Court Opinion

ID: 9468470
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:15:37.671263+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:52.871521
License: Public Domain

PELL, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
With all due respect to the conclusion reached by the majority of this panel that a *82magistrate can certify a basis for an interlocutory appeal pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1292(b), I cannot conclude that the Federal Magistrates Act of 1979, as broad as it is, is applicable to appeals under § ■ 1292(b). That section specifically and expressly empowers “a district judge” not a district court to take steps under it. The majority opinion refers to the 1979 amendments giving “case dispositive jurisdiction” to the magistrates. We are here, however, not dealing with a judgment that will dispose of the case. Instead it lays the way for an attempt at an interlocutory appeal which, in the wording of a typical certificate, “may materially advance the ultimate determination of the litigation,” but which, in real life, often results in a substantial delay to that determination. While the magistrate may order the proceedings before him or her not to be stayed, it would seem unlikely that vigorous litigation would continue while a potentially dispositive proceeding is lodged in a superior court.
It is one thing when the parties have agreed to the magistrate exercising the full powers of a “district court” that the final judgment entered by the magistrate be reviewed on appeal by this court. It is quite a different thing to say that during the course of proceedings before the magistrate interlocutory appeals can be brought to this court already overburdened by final appeals, when the general policy of our system of jurisprudence is that there should not be piecemeal review of litigation but only review of final decisions. Section 1292(b) is an exception to the finality rule but that exception for activation requires the concurrence of “a district judge” and the “Court of Appeals.” Here there has been no action by the “district judge” and the majority opinion is in effect amending by implication from the general language of the Magistrates Act of 1979 the specific language of § 1292(b).
I would for that reason decline to entertain this appeal on the basis of lack of jurisdiction.