Court Opinion

ID: 9472223
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:53:23.03472+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:48.857442
License: Public Domain

JAMES HUNTER, III, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I concur. I was in the majority in Coastal Steel Corp. v. Tilghman Wheelabrator Ltd., 709 F.2d 190 (3d Cir.1983), a case that receives considerable attention in the majority opinion here. I adhere to my position in Coastal Steel, because I believe it was right for that case. I vote here for the opposite result, because I believe this case to be different.
Defendants in Coastal Steel moved to dismiss the federal action in favor of trial in the English courts. Defendants here moved only to transfer the federal action to another federal court. That, to me, is a crucial difference between the cases. The grant or denial of a motion requiring parties to leave federal court and go into a foreign court whose procedural rules and substantive law are likely to be quite different in material respects will certainly have an effect on the litigation that is basic and an effect that transcends the problems of convenience that are implicated in a mere transfer to another federal court in this country. A decision on the motion to dismiss, grounded on a choice of forum clause (engaging a foreign jurisdiction), will determine the parties’ rights and liabilities with a “finality” that is not present in a transfer. It is more important — certainly to the parties, and to basic fairness — to provide immediate review in the former instance.
Further, I believe that this is the better analytical approach. Judge Gibbons in Coastal Steel found mandatory jurisdiction to review the district court’s denial of the motion to dismiss via two paths: the Ene-low-Ettelson approach, and the Cohen “collateral finality” approach. The majority opinion in this case analyzes each approach, and in the end distinguishes this case from Coastal Steel. I find it preferable simply to distinguish this case.
The Enelow-Ettelson rule requires the overlay of an equitable defense or counterclaim on a legal action. Coastal Steel held that a motion to dismiss an action to give effect to a forum selection clause “is analytically indistinguishable from a motion to stay an action at law pending arbitration” —one of the classic Enelow-Ettelson situations. 709 F.2d at 194 (citing Shanferoke Coal & Supply Corp. v. Westchester Service Corp., 293 U.S. 449, 55 S.Ct. 313, 79 L.Ed. 583 (1935)). That is correct. In Coastal Steel and Shanferoke, the effect of the order sought by movant was to end a federal court proceeding and to place the dispute in a sharply different proceeding. In the present case, however, we have not a motion to dismiss but a motion to transfer within the federal system. I find a motion to transfer effectively distinguishable from a motion to stay pending arbitra*775tion, and I would simply hold that Enelow-Ettelson has no application to motions to transfer.
The second jurisdictional “hook” we identified in Coastal Steel was the Cohen “collaterally final” exception to the final order rule of section 1291. 28 U.S.C. § 1291 (1982). The majority probes our treatment of the Cohen exception in Coastal Steel, before concluding that a motion to transfer — unlike a motion to dismiss on forum non conveniens grounds — is not a “matter in abatement” as described in Coastal Steel. I agree with the majority’s analysis and eventual conclusion. But consistent with the approach I have outlined to this point, I would have proceeded through that analysis and to that conclusion more directly-
The majority opinion in Coastal Steel, which I joined, has not met with universal acceptance. In joining those questioning it, the majority here loses sight of what I believe are the essential differences between this case and Coastal Steel. Fortunately, our separate analyses lead to the same result. I therefore respectfully concur.