Court Opinion

ID: 9476110
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:47:22.526435+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:07.707963
License: Public Domain

GARTH, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
After the plaintiff, Bussell, had received a state court judgment against the only defendant named in the state court action (DeWalt); Bussell, by a post-verdict motion sought to join two additional defendants— Black & Decker and Home Insurance Company — so as to obtain satisfaction of the state court judgment. Bussell sought to do so by a motion entitled: “Motion for Ruling that Plaintiff is Entitled to Judgment Against Black & Decker or Home Insurance Co.” Black & Decker and Home Insurance Company then petitioned to remove on the basis of diversity jurisdiction. The district court, in an opinion dated April 8, 1987, held that the motion to join two new defendants in the state court action did not constitute a “civil action” within the terms of 28 U.S.C. § 1441, that the defendants sought to be joined were real parties in interest, and that the removal was not timely.
I.
28 U.S.C. § 1447(d) provides that “an order remanding a case to the state court from which it was removed is not reviewable on appeal or otherwise ...” The instruction of the United States Supreme Court is unequivocal in holding that we are barred from reviewing a district court’s order of remand. See Gravitt, Executrix v. Southwestern Bell Telephone Co., et al., 430 U.S. 723, 97 S.Ct. 1439, 52 L.Ed.2d 1 (1976).1 This is so even if the district court erred, as I believe the district court here did, in its analysis and remand opinion.
*15However, in considering the writ of mandamus presented to us on April 9, 1987, it is undisputed that an order remanding the proceeding to the state courts of New Jersey has never been entered. An opinion has been rendered and filed — but no order implementing that opinion has ever been signed, filed or docketed. Indeed, the only order that has been entered by the district court is an order in which the district court agreed not to enter a remand order until April 13, 1987. Of course, by that time, this Court had stayed all further proceedings so that we could read and consider the submissions made with the petition for mandamus. Thus, absent an order of remand to the state court, the bar of § 1447(d) does not attach. The majority of this panel has failed to provide any satisfactory explanation as to why we should forego our normal and traditional appellate function when no statute requires that we do so.
II.
I would issue the writ of mandamus, and I would hold that the proceeding was timely and properly removed, and that no reason has been presented why the parties to this controversy “should not enjoy [their] constitutional right of having [their] case tried by a court of the United States.” Bondurant v. Watson, 103 U.S. (13 Otto) 281, 287, 26 L.Ed. 447 (1880). I therefore dissent from the majority’s denial of the petitioner’s writ.

. To the extent that 28 U.S.C. § 1447(c) requires that a remand to state court make express reference to the original removal as having been ordered "improvidently and without jurisdiction," see Thermtron Products, Inc. v. Hermansdorfer, 423 U.S. 336, 343-44, 96 S.Ct. 584, 589, 46 L.Ed.2d 542 (1977), I suggest that the majority has misread the district court opinion which contains no such determination or express language to that effect. Indeed, not even the district court suggests that jurisdiction is lacking, and the closest that the district court has come to holding that the removal is improvident is the district court’s refusal to regard the removed proceeding as a "civil action.”