Court Opinion

ID: 9555590
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-14 16:00:56.224617+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:36:52.459554
License: Public Domain

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                                                            [PUBLISH]
                                    In the
                 United States Court of Appeals
                         For the Eleventh Circuit

                           ____________________

                                 No. 22-10048
                           ____________________

        EMERGENCY RECOVERY, INC., et al.,
                                                      Plaintiff-Appellants,
        versus
        BRYAN HUFNAGLE, et al.,

                                                    Defendant-Appellees.

                           ____________________

                  Appeal from the United States District Court
                       for the Middle District of Florida
                    D.C. Docket No. 8:19-cv-00329-SCB-JSS
                           ____________________
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        2                      Opinion of the Court                 22-10048

        Before BRANCH, BRASHER, and ED CARNES, Circuit Judges.
        ED CARNES, Circuit Judge:
               Two companies filed a lawsuit in federal court against two
        of their former employees, who had served in executive positions.
        The former executives responded by suing the companies in
        Florida state court. They later moved for summary judgment in
        the federal action. While that motion was pending, the companies
        moved for a voluntary dismissal without prejudice of their federal
        action, which the executives opposed.
               The district court granted the companies’ motion for
        voluntary dismissal, and it denied the executives’ request for
        attorney’s fees and costs incurred in defending the federal lawsuit
        to that point. It did so because it thought that the work their
        attorneys had done in the federal case would be useful in the
        parallel state court case, which was ongoing. The executives
        appealed that order, and we vacated it and remanded for the district
        court to: “address what portion of the work performed by the
        executives’ attorneys in the federal litigation will be useful in the
        state court litigation, explaining the basis for its decision.”
        Emergency Recovery, Inc. v. Hufnagle, 861 F. App’x 355, 361 (11th Cir.
        2021). We also asked the district court to then “weigh the equities
        and decide whether to condition the dismissal on the companies’
        payment of these expenses.” Id.
               On remand, the district court again granted the voluntary
        dismissal, stating that the executives could move for fees and costs
        again if the companies refiled their federal lawsuit against them.
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        3                      Opinion of the Court                 22-10048

        The executives moved to alter or amend that judgment and be
        awarded fees and costs immediately, which the court denied. This
        is the executives’ appeal. They contend that the district court failed
        to follow our mandate and abused its discretion when it failed to
        award them costs and fees immediately. We are not persuaded.
                                I.     Background
               Emergency Recovery, Inc. (ERI) is a company owned by
        Bobbie Celler. The company offers medical billing services for
        healthcare providers. In 2017 ERI hired Bryan Hufnagle as its chief
        operating officer and Joseph King as its senior vice president of
        operations. They both signed employment agreements with ERI.
        Those agreements provided that they would work for ERI as
        executives for two years, they could be terminated only for just
        cause, and they would not disclose any of ERI’s trade secrets or
        confidential materials.
                In February 2018 ERI agreed to sell its assets to Solatium
        Healthcare, another company owned by Celler. A few months
        later, the executives signed new employment agreements with
        Solatium. The new agreements provided them with higher base
        salaries and a larger share of the profits than they had received at
        ERI. The new agreements also included restrictive covenants that
        barred the executives from working in the field of “third-party
        insurance billing and third-party insurance collection” for twelve
        months after their employment with Solatium ended. Although
        they entered those agreements with Solatium, they never officially
        worked for that company, and ERI never transferred any assets to
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        4                      Opinion of the Court                 22-10048

        it. ERI continued to pay the executives’ salaries, but it paid them
        based on the more generous terms of their contractual agreements
        with Solatium.
              In January 2019 the executives were fired. ERI and Solatium
        then sued the executives in federal district court, alleging that they
        had failed to maintain relationships with clients and grow the
        business and that they disclosed the companies’ trade secrets. The
        companies asserted claims under federal and Florida law for
        misappropriation of trade secrets, and they asserted Florida law
        claims for breach of contract and tortious interference with
        business relationships.
               A few days later, the executives sued the companies in
        Florida state court. They requested (1) an accounting from the
        companies to determine the share of profits they should receive,
        (2) a declaration that the restrictive covenants in their employment
        agreements were unenforceable, and (3) a declaration that they had
        been terminated without just cause and as a result were owed
        compensation and benefits.
               The parties conducted extensive discovery in the federal
        case. During the discovery period, the executives moved to compel
        the companies to identify the trade secrets that had allegedly been
        shared and to justify their damages calculations. The district court
        granted those motions. Based on the restrictive covenants in the
        executives’ employment agreements with both companies,
        Solatium sought a preliminary injunction barring them from
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        5                     Opinion of the Court                22-10048

        working for a competitor. An evidentiary hearing was held but no
        ruling was issued.
               Following discovery, the executives moved for summary
        judgment on all of the companies’ claims. The companies
        eventually responded with a motion for voluntary dismissal of
        their lawsuit without prejudice. The executives opposed that
        motion. They argued, alternatively, that if the court did grant a
        dismissal without prejudice, the dismissal should be conditioned on
        payment of their costs and attorney’s fees.
               The companies replied that they should not have to pay costs
        and fees because the work done by the executives’ attorneys in the
        federal case “is useful towards the resolution of ” the state court
        case. The district court granted the companies’ motion for
        voluntary dismissal without prejudice and without conditions
        under Rule 41(a)(2). The court concluded that the work the
        executives’ attorneys had performed in the federal case would be
        useful in the Florida state court case.
                The executives moved under Federal Rule of Civil
        Procedure 59(e) to alter or amend that dismissal order. They
        contended that not all of their attorneys’ work in the federal
        litigation would be useful in the state court case and that they
        should therefore receive costs and fees for that work. The district
        court denied their motion for reconsideration, and the executives
        appealed.
             A panel of our Court vacated the district court’s order that
        imposed no conditions on the dismissal and remanded the case for
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        6                      Opinion of the Court                 22-10048

        further proceedings. Hufnagle, 861 F. App’x at 361. The panel did
        hold that the district court acted within its discretion by granting
        the voluntary dismissal without prejudice. Id. at 359–60. But the
        panel vacated that order anyway and remanded because the district
        court had adopted the companies’ conclusory statement that the
        work done by the executives’ attorneys was useful toward the
        resolution of the state court case; the court had given no
        explanation beyond that conclusory statement for not requiring the
        companies to pay the executives’ costs and attorney’s fees. Id. at
        360–61.
                The previous panel explained that: “a single-sentence
        minute entry that relied on the companies’ response to the motion
        [for reconsideration] to find, once again, that the work performed
        by the executives’ attorneys would be useful in the state court
        litigation” was not enough. Id. at 360. And that without further
        explanation this Court would be “unable to engage in meaningful
        appellate review of the district court’s decision and [we] must
        remand for the district court to explain [its ruling].” Id. (citing
        Friends of the Everglades v. S. Fla. Water Mgmt. Dist., 678 F.3d 1199,
        1201 (11th Cir. 2012)). We went on to say:
               Sometimes when a district court fails to explain its
               reasoning, we nevertheless are able to engage in
               meaningful review because we can infer from the
               record the basis for the court’s decision. See United
               States v. $242,484.00, 389 F.3d 1149, 1154 (11th Cir.
               2004). But we cannot do so in this case because the
               record did not include evidence from which the
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        7                      Opinion of the Court                22-10048

               district court could determine that all the work
               performed in the federal litigation would be useful in
               the state court litigation. Indeed, the record contains
               only minimal information about the state court
               proceedings. And it contains no time records or other
               information from the executives’ attorneys detailing
               the work they performed in defending the federal
               lawsuit. In the absence of a developed record, we
               cannot discern the basis for the district court's
               decision that all the work the executives’ attorneys
               performed to defend this action would be useful in
               the state court litigation.
        Id. at 360–61.
               While the record did contain enough to find that some of
        the work of the executives’ attorneys in the federal case would be
        useful in the state court case, there was not enough overlap to
        affirm the district court’s decision. The problem was that the
        federal action included some claims the state court action did not.
        The overlap was not complete. And that prevented “discern[ing]
        the basis for the district court’s determination that work the
        executives’ attorneys undertook to defend against [some of the
        claims in the federal action] or oppose the motion for preliminary
        injunction would be useful in the state court action.” Id. at 361.
              The earlier panel vacated the district court’s order imposing
        no conditions on the dismissal and remanded for further
        proceedings with these instructions:
               We therefore vacate the order imposing no conditions
               on the dismissal and remand for further proceedings.
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        8                      Opinion of the Court                  22-10048

               On remand, the district court should address what
               portion of the work performed by the executives’
               attorneys in the federal litigation will be useful in the
               state court litigation, explaining the basis for its
               decision. After deciding this question, the district
               court should weigh the equities and decide whether
               to condition the dismissal on the companies’ payment
               of these expenses.
        Id. (citing McCants v. Ford Motor Co., 781 F.2d 855, 860–61 (11th Cir.
        1986)).
                On remand, the district court followed those instructions. It
        ordered the parties to submit additional briefing on what portion
        of the work performed by the executives’ attorneys in the federal
        action would be useful in the state court litigation. The companies,
        of course, contended that all of the work would be useful in the
        state court case, but they were forced to admit that their “ability to
        specifically discuss the work done by [the executives’] counsel [was]
        limited” because the record lacked evidence of the fees they had
        incurred. The companies argued that if the court were “inclined
        to impose the payment of some attorney’s fees as a condition for
        dismissal, the Court should require the payment only upon the
        refiling of the [federal] action.”
               The executives again insisted that they should immediately
        receive attorney’s fees and costs arising from the federal action
        because not all of their attorneys’ work would be useful in the state
        court action. They compared the state and federal cases and
        asserted that much of the work performed in the federal one would
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        9                      Opinion of the Court                 22-10048

        not be useful in the state one. Finally, the executives argued that
        because it was unlikely the companies would refile their federal
        action, payment should not be conditioned on refiling. They
        asserted that the companies must have moved for voluntary
        dismissal “out of fear that they would lose on summary judgment,”
        so “[t]here is never going to be a refiled case.”
                The district court entered an order directing the executives
        to explain “with specificity how the work done by their attorneys
        in the instant case that is not useful in the ongoing state court
        lawsuit would also not be useful if [the companies] decide to refile
        this [federal] action.” The executives answered that much of their
        attorneys’ work was specific to this case, such as the case
        management report, preparation of and responses to motions in
        discovery, and time spent in hearings. They again insisted that the
        district court should require the companies to pay some of their
        attorney’s fees because there would never be a refiled federal case.
               On November 1, 2021, the district court entered an amended
        order on the companies’ motion for voluntary dismissal. It
        reasoned that the executives would not clearly suffer prejudice if
        the case were dismissed without prejudice “given that at least some
        of the work done in this case,” namely, the work related to the
        breach of contract claim, “will be of use in the state court lawsuit.”
        The court determined, with the benefit of the additional briefing,
        that “the breach of contract claims are the extent of the overlap
        between the federal and state lawsuits.”
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        10                        Opinion of the Court                       22-10048

               It concluded that the work the executives’ attorneys did for
        the tortious interference with business relations and
        misappropriation of trade secrets claims would not be useful in the
        state court action. And that the same was true of the work done
        to oppose the companies’ motion for a preliminary injunction
        barring the executives from working for competitors. Given these
        findings, the district court dismissed the case without prejudice
        “with the condition that should [the companies] refile this action,
        [the executives] may move for fees and costs, pursuant to Rule
        41(d).”
               On November 29, 2021, the executives sought to alter or
        amend that order of dismissal under Rule 59(e). They asserted that
        by allowing the executives to move for costs and fees only in the
        event of a refiled federal action, the court had exceeded the scope
        of this Court’s mandate and imposed an “illusory condition.” The
        condition based on refiling was illusory, the executives argued,
        because it was so unlikely the companies would ever refile their
        lawsuit in federal court. The executives asserted that the
        companies had f led from the federal case in order to avoid an
        adverse summary judgment ruling, and they pointed out that the
        statute of limitations was set to run soon (in only 39 days) on the
        federal trade secrets claims. 1

        1
          The statute of limitations on the companies’ federal trade secrets claim is
        three years. 18 U.S.C. § 1836(d). The alleged misuse of a trade secret occurred
        on January 7, 2019. The companies had 67 days to refile after the district court
        entered its amended order of dismissal on November 1, 2021.
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        11                        Opinion of the Court              22-10048

               The companies responded that the executives’ motion was
        procedurally defective. They contended that a Rule 59(e) motion
        cannot be used to challenge a Rule 41(a)(2) order of voluntary
        dismissal without prejudice because the order was not a decision
        on the merits. They added that the court did not violate the
        mandate rule or abuse its discretion in denying the executives an
        award of costs and fees.
              On December 9, 2021, the district court denied the
        executives’ motion to alter or amend the order of dismissal. The
        court agreed with the companies that a Rule 59(e) motion could
        not be used to challenge the order of voluntary dismissal under
        Rule 41(a)(2) because that order of dismissal was not a decision on
        the merits. On January 5, 2022, the executives appealed.
                            II.      Standard of Review
                We review de novo our appellate jurisdiction. Thomas v.
        Phoebe Putney Health Sys., Inc., 972 F.3d 1195, 1200 (11th Cir. 2020).
        We also review de novo the district court’s interpretation and
        application of our mandate in a previous appeal. Winn-Dixie Stores,
        Inc. v. Dolgencorp, LLC, 881 F.3d 835, 843 (11th Cir. 2018).
               We review only for an abuse of discretion an order
        permitting voluntary dismissal under Rule 41(a)(2) and the denial
        of a motion for attorney’s fees and costs arising from it. United
        States v. $70,670.00 in U.S. Currency, 929 F.3d 1293, 1300 (11th Cir.
        2019). “A district court abuses its discretion when it applies an
        incorrect legal standard, relies on clearly erroneous factual
        findings, or commits a clear error of judgment.” Id.
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        12                     Opinion of the Court                 22-10048

                                 III.   Discussion
                                 A.     Jurisdiction
               Jurisdiction is a threshold issue, so we take it up at the
        threshold of our discussion. See Haney v. City of Cumming, 69 F.3d
        1098, 1101 (11th Cir. 1995). The companies say we lack jurisdiction
        because the appeal was not timely filed. Their argument is that the
        executives’ motion to alter or amend was not a true Rule 59(e)
        motion, so it did not toll the time for filing an appeal.
                The basic law is that the “timely filing of a notice of appeal
        in a civil case is a jurisdictional requirement.” Green v. Drug Enf ’t
        Admin., 606 F.3d 1296, 1300 (11th Cir. 2010) (quotation marks
        omitted). To be timely, a party generally has 30 days from the
        district court’s entry of the order or judgment being challenged to
        file the notice of appeal. Fed. R. App. P. 4(a)(1)(A). But if a party
        files a timely motion to alter or amend a judgment under Rule 59,
        “the time to file an appeal runs for all parties from the entry of the
        order disposing” of that motion. Fed. R. App. P. 4(a)(4)(A)(iv).
                Here are the dates. On November 1, 2021, the district court
        entered its amended Rule 41(a)(2) order granting the companies’
        motion for voluntary dismissal. On November 29 the executives
        filed a motion to alter or amend that order, styled under Rule 59(e).
        On December 9 the district court denied that motion, stating that
        it couldn’t be considered a Rule 59(e) motion because a motion
        under that rule can be used only to challenge a decision on the
        merits. According to the district court, the November 29 motion,
        however styled, challenged only the court’s order granting a
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        13                      Opinion of the Court                  22-10048

        motion for dismissal without prejudice under Rule 41(a)(2), which
        is not a decision on the merits.
                The executives appealed on January 5, 2022. That was more
        than 30 days after the November 1 amended order granting the
        companies’ motion for voluntary dismissal. But it was fewer than
        30 days after the December 9 order disposing of the executives’
        November 29 motion, which they had styled as a Rule 59(e) motion
        to alter or amend. Whether the executives’ notice of appeal was
        timely filed depends on whether their November 29 motion was
        truly a Rule 59(e) motion; if so, it tolled the time to file an appeal;
        if not, then it did not.
                Under Rule 59(e), a party may move to “alter or amend a
        judgment.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 59(e). “Rule 59 applies to motions for
        reconsideration of matters encompassed in a decision on the merits
        of the dispute, and not matters collateral to the merits.” Finch v. City
        of Vernon, 845 F.2d 256, 258 (11th Cir. 1988) (emphasis added);
        Osterneck v. Ernst & Whinney, 489 U.S. 169, 174 (1989) (“[A]
        postjudgment motion will be considered a Rule 59(e) motion
        where it involves reconsideration of matters properly encompassed
        in a decision on the merits.”) (quotation marks omitted) (emphasis
        added). The companies contend that the district court’s Rule
        41(a)(2) order entering a voluntary dismissal without prejudice was
        not a decision on the merits, so the executives’ motion could not
        have been a Rule 59(e) motion. And if it was not a proper motion
        to alter or amend under Rule 59(e), the filing of it did not toll the
        time for filing an appeal under Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure
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        14                     Opinion of the Court                 22-10048

        4(a)(4)(A)(iv), which extends the time for filing a notice of appeal
        until a timely filed Rule 59 motion to alter or amend is ruled on.
               That is a good tight syllogism, but the major premise is not
        true, so the conclusion is not valid. The better syllogism is this: a
        motion to alter or amend will lie against any order from which an
        appeal may be filed; an appeal may be filed from a ruling granting
        a voluntary dismissal without prejudice; therefore, a motion to
        alter or amend will lie against an order granting a voluntary
        dismissal without prejudice.
               The word “judgment” as used in Rule 59(e) includes “any
        order from which an appeal lies.” See Fed. R. Civ. P. 54(a)
        (“‘Judgment’ as used in these rules includes . . . any order from
        which an appeal lies.”). And the Rule 41(a)(2) order of voluntary
        dismissal without prejudice was a final, appealable order. See Corley
        v. Long-Lewis, Inc., 965 F.3d 1222, 1229 (11th Cir. 2020) (“[A]n order
        granting voluntary dismissal without prejudice under Rule 41(a)(2)
        is final and appealable by a defendant who had opposed the
        plaintiff ’s motion for voluntary dismissal.”) (quotation marks
        omitted); McGregor v. Bd. of Comm’rs of Palm Beach Cnty., 956 F.2d
        1017, 1020 (11th Cir. 1992) (“An order granting a plaintiff ’s motion
        for voluntary dismissal pursuant to Rule 41(a)(2) qualifies as a final
        judgment for purposes of appeal.”) (quotation marks omitted).
        Because the order of dismissal without prejudice under Rule
        41(a)(2) is a final and appealable order, Rule 59 provides an
        appropriate way to challenge that order. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 54(a).
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        15                     Opinion of the Court                 22-10048

               The companies point to decisions stating that “as a general
        matter, a request for attorney’s fees is not part of the merits of the
        underlying action,” so “a request for attorney’s fees . . . [is] not a
        Rule 59(e) motion.” Osterneck, 489 U.S. at 175. The same is true
        for costs — “a motion for costs filed pursuant to Rule 54(d) does
        not seek ‘to alter or amend the judgment’ within the meaning of
        Rule 59(e)” because it “raises issues wholly collateral to the
        judgment in the main cause of action.” Buchanan v. Stanships, Inc.,
        485 U.S. 265, 268 (1988).
               That is all true enough. But the executives’ motion was not
        a standard post-judgment motion for costs or fees, collateral to the
        merits of the appeal. Instead, the order of dismissal itself is about
        whether to award costs and fees. The district court entered the
        order under our mandate that it “explain[] the basis” for initially
        denying costs and fees and “weigh the equities and decide whether
        to condition the dismissal on the companies’ payment of these
        expenses.” Unlike Osterneck and Buchanan, the judgment from
        which this appeal lies is wrapped up in whether to award costs and
        fees –– to borrow a phrase from another area of the law, the two
        are inextricably intertwined. And the executives’ motion concerns
        the merits of that judgment — the district court’s decision to deny
        costs and fees — not matters “wholly collateral to the judgment”
        being appealed. Cf. Buchanan, 485 U.S. at 268. So Osterneck and
        Buchanan do not control here.
              After all, we have previously determined that a motion was
        a proper Rule 59(e) one notwithstanding that it challenged only an
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        16                         Opinion of the Court                        22-10048

        order granting attorney’s fees. In McGregor the district court
        entered a voluntary dismissal without prejudice but retained
        jurisdiction to award costs and fees. 956 F.2d at 1019. It later
        entered an order awarding the defendant attorney’s fees. Id. The
        plaintiff filed a timely Rule 59(e) motion to alter or amend the
        judgment awarding attorney’s fees. Id. at 1020. We concluded that
        the Rule 59(e) motion tolled the time to file an appeal. Id. at 1021.
                The motion in this case is similar to the one in McGregor; if
        anything, this one is even more closely related to the merits of the
        dismissal order than the one there. In McGregor the order granting
        attorney’s fees was separate from the order of dismissal; here it’s
        all one order. We conclude that the executives’ motion was a Rule
        59(e) motion to alter or amend the judgment, which means the
        district court’s finding that the motion was not a Rule 59(e) one
        was error. And because the executives timely appealed the denial
        of their Rule 59(e) motion, we have jurisdiction.2

        2
          The companies also contend that the district court’s determination that the
        executives’ motion to alter or amend was not a motion under Rule 59(e) is the
        “law of the case.” They assert that in the executives’ opening brief to us they
        did not challenge the district court’s determination, so we are bound by it.
        “Under the law of the case doctrine, a legal decision made at one stage of the
        litigation, unchallenged in a subsequent appeal when the opportunity existed,
        becomes the law of the case for future stages of the same litigation.” United
        States v. Escobar-Urrego, 110 F.3d 1556, 1560 (11th Cir. 1997) (quoting
        Williamsburg Wax Museum v. Historic Figures, 810 F.2d 243, 250 (D.C. Cir.
        1987)). But the executives asserted in their opening brief that their motion
        was a Rule 59(e) motion. And even if they had not, the law of the case doctrine
        does not force us to ignore a conclusion that is clearly incorrect as a matter of
        law. Jenkins Brick Co. v. Bremer, 321 F.3d 1366, 1370 (11th Cir. 2003) (explaining
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        17                         Opinion of the Court                       22-10048

                                        B.      Merits
                Having determined that we have jurisdiction, we turn to the
        merits of the executives’ appeal. They first contend that the district
        court failed to follow our mandate on remand. Specifically, they
        argue that the court should not have considered whether the work
        performed by the executives’ attorneys would be useful if the
        companies refiled the case in federal court and should not have
        conditioned any possible award of costs or fees on a potential
        refiling. The executives also contend that the district court abused
        its discretion because it denied them an immediate award of costs
        and attorney’s fees and didn’t explain how their interests would be
        protected by that decision. We address each argument in turn.
              1.      Whether the district court followed our mandate
              We first consider whether the district court properly
        followed our mandate when it conditioned the possible award of

        that the law of the case doctrine does not apply where “the initial decision was
        clearly erroneous and would work manifest injustice”) (quotation marks
        omitted). More importantly perhaps, the law of the case doctrine applies to
        courts of appeals decisions, not to district court decisions, and it does not
        concern itself with what is or isn’t in a brief. See Heathcoat v. Potts, 905 F.2d
        367, 370 (11th Cir. 1990) (“Under the law of the case doctrine, the findings of
        fact and conclusions of law by an appellate court are generally binding in all
        subsequent proceedings in the same case in the trial court or on a later
        appeal.”) (quotation marks omitted).
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        18                         Opinion of the Court                       22-10048

        the executives’ costs and fees on the companies’ refiling of the
        federal lawsuit. The court did.
                “The law of the case doctrine and the mandate rule ban
        courts from revisiting matters decided expressly or by necessary
        implication in an earlier appeal of the same case.” Winn-Dixie
        Stores, 881 F.3d at 843 (“The mandate rule is a specific application
        of the ‘law of the case’ doctrine which provides that subsequent
        courts are bound by any findings of fact or conclusions of law
        made by the court of appeals.”) (quotation marks omitted).
        District courts must follow our “clear and precise” instructions. See
        id. They “cannot amend, alter, or refuse to apply an appellate
        court’s mandate simply because an attorney persuades the court
        that the decision giving rise to the mandate is wrong, misguided,
        or unjust.” Id. at 844.
              Although “a mandate is completely controlling as to all
        matters within its compass,” a district court remains “free to pass
        upon any issue which was not expressly or impliedly disposed of
        on appeal.” Gulf Coast Bldg. & Supply Co. v. Int’l Bhd. of Elec.
        Workers, 460 F.2d 105, 107 (5th Cir. 1972). 3 The mandate rule does
        not apply “when the issue in question was outside the scope of the
        prior appeal.” Transamerica Leasing, Inc. v. Inst. of London
        Underwriters, 430 F.3d 1326, 1332 (11th Cir. 2005). So a district court

        3
         In Bonner v. City of Prichard, 661 F.2d 1206, 1209 (11th Cir. 1981) (en banc),
        we adopted as binding precedent all decisions of the former Fifth Circuit
        handed down before October 1, 1981.
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        on remand is “free to address, as a matter of first impression, those
        issues not disposed of on appeal.” Id. at 1331.
               Here the district court properly followed our mandate. To
        reiterate, the mandate instructed the district court to:
              [A]ddress what portion of the work performed by the
              executives’ attorneys in the federal litigation will be
              useful in the state court litigation, explaining the basis
              for its decision. After deciding this question, the
              district court should weigh the equities and decide
              whether to condition the dismissal on the companies’
              payment of these expenses.
        Hufnagle, 861 F. App’x at 361. On remand, the district court did
        address “what portion of the work performed by the executives’
        attorneys in the federal litigation will be useful in the state court
        litigation.” The court found that the only work that would be
        useful in the state court litigation was the work that the executives’
        attorneys had done on the breach of contract issue. But after
        weighing the equities, the court decided not to condition the
        dismissal on the immediate payment of the costs and fees incurred
        in any work. Instead, the court chose a different approach: it
        explained that if the companies refiled the federal lawsuit, the
        executives “may move for fees and costs, pursuant to Rule 41(d).”
        Our mandate gave the district court every right to condition the
        dismissal that way.
               That’s because the issue of whether to award costs and fees
        in a future refiled case was not before us in the first appeal, so it
        wasn’t the subject of our mandate. We neither expressly nor
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        20                     Opinion of the Court                22-10048

        implicitly decided whether an award of the executives’ costs and
        fees should be granted if the companies refiled this federal lawsuit.
        Our mandate did not forbid the district court from awarding costs
        and fees — either immediately or upon a future motion after
        refiling — nor did it require the court to award costs and fees.
               In fact, the district court would not have violated our
        mandate even if it had denied costs and fees altogether, regardless
        of whether the federal case was refiled, so long as the court had (1)
        identified the portion of the executives’ attorneys’ work on the
        federal litigation that would not be useful in the state court case,
        and (2) weighed the equities to determine whether to condition the
        dismissal on the companies’ payment of that portion of the
        executives’ costs and fees. Its decision might or might not have
        been subject to attack as an abuse of discretion, but it would not
        have been a violation of our mandate.
                Our remand instructions did not preclude the court from
        doing exactly what it did: conditioning the voluntary dismissal
        without prejudice on the executives being able to move for costs
        and fees if the companies refiled. Because our remand instructions
        were broad enough to encompass the condition the district court
        chose to impose, the court did not exceed the scope of our
        mandate. See AIG Baker Sterling Heights, LLC v. Am. Multi-Cinema,
        Inc., 579 F.3d 1268, 1271 (11th Cir. 2009) (noting that the district
        court did not exceed the mandate where this Court had “decided
        nothing expressly or by necessary implication about the district
        court’s power to grant” other relief ).
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              2.     Whether the district court abused its discretion
               The next issue is whether the court, even though it did not
        violate the remand mandate, abused its discretion by allowing the
        dismissal to be without prejudice subject only to the condition
        imposed. It didn’t.
               When granting a voluntary dismissal, “the district court
        must exercise its broad equitable discretion under Rule 41(a)(2) to
        weigh the relevant equities and do justice between the parties in
        each case, imposing such costs and attaching such conditions to the
        dismissal as are deemed appropriate.” McCants, 781 F.2d at 857; see
        also Fed. R. Civ. P. 41(a)(2) (providing that a court may enter a
        voluntary dismissal “on terms that the court considers proper”).
        And under Rule 41(d)(1), “[i]f a plaintiff who previously dismissed
        an action in any court files an action based on or including the same
        claim against the same defendant, the court . . . may order the
        plaintiff to pay all or part of the costs of that previous action.” Fed.
        R. Civ. P. 41(d)(1).
               A court entering a voluntary dismissal without prejudice
        should seek to protect the defendant’s interests, and the defendants
        here are the executives. See McCants, 781 F.2d at 856 (“[A] district
        court considering a motion for dismissal without prejudice should
        bear in mind principally the interests of the defendant, for it is the
        defendant’s position that the court should protect.”). One way to
        protect a defendant’s interest is by conditioning a voluntary
        dismissal on the plaintiff ’s payment of the defendant’s costs and
        fees. “Where the ‘practical prejudice’ of expenses incurred in
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        22                      Opinion of the Court                   22-10048

        defending the action can be ‘alleviated by the imposition of costs
        or other conditions,’ the district court does not abuse its ‘broad
        equitable discretion’ by dismissing the action without prejudice.”
        Pontenberg v. Bos. Sci. Corp., 252 F.3d 1253, 1260 (11th Cir. 2001)
        (quoting McCants, 781 F.2d at 859). But it does not follow that a
        court always abuses its discretion if it grants a dismissal without
        prejudice and does not immediately impose costs and fees on the
        plaintiff.
                We have said that a “plaintiff ordinarily will not be permitted
        to dismiss an action without prejudice under Rule 41(a)(2) after the
        defendant has been put to considerable expense in preparing for
        trial, except on condition that the plaintiff reimburse the defendant
        for at least a portion of his expenses of litigation.” McCants, 781
        F.2d at 860. But “ordinarily” is not “always,” and there is more than
        one way to protect the interests of a defendant who objects to a
        plaintiff being allowed to dismiss its lawsuit without prejudice.
        When a later, similar lawsuit between the parties is also involved,
        “expenses awarded might be limited to those incurred in
        discovering information and researching and pressing legal
        arguments that will not be useful in the later suit.” Id.
               Delaying the payment of the defendant’s costs and fees until
        the plaintiffs refile their case, if they do, can also adequately protect
        defendants. See Versa Prods., Inc. v. Home Depot, USA, Inc., 387 F.3d
        1325, 1328 (11th Cir. 2004) (noting that a condition that a plaintiff,
        “upon refiling, pay the fees and costs incurred by” the defendant “is
        plainly intended to protect [the defendant] from the unfairness of
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        23                     Opinion of the Court                 22-10048

        duplicative litigation”). For example, in Pontenberg we recognized
        that conditioning a voluntary dismissal without prejudice on the
        plaintiff ’s payment of the defendant’s costs if the plaintiff refiled
        could “adequately address[]” any “financial prejudice” the
        defendant suffered. 252 F.3d at 1260. In Pontenberg, the defendant
        argued that dismissal without prejudice was inappropriate because
        “it had invested considerable resources, financial and otherwise, in
        defending the action, including by preparing the then pending
        summary judgment motion.” Id. at 1256. We stated that the
        dismissal without prejudice was within the district court’s
        discretion “particularly” because the court had conditioned it on
        the payment of costs if the plaintiff were to refile, which protected
        the interests of the defendant. Id. at 1260.
                Here, the executives argue that the district court abused its
        discretion by conditioning the dismissal on the possible payment of
        their fees and costs if the companies refile because it is so unlikely
        that the companies will refile. The executives argue that
        unlikelihood makes the condition “illusory.” They assert that
        because the statute of limitations on some of the claims in the
        federal litigation was set to expire “in a matter of weeks,” this case
        is distinguishable from Pontenberg and Versa Products, where we
        upheld conditions like the one the district court imposed here.
               Not so. In Pontenberg and Versa Products, the defendants had
        incurred costs defending the claims against them and were not
        guaranteed any later recoupment of those costs. See Versa Prods.,
        387 F.3d at 1328; Pontenberg, 252 F.3d at 1256, 1260. The same is
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        24                     Opinion of the Court                 22-10048

        true here. The district court didn’t abuse its discretion by entering
        the voluntary dismissal without prejudice and denying the
        executives an immediate award of costs and fees, even though they
        incurred some expense while defending the federal litigation and
        even though they may never be reimbursed for it.
                That’s because in this context protecting a defendant’s
        interest is about protecting a defendant from having to defend
        duplicative litigation, not about protecting a defendant from
        having to pay to defend the first-filed lawsuit. See Versa Prods., 387
        F.3d at 1328; Pontenberg, 252 F.3d at 1258 (explaining that Rule 41(a)
        “allows the court to prevent prejudice to the defendant in such
        cases by attaching conditions to the dismissal”); McCants, 781 F.2d
        at 860 (noting that the court can impose monetary or “non-
        monetary conditions designed to alleviate the prejudice the
        defendant might otherwise suffer”); cf. Fisher v. P.R. Marine Mgmt.,
        Inc., 940 F.2d 1502, 1502–03 (11th Cir. 1991) (“[W]e have said that in
        most cases a voluntary dismissal should be allowed unless the
        defendant will suffer some plain prejudice other than the mere
        prospect of a second lawsuit . . . .”). We recognized that principle
        in Versa Products when we explained that a future payment
        condition helps protect the defendant against “the unfairness of
        duplicative litigation.” 387 F.3d at 1328. Here, there was even
        greater protection from the threat of duplicative litigation. The
        statute of limitations was going to run on the federal trade secrets
        claims shortly after the order of dismissal was entered. See 18
        U.S.C. § 1836(d). And those claims were the sole basis the plaintiffs
        asserted for federal jurisdiction.
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        25                      Opinion of the Court                  22-10048

                The executives insist that the reason the companies
        abandoned their federal lawsuit was that they realized they were
        going to lose it. But that argument makes the executives’ position
        weaker because it means the companies were less likely to refile
        the federal case, which makes it less likely that the executives would
        incur additional costs and fees from federal litigation. Combine
        that with the imminent running of the statute of limitations on the
        sole asserted basis for federal jurisdiction, and this dismissal is like
        the one in the Mickles case. See Mickles v. Country Club Inc., 887 F.3d
        1270, 1280 (11th Cir. 2018). As we explained there: “Where a
        dismissal without prejudice has the effect of precluding a plaintiff
        from refiling his claim due to the running of the statute of
        limitations, the dismissal is tantamount to a dismissal with
        prejudice.” Id. (quotation marks omitted). And if the voluntary
        dismissal without prejudice is in effect a dismissal with prejudice,
        the executives were exposed to less “practical prejudice” than in
        those cases where the plaintiffs had more time to refile before the
        statute of limitations ran or where the plaintiffs were more likely
        to refile than the plaintiffs in this case are.
                 On the same subject, the executives insist: “Now that the
        statute of limitations has expired, a remand to require the district
        court to explain its reasoning would be useless and moot, as there
        can be no future federal case.” That is a self-destructive argument.
        If, as the executives insist, there is not going to be a future federal
        case, they will not have to incur any duplicative costs and fees
        defending one. And that means there is no basis for ordering the
        plaintiff companies to pay costs and fees as a condition of
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        26                     Opinion of the Court                  22-10048

        dismissing this litigation. The purpose of conditioning a dismissal
        without prejudice on payment of costs and fees is not to punish the
        dismissing plaintiff but to protect the defendants from having to
        pay twice to defend against the same claims in federal court. Here
        there was no need to do that because, as the defendant executives
        themselves stress, there was not going to be a future federal case.
        (And, as predicted, there wasn’t one.)
               Finally, the executives argue that the district court abused its
        discretion by failing to explain its reasoning for deferring the
        possible payment of costs and fees to a hypothetical refiled federal
        case. But the district court did explain the reasoning behind its
        decision. It’s undisputed that the executives incurred considerable
        fees and expenses litigating the federal lawsuit. With the benefit of
        additional briefing on remand, the court determined that the work
        their attorneys devoted to the breach of contract question is the
        only work that would be useful in the state court case. It concluded
        that the rest of the work would be useful only if the plaintiffs
        refiled their case; the court cited Pontenberg and Versa Products for
        the proposition that it was within the court’s discretion to
        condition the dismissal on payment of costs and fees if the plaintiffs
        refiled. The court explained that this condition “offered [the
        executives] protection from unfairness and [the companies] are not
        prejudiced in their right to renew their litigation.” That reasoning
        is clear enough, although it was not what the executives were
        hoping to hear.
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        27                     Opinion of the Court                 22-10048

               The district court sufficiently protected the executives from
        the prejudice of duplicative litigation by essentially inviting them
        to move for payment of their costs and fees if the companies ever
        refiled their federal lawsuit. The court adequately explained its
        reasoning for granting the dismissal without prejudice on that
        condition. In all aspects of the decision, the court acted within its
        discretion. See generally Friends of the Everglades, 678 F.3d at 1201
        (“We will find an abuse of discretion only when a decision is in
        clear error, the district court applied an incorrect legal standard or
        followed improper procedures, or when neither the district court’s
        decision nor the record provide sufficient explanation to enable
        meaningful appellate review.”).
              AFFIRMED.