Court Opinion

ID: 9499704
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:55:43.572942+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:59:40.722281
License: Public Domain

*768TASHIMA, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
The majority finds appellate jurisdiction in this case only by mistakenly assuming that if any issue decided by the district court is subject to interlocutory appeal, any other issue decided in the same order can also be reached on interlocutory appeal. Because I disagree and would dismiss this interlocutory appeal for lack of appellate jurisdiction over the limited issues raised and not reach the merits, I respectfully dissent.
Under the collateral order doctrine, this court would have jurisdiction over an interlocutory appeal from that portion of the district court’s order denying Thai Airways’ claim to sovereign immunity under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (“FSIA”), 28 U.S.C. §§ 1602-1611. But this rule does not confer jurisdiction over an interlocutory appeal from other parts of the same order.
Thai Airways was very specific of the issues it raised on this appeal. It raised only two issues. To quote fully the “Issues Presented for Review” section of Thai Airways’ opening brief:
1. Whether the District Court erred in Denying Thai Airways’ motion to dismiss after the State Superior Court determined, in an identical prior action, that Thai Airways was immune from suit on Gupta’s claim in the United States under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (“FSIA”). 28 U.S.C. § 1604; Saudi Arabia v. Nelson, 507 U.S. 349, 355, 113 S.Ct. 1471, 123 L.Ed.2d 47 (1993).
2. Whether Gupta’s subsequent identical action against Thai Airways in federal court was a de facto appeal of the prior State Court determination and thus barred under the Rooker-Feldman Doctrine.
In support of its first issue, Thai Airways argued that the district court erred in denying its motion to dismiss because the prior ruling by the state superior court was res judicata. In support of its second issue, Thai Airways argued that under the Rooker-Feldman doctrine,1 Gupta’s action in the district court was a de facto appeal of the state court’s dismissal of his earlier action. Thai Airways raised no argument in its briefs that it was immune from suit as a foreign state under the FSIA. Yet, because Thai Airways is taking an interlocutory appeal from an “order denying Thai Airways immunity under the FSIA,” Maj. op. at 765 (emphasis added), the majority concludes, without analysis and erroneously in my view, that we have jurisdiction to review that portion of the district court’s order denying dismissal on the basis of res judicata.
The collateral order doctrine is intended to allow immediate appeal only of “that small class [of decisions] which finally determine claims of right separable from, and collateral to, rights asserted in the action, too important to be denied review and too independent of the cause itself to require that appellate consideration be deferred until the whole case is adjudicated.” Cohen v. Beneficial Indus. Loan Corp., 337 U.S. 541, 546, 69 S.Ct. 1221, 93 L.Ed. 1528 (1949). “The requirements for collateral order appeal have been distilled down to three conditions: that an order (1) conclusively determine the disputed question, (2) resolve an important issue completely separate from the merits of the action, and (3) be effectively unreviewable on appeal from a final judgment.” Will v. Hallock, *769546 U.S. 345, 126 S.Ct. 952, 957, 163 L.Ed.2d 836 (2006) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted).
While it is true that our case law permits an immediate interlocutory appeal from an order denying a motion to dismiss based on foreign sovereign immunity, Compania Mexicana De Aviacion, S.A. v. U.S. Dist. Court, 859 F.2d 1354, 1358 (9th Cir.1988) (per curiam), it is equally well-settled that the denial of a motion to dismiss based on res judicata grounds is not immediately appealable. See Will, 126 S.Ct. at 960 (“[The] rule of respecting a prior judgment by giving a defense against relitigation has not been thought to protect values so great that only immediate appeal can effectively vindicate them.”). To repeat, in this case, while it is true that the order Thai Airways appeals from rejected its claim of sovereign immunity, Thai Airways’ only arguments on appeal are directed to the other bases of the order, those resting on res judicata and the Rooker-Feldman doctrine.2
Although the cases discussing the collateral order doctrine sometimes loosely refer to interlocutory orders as being appeal-able, in fact, the cases actually analyze the specific claim or issue presented in determining the scope of their jurisdiction on an interlocutory appeal. And each claim presented must independently meet the requirements of the collateral order doctrine in order for it to be considered on interlocutory appeal. Appellate jurisdiction over one claim rejected in a district court order does not confer jurisdiction over all other claims rejected in the same order. Abney v. United States, 431 U.S. 651, 662-63, 97 S.Ct. 2034, 52 L.Ed.2d 651 (1977); see also United States v. Yellow Freight Sys., Inc., 637 F.2d 1248, 1251 (9th Cir.1980) (“Inquiry into the immediate appealability of a particular pretrial order must focus upon each claim asserted.”).
In Abney, after ruling that a denial of a criminal defendant’s motion to dismiss on double jeopardy grounds is an immediately appealable collateral order, the Supreme Court noted that “we, of course, do not hold that other claims contained in the motion to dismiss are immediately appeal-able as well.” 431 U.S. at 662-63, 97 S.Ct. 2034. The Court held that “other claims presented to, and rejected by, the district court in passing on the accused’s motion to dismiss .... are appealable if, and only if, they too fall within Cohen’s collateral-order exception to the final-judgment rule.” Id. at 663, 97 S.Ct. 2034. The Court thus held that the court of appeals lacked jurisdiction to review the district court’s denial of the motion to dismiss based on insufficiency of the indictment. Id.3
The principle that appellate courts must examine each claim or issue presented separately to determine their jurisdiction on *770interlocutory appeal is also reflected in the requirements that an order must meet to be immediately appealable. Those requirements are phrased in terms of a disputed “question” — in the singular — indicating that it is not the breadth of the order that defines the scope of appellate jurisdiction on an interlocutory appeal. Rather, each particular appealable issue that is resolved by the order must be examined separately. See Will, 126 S.Ct. at 957 (noting that an order must “conclusively determine the disputed question ” and “resolve an important issue completely separate from the merits” to be immediately appealable) (emphasis added).
Hence, the issue here is whether separate claims/defenses are raised by Thai Airways’ arguments to the district court of (1) a substantive entitlement to foreign sovereign immunity, and (2) issue preclusion as to its entitlement to foreign sovereign immunity. Here, under simple logic, applying Abney, if the two arguments constitute separate claims, then this court does not have jurisdiction over an appeal taken solely from the portion of the district court’s order rejecting Thai Airways’ issue preclusion argument. The fact that the ruling on one argument is interlocutor-ily appealable does not mean that the other is as well.4
There may be instances where it is not entirely clear whether the two arguments can be considered separate defenses.5 An immunity defense and an issue preclusion defense, however, are clearly unrelated, separate defenses. See, e.g., Timpanogos Tribe v. Conway, 286 F.3d 1195, 1200 (10th Cir.2002) (refusing to exercise pendent jurisdiction over a res judicata claim in an interlocutory appeal of the denial of a motion to dismiss on Eleventh Amendment grounds, because there was no showing that the res judicata claim was “inextricably intertwined” with the Eleventh Amendment claim).6
Here, the rationale for applying the Cohen collateral order doctrine to appeals from denials of foreign sovereign immunity does not encompass instances where the appeal is taken and supported solely on the grounds of issue preclusion. The Supreme Court has pointedly remarked that “the third Cohen question, whether a right is ‘adequately vindieable’ or ‘effectively reviewable [on appeal from a final judgment],’ simply cannot be answered without a judgment about the value of the interests that would be lost through rigorous application of a final judgment requirement.” Digital Equip. Corp. v. Desktop Direct, Inc., 511 U.S. 863, 878-79, 114 S.Ct. 1992, 128 L.Ed.2d 842 (1994).
*771In explaining why pretrial rulings based on res judicata grounds do not merit immediate appeal, courts have emphasized that the res judicata doctrine is not meant to give a defendant an absolute right to avoid trial. See, e.g., In re Corrugated Container Antitrust Litig., 694 F.2d 1041, 1043 (5th Cir.1983) (“[T]he only injury [from denial of immediate review] ... is that [the defendant] will have to present its defense at trial, but that sort of injury follows in every denial of a motion to dismiss a complaint and does not justify an exception to the final-judgment rule.”); see also R.R. Donnelley & Sons Co. v. FTC, 931 F.2d 430, 432-33 (7th Cir.1991) (“Preclusion in a civil case creates a ‘right not to be tried’ only in the sense that it creates a right to win; but many legal doctrines do that without also creating a right to interlocutory appellate review.”).
Here, in relying only on issue preclusion arguments, Thai Airways is not arguing that the substantive purposes of the FSIA would be served by granting it sovereign immunity. Those admittedly weighty interests are not the interests at stake in this appeal. Rather, Thai Airways is only arguing that respect for another court’s judgment entitles it to dismissal. The interests at stake in the claim being asserted are simply those ordinarily protected by the doctrine of res judicata. Any interest that Thai Airways may legitimately possess in avoiding suit under the FSIA is not truly implicated in this appeal, because Thai Airways is not arguing the merits of its claim to FSIA immunity. Thus, in reaching the merits of this interlocutory appeal, the majority frustrates “the substantial finality interests § 1291 is meant to further,” Will, 126 S.Ct. at 957, and expands the intended “modest scope” of the collateral order doctrine, id. at 958.
Had Thai Airways chosen to appeal the district court’s ruling as to its entitlement to foreign sovereign immunity under the FSIA, we might have exercised jurisdiction over that appeal. However, nowhere in its opening or reply brief did Thai Airways make this argument. In fact, Thai Airways affirmatively declared that the merits of its FSIA defense are not within the scope of its appeal, arguing in its reply brief that “the applicability of the Warsaw Convention is not an issue on this appeal.” 7 By electing not to argue its entitlement to FSIA immunity on the merits, Thai Airways has waived the issue for purposes of this appeal. United States v. Kama, 394 F.3d 1236, 1238 (9th Cir.2005). Thai Airways’ issue preclusion defense is an insufficient ground upon which to base our appellate jurisdiction over this interlocutory appeal.
Because I would dismiss this appeal for lack of jurisdiction, I respectfully dissent.

. See Rooker v. Fidelity Trust Co., 263 U.S. 413, 44 S.Ct. 149, 68 L.Ed. 362 (1923); Dist. of Columbia Court of Appeals v. Feldman, 460 U.S. 462, 103 S.Ct. 1303, 75 L.Ed.2d 206 (1983).

. Thai Airways did not make any Rooker-Feldman-based arguments to the district court. “As a general rule, a federal appellate court does not consider an issue not passed upon below.” Dodd v. Hood River County, 59 F.3d 852, 863 (9th Cir.1995) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). Even if we wished to deviate from this general rule, we lack jurisdiction over the Rooker-Feldman argument for the same reasons that we lack jurisdiction over the res judicata issue.

. The Abney rule may be eased somewhat in instances where courts choose to exercise pendent appellate jurisdiction. In this instance, however, pendent jurisdiction is inapplicable because there is no independent basis for jurisdiction to which jurisdiction over this matter can be "appended.” Cf. Swint v. Chambers County Comm'n, 514 U.S. 35, 50-51, 115 S.Ct. 1203, 131 L.Ed.2d 60 (1995) ("We need not definitively or preemptively settle here whether or when it may be proper for a court of appeals, with jurisdiction over one ruling, to review, conjunctively, related rulings that are not themselves independently appealable.”).

. The majority’s reliance on Compañía Mexi-cana is misplaced because there the only issue that was before the appellate court on interlocutory appeal was sovereign immunity under the FSIA.

. The transactional definition of a "claim” for purposes of claim preclusion, which is aimed at determining whether two suits allege the same cause of action, is unhelpful here, where the court must consider the relationship between defenses rather than between claims. Cf. Cent. Delta Water Agency v. United States, 306 F.3d 938, 952 (9th Cir.2002) (most important factor in claim preclusion analysis is “whether the two suits arise out of the same transactional nucleus of facts”).

.The majority argues that because the state court judgment was based on FSIA immunity, that should make a difference in determining whether we have jurisdiction over this interlocutory appeal based only on res judicata, Maj. op. at 765 n. 9, but it cites no case in support of that assertion. It further conflates the inquiry by asserting that "to deny interlocutory appeal in this case would frustrate the purposes of the FSIA.” Id. But that frustration is caused by Thai Airways appealing only from the res judicata portion of the district court’s order and not appealing from the FSIA immunity portion of the same order.

. In a supplemental filing, Thai Airways argues that if we find jurisdiction lacking under the final judgment rule, we should construe this appeal as a petition for mandamus. However, my conclusion that this appeal does not fall within the Cohen collateral order doctrine is based on my view that the rights at stake in an issue preclusion defense are adequately vindicable on appeal from a final judgment. This conclusion implies that Thai Airways has an “adequate means” to obtain relief, and will not be “damaged or prejudiced in a way not correctable on appeal” if we do not provide mandamus relief. See Bauman v. U.S. Dist. Court, 557 F.2d 650, 654-55 (9th Cir.1977) (listing these criteria among the factors that should be considered in determining whether to grant mandamus). As a result, I see no reason to grant mandamus relief.