite the plain language of section 158(d), which allows us jurisdiction to hear appeals “from all final decisions, judgments, orders, and decrees” entered by a district court sitting as an appellate tribunal in bankruptcy, we have interpreted these words more than expansively to include interlocutory, non-final remand orders like that at issue in this case. N. Slope Borough v. Barstow (In re MarkAir, Inc.), 308 F.3d 1057, 1060 (9th Cir.2002); DeMarah v. United States (In re DeMarah), 62 F.3d 1248, 1250 (9th Cir.1995); Bonner Mall P’ship v. U.S. Bancorp Mortgage Co. (In re Bonner Mall P’Ship), 2 F.3d 899, 903-04 (9th Cir.1993); Vylene Enters. v. Naugles, Inc., 968 F.2d 887, 894-95 (9th Cir.1992); Zolg v. Kelly (In re Kelly), 841 F.2d 908, 911 (9th Cir.1988); King v. Stanton (In re Stanton), 766 F.2d 1283, 1285-86 (9th Cir.1985); Dental Capital Leasing Corp. v. Martinez (In re Martinez), 721 F.2d 262, 265 (9th Cir.1983).
My view is that we should not accept jurisdiction in this appeal because the Supreme Court made it clear eleven years ago in Conn. Nat’l Bank v. Germain, 503 U.S. 249, 112 S.Ct. 1146, 117 L.Ed.2d 391 (1992) that jurisdiction over appeals of non-final orders in bankruptcy cases is governed by 28 U.S.C. § 1292, pursuant to which we, in our discretion, may assume jurisdiction after the district court has certified to this court “a controlling question of law as to which there is substantial ground for difference of opinion.” Ger-main reviewed the Second Circuit’s decision that section 158(d) effectively limited the scope of section 1292 so that an appellate court has jurisdiction only over final *1176orders issued by a district court sitting as a bankruptcy appeals court; in order to hear an interlocutory appeal from the district court in such a case, the order at issue must have been entered by the district court after it had withdrawn the case from bankruptcy under 28 U.S.C. § 157(d). Germain v. Conn. Nat’l Bank, 926 F.2d 191, 196 (2d Cir.1991).
The Supreme Court in Germain explained that although sections 158(d) (jurisdiction over final decisions of district courts sitting as courts of appeal in bankruptcy) and 1291 (jurisdiction over appeals from final decisions of the district courts) appear to operate independently, “the statutes do not pose an either-or proposition.” 503 U.S. at 253, 112 S.Ct. 1146. Rather, “[sjections 1291 and 158(d) [ ] overlap ... but each section confers jurisdiction over cases that the other section does not reach.” Id. Likewise, section 158(d) does not “precludfe] jurisdiction under § 1292.” Id. In discussing the relationship of sections 158(d) and 1292, the Court stated:
[T]he judicial inquiry into the applicability of § 1292 begins and ends with what § 1292 does say and with what § 158(d) does not. Section 1292 provides for review in the courts of appeals, in certain circumstances, of “interlocutory orders of the district courts of the United States.” Section 158(d) is silent as to review of interlocutory orders.... So long as a party to a proceeding or case in bankruptcy meets the conditions imposed by § 1292, a court of appeals may rely on that statute as a basis for jurisdiction.
Id. at 254, 112 S.Ct. 1146. The Supreme Court’s explanation is quite simple: section 158(d) concerns only final orders, so when dealing with an appeal of an interlocutory order in bankruptcy, courts of appeals must look to section 1292, as they do in any other civil case in which there is an appeal of an interlocutory order. This logic has not been lost on our sister circuits. AroChem Corp. v. Coan (In re AroChem), 176 F.3d 610, 618 (2d Cir.1999); The Wallace & Gale Co. v. Aetna Cas. & Sur. Co. (In re Wallace & Gale Co.), 72 F.3d 21, 24 (4th Cir.1995); Orix Credit Alliance v. Delta Res. Inc. (In re Delta Res. Inc.), 54 F.3d 722, 727 n. 4 (11th Cir.1995); Plan Comm. v. Clark (In re Bank Bldg. & Equip. Corp. of Am.), 23 F.3d 1390, 1392 n. 5 (8th Cir.1994); Conroe Office Bldg., Ltd. v. Nichols (Matter of Nichols), 21 F.3d 690, 692-93 (5th Cir.1994); Matter of Stoecker, 5 F.3d 1022, 1026 (7th Cir.1993); Lopez v. Casal (In re Casal), 998 F.2d 28, 31 (1st Cir.1993); Balcor Pension Investors v. Wiston XXIV P’Ship (In re Wiston XXIV P’Ship), 988 F.2d 1012, 1012-13 (10th Cir.1993).
Once Germain became final, we had no choice but to follow it. Its analysis is clear: our Circuit had been wrong on our jurisdictional analysis. But instead of analyzing Germain and conforming to its clear teaching, we merely stated without any analysis that “nothing in Germain casts doubt upon the liberal standard for finality we have adopted regarding § 158(d).” Bonner Mall, 2 F.3d at 904 n. 11. Rather than recognize that by its plain language, 28 U.S.C § 1292 governs appellate jurisdiction of the courts of appeals over interlocutory orders (such as remand orders), our court chose, via our unsupported statement in Bonner Mall, to cling to the extremely liberal standard of finality we had earlier applied to bankruptcy cases. Instead of calling this case “interlocutory,” as it is, this court’s precedent instructs us to call it “final” and exercise jurisdiction over this appeal. I cannot agree that an order of the district court remanding to the bankruptcy court for further fact-finding in conjunction with a determination of how much of Saxman’s $90,000 student loan debt causes him hardship is a final order. Contrary to what the majority *1177says, there is more left for the bankruptcy court to do in this case than merely ministerial computations. On remand, the bankruptcy court must contend with both Saxman’s and ECMC’s differing characterizations of how much “disposable” income Saxman should have each month, which in turn affects how much of his loan causes him hardship. This is a factual inquiry involving issues of financial independence and quality of life, not a simple set of mathematical calculations. Clearly, this does not give us jurisdiction even under our own wrongly decided cases, let alone binding Supreme Court precedent.
Apparently, other circuits would agree with my characterization of the remand. In a majority of the circuits,
a decision by the district court on appeal remanding the bankruptcy court’s decision for further proceedings in the bankruptcy court is not final, and so is not appealable to this court unless the further proceedings contemplated are of a purely ministerial character, such as calculating prejudgment interest when the amount of the judgment, the interest rate, and the period over which the interest is to be calculated are all uncontested.
Matter of Lopez, 116 F.3d 1191, 1192 (7th Cir.1997); accord In re Rex Montis Silver Co., 87 F.3d 435, 438 (10th Cir.1996); Jove Eng’g, Inc. v. I.R.S., 92 F.3d 1539, 1548 (11th Cir.1996); In re Prudential Lines, Inc., 59 F.3d 327, 331-32 (2d Cir.1995); In re Broken Bow Ranch, Inc., 33 F.3d 1005, 1008 (8th Cir.1994); In re Harrington, 992 F.2d 3, 6 (1st Cir.1993); In re St. Charles Pres. Investors, Ltd., 916 F.2d 727, 729 (D.C.Cir.1990) (per curiam); United States, Dep’t of Air Force v. Carolina Parachute Corp., 907 F.2d 1469, 1472 n. 3 (4th Cir.1990). Determining how much of his loan Saxman can repay without causing him an undue hardship is not, in my view, analogous to the ministerial task of calculating interest when all of the variables are known.
This of course makes it all the more ironic that the majority chose to cite In re Fox, 762 F.2d 54, 55 (7th Cir.1985) when calling the bankruptcy court’s remaining tasks in this case “ministerial,” since the Seventh Circuit, and the seven other circuits cited above, have openly rejected the Ninth Circuit’s approach to the finality of remand orders in bankruptcy cases. Matter of Lopez, 116 F.3d at 1194 (calling the Ninth Circuit’s approach “terribly wooly” and stating that the word “final” in section 158(d), “cannot be thought, in light of the tradition of bankruptcy cases, a term of art meaning ‘final or nonfinal’ ”).
Nor am I the first in the Ninth Circuit to recognize that Germain casts grave doubts on our liberal standard for finality under section 158(d). For example, in Vylene, we acknowledged that the then recently decided Supreme Court Germain opinion challenged “[ejxisting Ninth Circuit precedent [that] holds ... that the finality standards [under sections 158(d) and 1291] differ.” 968 F.2d at 891. This is because, as we accepted in Vylene, “The Supreme Court has stated that §§ 158(d) and 1291 afford the same jurisdiction with respect to final orders of a district court sitting in its bankruptcy appellate capacity. To afford the same jurisdiction, both statutes would have to have the same finality standards in bankruptcy proceedings.” Id. at 892 (citing Germain, 503 U.S. at 253, 112 S.Ct. 1146) (internal citation omitted).
Vylene left for another panel the resolution of the conflict between Germain and this circuit’s interpretation of finality in the bankruptcy context. Id. at 891. The conflict was properly acknowledged again in Stanley v. Crossland, Crossland, Chambers, MacArthur & Lastreto (In re Lakeshore Village Resort, Ltd.), 81 F.3d 103, 105-06 (9th Cir.1996). There, we observed *1178that “Germain cast some doubt on our holdings that section 158(d) provides broader appellate jurisdiction in bankruptcy proceedings than that provided by section 1291 in other civil litigation,” but we did not resolve the conflict because the district court’s decision was not final under either standard.
These cases make it clear that Bonner Mall’s assertion that “nothing in Germain casts doubt upon the liberal standard for finality we have adopted regarding § 158(d)” cannot be sustained. 2 F.3d at 904 n. 11. Vylene and Stanley, decided before Bonner Mall, both acknowledge the conflict. Not only did the Supreme Court in Germain hold that section 1292, rather than section 158(d), governs appellate jurisdiction over interlocutory orders (like the remand in this case), it also made it clear that this circuit’s section 158(d) finality jurisprudence must be reconciled with section 1291. This should be obvious from the circuit split, where we largely stand alone against the majority of our sister circuits.
I think it is undeniable that our responsibility is to follow the Supreme Court rather than our tortured attempt to circumvent a clear jurisdictional rule. I would follow Germain and dismiss the appeal. Because this case does not present a final decision even under our misguided precedents, I dissent.