Court Opinion

ID: 9440653
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 17:00:59.730084+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:46.270508
License: Public Domain

FOR PUBLICATION

   UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
        FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

JOHN BOSHEARS, on behalf of               No. 22-35262
himself and all others similarly
situated,                                D.C. No. 2:21-
                                         cv-01222-MJP
              Plaintiff-Appellee,

 v.                                        OPINION

PEOPLECONNECT, INC.,

              Defendant-Appellant.

      Appeal from the United States District Court
        for the Western District of Washington
      Marsha J. Pechman, District Judge, Presiding

           Argued and Submitted July 13, 2023
               San Francisco, California

                  Filed August 3, 2023

  Before: Carlos T. Bea, Mark J. Bennett, and Holly A.
                Thomas, Circuit Judges.

                  Opinion by Judge Bea
2               BOSHEARS V. PEOPLECONNECT, INC.

                          SUMMARY *

            Federal Arbitration Act/Jurisdiction

    In a suit alleging that defendant PeopleConnect, Inc.,
violated plaintiff’s right of publicity by using his photo on
its website Classmates.com, the panel dismissed the appeal
in part for lack of appellate jurisdiction, vacated the district
court’s order denying PeopleConnect’s motion to compel
arbitration, and remanded.
    In response to plaintiff’s lawsuit, PeopleConnect sought
to compel arbitration under section 4 of the Federal
Arbitration Act (“FAA”) and also sought to dismiss the
complaint on immunity grounds. The district court denied
both requests in a document labeled a single “order.” On
appeal, PeopleConnect asserted that because the district
court denied the motion to dismiss in the same “order” in
which it denied the motion to compel arbitration, the whole
“order” was reviewable under FAA § 16(a), which allows
for interlocutory appeals of orders denying motions to
compel arbitration.
    The panel determined that it had jurisdiction to review
the district court’s order denying the motion to compel
arbitration. In a concurrently filed memorandum
disposition, the panel vacated the order and remanded for
further proceedings.
   Addressing whether it had jurisdiction to review the
denial of PeopleConnect’s motion to dismiss, the panel held

*
 This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has
been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.
               BOSHEARS V. PEOPLECONNECT, INC.               3

that two orders do not become one “order” for the purposes
of § 16(a) solely by virtue of the fact that they appear in the
same document. Notwithstanding its label as a single
“order,” the document clearly contained multiple
orders. Because § 16(a) grants jurisdiction to review only an
order denying a motion to compel arbitration, and because
the district court’s denial of the motion to dismiss was not
part of such an order, the panel lacked jurisdiction to review
it.

                         COUNSEL

Ian H. Gershengorn (argued) and Illyana A. Green, Jenner &
Block LLP, Washington, D.C.; Clifford W. Berlow, Debbie
L. Berman, Wade A. Thompson, and Daniel W. Bobier,
Jenner & Block LLP, Chicago, Illinois; Brent Caslin, Jenner
& Block LLP, Los Angeles, California; Michael
Rosenberger and Mark A. Wilner, Gordon Tilden Thomas &
Cordell LLP, Seattle, Washington; for Defendant-Appellant.
Ben R. Osborn (argued), Law Office of Benjamin R. Osborn,
Brooklyn, New York; Michael F. Ram, Morgan & Morgan
Complex Litigation Group, San Francisco, California;
Samuel J. Strauss and Raina Borrelli, Turke & Strauss LLP,
Madison, Wisconsin; for Plaintiff-Appellee.
4              BOSHEARS V. PEOPLECONNECT, INC.

                          OPINION

BEA, Circuit Judge:

    Plaintiff-Appellee John Boshears sued Defendant-
Appellant PeopleConnect, Inc., alleging that it violated his
right of publicity by using his photo on its website,
Classmates.com. PeopleConnect responded by seeking two
forms of relief. First, it sought to compel Boshears to
arbitrate his claims under section 4 of the Federal Arbitration
Act (FAA). See 9 U.S.C. § 4. Second, it sought to dismiss
Boshears’s complaint, see Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6), arguing
in relevant part that it was entitled to section 230 immunity
under the Communications Decency Act, see 47 U.S.C.
§ 230. In a 26-page document labeled a single “order,” the
district court denied both requests for relief. PeopleConnect
filed an interlocutory appeal, attempting to challenge both
denials by relying on the FAA as the basis for interlocutory
appellate jurisdiction. See 9 U.S.C. § 16(a).
    Section 16(a) reads, in relevant part: “An appeal may be
taken from . . . an order . . . denying a petition under section
4 of this title to order arbitration to proceed.” Id. More
simply, § 16(a) allows for “appeals of orders
denying . . . motions to compel arbitration.” Coinbase, Inc.
v. Bielski, 143 S. Ct. 1915, 1919 (2023) (emphasis removed).
Section 16(a) allows us to review the first issue raised on
appeal—whether the district court correctly denied
PeopleConnect’s motion to compel arbitration. We address
that issue in a concurrently filed memorandum disposition in
which we vacate the district court’s order denying the
motion to compel arbitration and remand for further
proceedings. In this opinion, we address only our jurisdiction
to review the second issue—whether the district court
                BOSHEARS V. PEOPLECONNECT, INC.                 5

correctly denied PeopleConnect’s Rule 12(b)(6) motion to
dismiss based on § 230 immunity.
    Absent a final judgment, see 28 U.S.C. § 1291, we
generally lack jurisdiction to review the denial of a Rule
12(b)(6) motion. Hilton v. Hallmark Cards, 599 F.3d 894,
900 (9th Cir. 2010). PeopleConnect invokes neither the
collateral order doctrine nor the pendent appellate
jurisdiction doctrine, see Cunningham v. Gates, 229 F.3d
1271, 1283–84 (9th Cir. 2000), as amended (Oct. 31, 2000)
(describing these doctrines), to argue that we may review
such a denial here. Instead, it relies solely on the “plain
language” of § 16(a). PeopleConnect contends that the
district court denied its Rule 12(b)(6) motion in the same
“order” in which the district court denied its motion to
compel arbitration, and therefore the whole “order” is
reviewable under § 16(a).
    PeopleConnect conflates, and thereby confuses, the
meaning of an order with that of a document. Cf. Fed. R.
App. P. 4(a)(7)(A) (distinguishing an “order” from the
“document” in which it is set forth). An “order” refers to a
“written direction or command,” not to the document in
which that “direction or command” is “delivered by a court
or judge” to the parties. See BP P.L.C. v. Mayor & City
Council of Baltimore, 141 S. Ct. 1532, 1537 (2021) (cleaned
up). In the document at issue here, the district court
addressed PeopleConnect’s arbitration argument separately
from its § 230 argument. At the end of its arbitration
analysis, the district court wrote: “The Court thus DENIES
[PeopleConnect’s] request to compel arbitration.” Six pages
later, at the end of its § 230 analysis, the district court wrote:
“The Court DENIES the Motion [to dismiss] as to this
argument.” These are separate “written direction[s] or
command[s].” Id. (citation omitted). They are thus different
6              BOSHEARS V. PEOPLECONNECT, INC.

“order[s]” that merely happen to appear in the same
document. Id.
    Courts frequently issue multiple orders in the same
document, particularly when a party request multiple forms
of relief at the same time, as PeopleConnect did here. And it
is also common for a district court to label such a document
a singular “order,” as the district court did here. But we may
“look behind the district court’s characterization” of its order
to determine whether we have appellate jurisdiction to
review it. Cf. Atl. Nat. Tr. LLC v. Mt. Hawley Ins. Co., 621
F.3d 931, 938 (9th Cir. 2010) (interpreting the appellate
jurisdiction-stripping provisions in 28 U.S.C. § 1447).
Notwithstanding its label as a single “order,” the document
clearly contains multiple orders.
    This all seems fairly commonsensical. Yet the parties do
not cite, and we were unable to find, a published opinion
from our Circuit expressly explaining this obvious principle.
The closest case we could find, Blair v. Rent-A-Center, Inc.,
928 F.3d 819 (9th Cir. 2019), held that § 16(a) did not grant
jurisdiction to review a denial of a motion for a discretionary
stay, id. at 832, even though the district court denied that
motion in the same document in which it denied a motion to
compel arbitration, Blair v. Rent-A-Ctr., Inc., 2017 WL
4805577, at *6 (N.D. Cal. Oct. 25, 2017). We now make
explicit what was implied in Blair—two orders do not
become one “order” for the purpose of § 16(a) solely by
virtue of the fact that they appear in the same document.
    In arguing otherwise, PeopleConnect cites BP P.L.C.,
141 S. Ct. at 1537 (concluding that 28 U.S.C. § 1447(d)
allows review of all rejected bases for federal jurisdiction in
an order remanding a case to state court), and some out-of-
circuit cases interpreting § 16(a). See Donelson v.
               BOSHEARS V. PEOPLECONNECT, INC.               7

Ameriprise Fin. Servs., Inc., 999 F.3d 1080, 1086–87 (8th
Cir. 2021) (concluding that § 16(a) allows review of a denial
of a motion to strike class-action allegations); Int’l Energy
Ventures Mgmt., L.L.C. v. United Energy Grp., Ltd., 999
F.3d 257, 263 n.1 (5th Cir. 2021) (concluding that § 16(a)
allows review of whether an arbitration defense was
waived).
    To the extent BP P.L.C. is helpful, it merely suggests that
§ 16(a) grants jurisdiction to review all of the reasoning in
an order denying a motion to compel arbitration—“not just
some of its parts or pieces.” 141 S. Ct. at 1538. And
Donelson—PeopleConnect’s strongest case—might suggest
that we can review issues intertwined with a motion to
compel arbitration. See 999 F.3d at 1088 (“[The very]
purpose of moving to strike was so that the district court
could compel arbitration under the terms of the Client
Agreement.”). But neither suggestion is of any help to
PeopleConnect. The district court’s denial of § 230
immunity was plainly not part of the reasoning it articulated
in support of its denial of PeopleConnect’s motion to compel
arbitration. Nor did the motion to compel arbitration “turn[]
on” whether PeopleConnect was entitled to § 230 immunity.
Id. at 1091.
    Because § 16(a) grants us jurisdiction to review only an
order denying a motion to compel arbitration, and because
the district court’s denial of § 230 immunity is not part of
such an order, we lack jurisdiction to review it. We dismiss
this portion of PeopleConnect’s appeal.
    Finally, we address costs. In his answering brief,
Boshears requested an award of fees and costs for
responding to PeopleConnect’s § 230 immunity argument.
Boshears was required to request this award in “a separately
8             BOSHEARS V. PEOPLECONNECT, INC.

filed motion.” Fed. R. App. P. 38; see also Higgins v. Vortex
Fishing Sys., Inc., 379 F.3d 701, 709 (9th Cir. 2004).
Regardless, we deny Boshears’s request. See Exxon Valdez
v. Exxon Mobil, 568 F.3d 1077, 1081 (9th Cir. 2009) (“[O]ur
usual practice when each side wins something and loses
something” is to “exercise our discretion by requiring each
party to bear its own costs.”). Each party shall bear its own
costs on appeal. See Fed. R. App. P. 39(a)(4); Ninth Cir.
Gen. Order 4.5(e).
  DISMISSED IN PART, VACATED IN PART, AND
REMANDED.