Court Opinion

ID: 9477524
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:25:23.927211+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:55.219302
License: Public Domain

KRAVITCH, Circuit Judge,
specially concurring:
I concur in the court’s disposition of these cases. I further agree that the jurisdictional issue is squarely controlled by Schuurman v. Motor Vessel “Betty K V”, 798 F.2d 442 (11th Cir.1986) (per curiam). I write separately to express my concern that Schuurman may be in conflict with the principles expressed in Jung v. K. & D. Mining Co., 356 U.S. 335, 78 S.Ct. 764, 2 L.Ed.2d 806 (1958) (per curiam), and Czeremcha v. International Association of Machinists, 724 F.2d 1552 (11th Cir.1984).
In Jung, the plaintiffs filed a complaint alleging violations of the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The plaintiffs thereafter filed a first amended complaint. The district court granted the defendant’s motion to dismiss the first amended complaint for failure to state a claim. In its dismissal order, the district court granted the plaintiffs “twenty days from this date within which to file [another] amended complaint.” In a second order, the district court granted an additional twenty days for the filing of an amended complaint. The plaintiffs did not file another amended complaint or do anything further in their lawsuit for two more years, when they informed the district court that they elected to stand on their first amended complaint. The district *1538court then entered an order dismissing the cause of action.
The Supreme Court held that the last order dismissing the cause of action, not the first order dismissing the amended complaint, was the final, appealable order. Although the Court recognized that it was condoning the plaintiffs’ delay in informing the court that they elected to stand on the first amended complaint, it concluded that “[t]he undesirability of useless delays in litigation is more than offset by the hazards of confusion or misunderstanding as to the time for appeal.” 356 U.S. at 337, 78 S.Ct. at 766.
The principle of Jung, as I view it, is that the burden lies with the parties to request the district court to enter a final order if there is ambiguity as to whether a district court’s order dismissing a complaint also constitutes a dismissal of the cause of action. This ambiguity is most likely to be present in cases like Jung, Schuurman, and the case at bar, where the district court literally invites the plaintiff to amend its complaint. The ambiguity also will be present in cases like Czeremcha, where the district court, by its extensive discussion of the fact that the plaintiff had proceeded under the wrong statute, sent a strong hint to the plaintiff that he could amend his complaint. See 724 F.2d at 1555. In such a case, the district court’s order of dismissal does not really amount to a decision “that all relief shall be denied.” Fed.R.Civ. P. 58; see Jung, 356 U.S. at 337, 78 S.Ct. at 766. Moreover, the parties can easily protect their rights by requesting entry of final judgment pursuant to Rule 58. By making such a request in this case, the United States could have obtained a final, appealable order, and the defendants could have put an end to the case in the district court and started the clock of Fed.R.App.P. 4(a) running.1
In Schuurman, we concluded that the district court’s order dismissing the complaint automatically became a final order dismissing the cause of action after the lapse of the period that the district court explicitly granted for amendment of the complaint. We stated that “[t]he rule set forth herein averts the possibility of uncertainty as to whether the dismissal of a complaint constitutes a final judgment.” 798 F.2d at 445. The rule adopted by this court in Schuurman does solve the problem of uncertainty, but it solves it differently than did the Supreme Court in Jung. The bar may well be confused when one rule tells attorneys when an order becomes final for appealability purposes and another rule governs finality for timeliness purposes. In such technical areas of civil procedure, we should choose one, clear rule.

. I do not intend to imply any criticism of the government’s decision to appeal the district court’s rejection of its motions for reconsideration and remand. The district court clearly did not share the court of appeals’ view of the procedural posture of this case. Both Jung and Czeremcha were on the books, however, when the district court entered its order dismissing the government’s complaint. The government could have sought clarification of that order.