Court Opinion

ID: 9473633
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:34:26.897614+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:37.948451
License: Public Domain

FARRIS, Circuit Judge, concurring:
I write separately because I believe that our jurisdiction is supported by additional factors that the Supreme Court considers essential to any exercise of jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1292(a)(1).
For an interlocutory order to be immediately appealable under § 1292(a)(1), however, a litigant must show more than that the order has the practical effect of refusing an injunction. Because § 1292(a)(1) was intended to carve out only a limited exception to the final-judgment rule, ... § 1292(a)(1) will be available only in circumstances where an appeal will further the statutory purpose of “permit[ting] litigants to effectually challenge interlocutory orders of serious, perhaps irreparable, consequence.”
Carson v. American Brands, Inc., 450 U.S. 79, 84, 101 S.Ct. 993, 996, 67 L.Ed.2d 59 (1981) (quoting Baltimore Contractors, Inc. v. Bodinger, 348 U.S. 176, 181, 75 S.Ct. 249, 252, 99 L.Ed. 233 (1955)) (emphasis added). Although no Ninth Circuit or Supreme Court decision has clarified whether the “Enelow-Ettelson” rule on *1296which the majority bases our jurisdiction has been supplanted by Carson’s emphasis on “practical effect” and “serious, perhaps irreparable consequence,” our jurisdiction here satisfies either test.
The practical effect of the stay is indistinguishable from the effect of an order at least temporarily enjoining enforcement of the judgment. Id.; Alarcom, Inc. v. ITT North Electric Co., 727 F.2d 1419, 1422 (9th Cir.1984); Wren v. Sletten Constr. Co., 654 F.2d 529, 533 (9th Cir.1981). Furthermore, the stay of execution deprives Dias of “the inexpensive and expeditious means” of obtaining a judgment that is already indisputably hers; under the stay, she must now “undergo the expense and delay of a trial [in state court] before being able to appeal” the withholding of her $185 federal court judgment. Alascom, 727 F.2d at 1422. This consequence is “serious, perhaps, irreparable” and “effectually challenged” only by immediate appeal. See id., citing Carson, 450 U.S. at 84, 101 S.Ct. at 996.
In addition, I would find inapplicable the Bank's argument that a federal court stay to await developments in a previously commenced state action involving the same issues “is not ordinarily regarded as the grant or denial of an injunction.” See 9 Moore, Federal Practice ([ 110.20[4.-2] at 249-250. First, when a stay is the equitable exercise of a court’s “inherent power to control the disposition of cases on its docket with economy of time and effort,” id. at 250, I question its use to protect a defendant who belatedly filed a competing state court action only after an offer of judgment had been made and accepted. Cf. Gillespie v. United States Steel Corp., 379 U.S. 148, 152-53, 85 S.Ct. 308, 310-11, 13 L.Ed.2d 199 (1964) (in deciding whether an order is “final” and appealable, “the most important competing considerations are ‘the inconvenience and costs of piecemeal review on the one hand and the danger of denying justice by delay on the other’ ”). Second, while the federal action involved a breach of the Bank’s statutory disclosure duty to its consumers, the competing state action is, by the Bank’s own characterization, a simple “debt collection,” unrelated to the transactions and occurrences that form the essence of Dias’ federal claim. There is thus little overlap of legal issues between the two “competing” actions; the concerns of judicial economy that underlie appellate courts’ reluctance to review an interlocutory stay, cf. id., are irrelevant to Dias’ TILA suit.
Finally, I am reluctant to express any disapproval in dicta of the Hawaii district court’s practice of dismissing counterclaims on the debt. See Majority Opinion at n. 1. Although I might agree as a matter of policy after fully reviewing the merits of each counterclaim, I cannot criticize their dismissal when we have not been called upon, nor had an opportunity to review these cases.