Court Opinion

ID: 9481931
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:35:51.080682+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:40.047089
License: Public Domain

KRUPANSKY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
The panel majority’s statement to the contrary, the notice of appeal in this case is substantively the same as the notice of appeal the en banc court of this circuit found insufficient in Minority Employees of Tenn. Dep’t of Employment Service, Inc. v. State of Tennessee, 901 F.2d 1327 (6th Cir.1990) (en banc). The majority relies on language in the body of the notice of appeal to salvage the deficient caption. The body of the notice of appeal in Minority Employees read: “Now come plaintiffs in the above case and appeal_” Minority Employees, 901 F.2d at 1330. The body of the notice of appeal in this case reads: “Notice is hereby given that all of the Plaintiffs to this action as set out in the Complaint which has been filed herein as well as in all amendments hereby appeal. ...” In attempting to distinguish the instant case from Minority Employees, the majority relies entirely upon the word “all” and erroneously states that none of our previous cases dismissed an appeal when the body of the complaint made reference to “all” the plaintiffs named in the complaint or amendments thereto. The panel majority’s rationalizes that the en banc court in Minority Employees dismissed the notice of appeal because “the plaintiffs” might have meant “some” of the plaintiffs, not “all” of the plaintiffs.
Minority Employees did not rest on such a slim reed. Only one plaintiff was specifically named in the caption, “Minority Employees of the Tennessee Department of Employment Security,” a corporate plaintiff. The en banc court concluded that “the appellants must include in the notice of appeal the name of each and every party taking the appeal.” Minority Employees, 901 F.2d at 1330. Nothing could be more explicit. The court relied upon Torres v. Oakland Scavanger Co., 487 U.S. 312, 108 S.Ct. 2405, 101 L.Ed.2d 285 (1988), which, contrary to the panel majority’s implication, did not turn on the lack of “constructive notice,” but rather upon the mandate of the Torres disposition, which reads:
The failure to name a party in a notice of appeal is more than excusable “informality”; it constitutes a failure of that party to appeal.
The wisdom of the Supreme Court’s pronouncements are demonstrated by the instant notice of appeal which provides “Notice is hereby given that all of the Plaintiffs to this action as set out in the Complaint which has been filed herein as well as in all amendments hereby appeal....”
Mindful of the above language, the record of the instant proceedings challenges the majority to determine with certitude the identity of the appellants not named in the notice of appeal who may be bound by an adverse judgment or who may be held liable for costs or sanctions in these proceedings when it is apparent on the face of that record that the named parties plaintiff in the initial complaint are significantly different from those identified in the amended complaint in that a number of the named plaintiffs identified in the initial complaint voluntarily withdrew from the action at some point in time before the amended complaint which joined additional parties plaintiff not named or identified in the initial complaint was filed.1
*401The dissent in Minority Employees advanced essentially the same reasoning adopted by this panel’s majority and argued that the word “plaintiffs” in the body of the otherwise unspecific notice of appeal gave sufficient notice of the parties appealing. Minority Employees, 901 F.2d at 1341-48 (Nelson, J., dissenting). Although the argument was rejected by the en banc court in Minority Employees, the panel majority now seeks to evade this circuit’s en banc pronouncements by erroneously reasoning that “all the plaintiffs” is the same as “the appellants must include in its notice of appeal the name of each and every party taking the appeal.” Thus, in the process of embracing the dissent, the panel majority has elevated the redundancy of the word “all” to a principle of appellate jurisdiction.
In Minority Employees, the en banc court admonished against the use of nice semantic distinctions to avoid the mandate of Fed.R.App.P. 3(c) and Torres when it rejected the holding of Ford v. Nicks, 866 F.2d 865 (6th Cir.1989). In Ford, the panel had concluded that a notice of appeal captioned, in part, “Chancellor Roy S. Nicks, et al. Defendants” sufficiently designated the appellants. Ford, 866 F.2d at 869. According to the Ford panel of this court, because of the lack of articles in Latin, “et al.” could mean “and others” or “and the others,” depending upon the context within which it was used. Accordingly, the Ford panel reasoned that since “the” appeared in the body of the caption, the notice of appeal conveyed the intention of “all” “the” eighteen defendants to appeal. Ford, 866 F.2d at 869. In rejecting this reasoning, the en banc court stated that even if the Ford approach was consistent with Torres, “we cannot permit our jurisdiction to turn on the presence or absence of the definite article.” Minority Employees, 901 F.2d at 1333.
As both Torres and Minority Employees recognized, the purpose of the notice of *402appeal is to identify the appellants for the opposing party and the court. This notice requirement is “jurisdictional and mandatory.” Torres, 108 S.Ct. at 2408 (quotations omitted). Jurisdiction can not turn on a panel’s ingenuity in creating artificial constructs of language, and a panel may not withhold the sometimes harsh application of this rule simply because a particular case has merit. Such judicial action defeats the basic purpose of our procedural rules: to secure “a fair and orderly process.” Torres, 108 S.Ct. at 2410 (Scalia, J., dissenting). Only an even-handed enforcement of the terms of Fed.R.App.P. 3(c) will preserve a fair and orderly process for “all” litigants. It appears that the majority opinion has successfully created confusion from the order which resulted from the en banc resolution of Minority Employees.
The bench, the federal bar, and the public have a right to know what the precedent in this circuit dictates as to this jurisdictional issue of importance. Must the notice of appeal include “the name of each and every party taking the appeal ” as mandated by the en banc decision of this circuit in Minority Employees or is that decision now superceded by this panel’s majority opinion in the instant case which advises that the name of each and every party taking the appeal need not be included in the notice of appeal so long as the notice of appeal states that “notice is hereby given that all the Plaintiffs to this action ... hereby appeal.”
A review of the remaining issues as they relate to the single remaining plaintiff who was actually named in the notice of appeal, discloses that the district court did not abuse its discretion in staying discovery pending the disposition of the summary judgment motion. Prior to ruling on the motion, the court afforded the plaintiff an opportunity to explain the relevancy of his interrogatories and document production requests to the subject matter of the motion for summary judgment. The plaintiffs failed to do so and responded with the conclusory statement that the discovery was “clearly relevant.”
Considering the district court s disposition of the summary judgment motion, wherein it found no evidence of a breach of duty of fair representation as it related to the sole remaining plaintiff, and according the sole remaining plaintiff the benefit of all the evidence submitted in opposition to the summary judgment motion, together with every favorable inference that may have been drawn from all the evidence presented, the district court’s judgment was clearly correct. The plaintiff simply has not joined issues of fact that would prove that the union, by distributing the small strike settlement among the union employees who actually engaged in the four-year picket, intentionally discriminated against him. I must accordingly respectfully dissent and would affirm the district court.

. The panel majority misinterprets and misconceives Storage Technology Corp. v. United States District Court for the District of Colorado, 934 F.2d 244 (10th Cir.1991). In that case, the body of the notice of appeal in controversy identified appellants as "Comite Pro Rescate de la Salud, et al., and all the Defendants of record herein.” Storage Technology, 934 F.2d at 245 (emphasis added). The Tenth Circuit concluded that the notice was inadequate and did not embrace any appellant beyond the appellant actually named therein:
In Laidley v. McClain, 914 F.2d 1386, 1389 (10th Cir.1990), we held that "the failure to specifically designate a party somewhere in the notice of appeal is a jurisdictional bar to that party's appeal." We rejected the use of "‘plaintiffs hereby appeal,’ when combined with an ‘et ah’ designation of some of the plaintiffs” as subject to the interpretation either that all of the plaintiffs intended to appeal or that less than all plaintiffs intended to be appellants. Id. Likewise, in Pratt v. Petroleum Production, 920 F.2d [651] at 654, [10th *401Cir.1990] we held the phrase "defendants above named hereby appeal” in conjunction with an "et al.” to be insufficient to meet the specificity requirements of Fed.R.App.P. 3(c) and Torres.
We relied in Pratt, as we had in Laidley, on Minority Employees of Tennessee Department of Employment Securities, Inc. v. Tennessee Department of Employment Securities, 901 F.2d 1327, 1360 (6th Cir.) (en banc), cert. denied, - U.S. -, 111 S.Ct. 210, 112 L.Ed.2d 170 (1990) (name of each and every party taking appeal must be included in notice of appeal) and Rosario-Torres v. Hernandez-Colon, 889 F.2d 314, 317 (1st Cir.1989) (en banc) (court lacked jurisdiction over appeals sponsored by would-be appellants not specified in timely notice of appeal).
Storage Technology, 934 F.2d at 247-48.
The language of the Tenth Circuit, citing to this Circuit’s disposition of Minority Employees, accordingly belies the panel majority’s analysis of Storage Technology.
In Santos-Martinez v. Soto-Santiago, 863 F.2d 174 (1st Cir. 1988), the text of the notice of appeal identified appellants as follows: "All plaintiffs appeal to the First Circuit Court of Appeals the Opinion and Order of November 30, 1987.” Santos-Martinez, 863 F.2d at 175 (emphasis added). In Santos-Martinez, as in the instant case, a number of the named parties identified in the initial complaint voluntarily withdrew from the action at some point in time before the notice of appeal was filed.
In addressing the adequacy of the notice of appeal, the First Circuit noted:
In their supplementary brief, appellants argue that their case is distinguished from Torres by the statement in the notice of appeal that “All plaintiffs appeal....” (Emphasis added.) But most of the Supreme Court’s reasoning for rejecting the "et al.” designation applies equally in the circumstances of this case to the words, "All plaintiffs.” Santos-Martinez, 863 F.2d at 176.
In disposing of the appeal, the First Circuit concluded:
That the appellees and the court might, by further inquiry, eventually ascertain the identity of the actual appellants is not enough, as the Torres Court has indicated in its near-unanimous decision. Appellants must comply with the language of Rule 3(c) — that is, they must "specify the party or parties taking the appeal.” It does not suffice that the actual appellants are now known and that no harm may have been done by reason of the insufficient notice of appeal. Because Rule 3(c) is jurisdictional, the Supreme Court has stated that "harmless error” analysis is inapplicable to a defect in the notice of appeal: "a litigant’s failure to clear a jurisdictional hurdle can never be 'harmless’ or waived by a court.” Torres, 108 S.Ct. at 2409 n. 3. See also Hays v. Sony Corp. of America, 847 F.2d 412, 420 (7th Cir.1988) (noting that under Torres the failure to name an appellant in a notice of appeal necessitates dismissal of the appeal, even if the appellee was not misled).
Santos-Martinez, 863 F.2d at 177 (footnote omitted).