Court Opinion

ID: 9491372
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:12:03.813005+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:41.570794
License: Public Domain

CUDAHY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
The district court has granted a stay in this case, and there is no reason to believe that we have acquired jurisdiction of an appeal. Albiero v. City of Kankakee, 122 F.3d 417 (7th Cir.1997), bears some relevance here, but it is certainly not controlling. In Albiero, the district court gave the plaintiff the standard 21 days to amend his complaint. At the end of 21 days the judgment of dismissal would become final and appealable, and a notice of appeal filed before the 21 days had expired became effective at the expiration of the period.
Here Judge Curran gave Nutritional Products, Animix and Vitek 90 days to show cause why these companies should not be considered alter egos: “[Wjithin ninety (90) days of the date of this order, Vitek and its alter egos shall pay the fine and restitution as ordered at sentencing or shall appear and show cause, if any they have, why they should not be held responsible for the continuing violation of Vitek’s terms of supervised release” (emphasis added). Before the 90 days had expired, the companies asked for a stay pending disposition of the appeal in this case and in the case establishing Vitek’s liability on the merits. Judge Curran took the motion under advisement immediately and subsequently granted the stay. Although the language of the stay is not entirely explicit, taking it in connection with the moving papers, it surely appears to stay the '90-day period, which of course is applicable both to the show-cause requirement and to the order to pay the fine and restitution. The majority has cited no plausible reason to believe the stay applied only to the order to pay and not to the opportunity to show cause why alter ego treatment was not appropriate. Not only did Judge Curran give no signal that he was bifurcating his original order, but it would make no sense that he would do so. Certainly the rationale offered in the motion — waiting for decision in the two appeals — would not have furnished any basis for bifurcation. And the notion that the stay applied only to Vitek is highly dubious. The documents leading up to the stay, including the “Joint Reply Memorandum of Vitek, Nutritional Products, and Animix in Support of their Motions for Stay Pending Appeal,” offer no support for the majority’s distinction between a Vitek stay and an alter egos stay. The government never distinguished between these defendants, either in its initial memorandum opposing any stay or in withdrawing its opposition to a stay. Further, it would make no sense for the district court to stay Vitek’s responsibility to pay and not the alter egos’. If the district court had intended instead to stay the order only with respect to Vitek, it would have said so directly. The reasonable interpretation of the stay is that it stays the entire order, which is what both Vitek and its alleged alter egos requested.
In addition, the reasoning in Albiero was based on the fact that “[t]he district judge announced that the complaint was dismissed and that the suit would be over unless Albie-ro filed a new complaint within 21 days. In other words, the judge stated a plan to enter a final judgment on day 22 unless Albiero filed a particular document.” 122 F.3d at 420 (emphasis added). Here Judge Curran, by taking the stay motion under advisement within the 90 days allowed by the original order, clearly demonstrated that he had at most only a tentative plan. He thus precluded the possibility of a final and appealable order’s issuing even though he did not decide to grant the motion until some time later. Here it simply cannot be said, as this court *587did in Otis v. City of Chicago, 29 F.3d 1159, 1165 (7th Cir.1994) (en banc), discussing a conditional dismissal, that “the order is ‘final’ by any standard other than one making the entry of a Rule 58 [final] judgment indispensable” or that the order is obviously a “final ‘decision[ ]’ that [is] not [a] final ‘judgment[ ].’ ” Id. After all, the 90-day period is not some statutory limitation; it is a period provided by the district court, which that court can modify as it sees fit. And uritil the district court has completed its consideration of these matters, there is no final order ripe for appellate review. An order does not become final just because a notice of appeal has been filed. Whatever the precise meaning of the order entering the stay, when the district court entertained the motion for a stay, deferral of Vitek’s and its alter egos’ opportunity to show cause was clearly on the table. That is how the government understood the situation when it initially opposed a stay:
[I]t is time to schedule this matter for a show cause hearing.... Vitek and its alter egos .... will have an opportunity to present other evidence to the Court in defense of either a contempt sanction or the entry of an enforceable judgment against them.
At the conclusion of that hearing, and in the event that the [district] Court holds against Vitek and its alter egos, they can at that time again ask this Court for a stay before any of the adverse consequences of the Court’s decision have any impact upon them. At this stage, however, all we are about to hold is a hearing.
Gov’t’s Mem. in Opp’n to Mot. for Stay Pending Appeal 2-3 (emphasis added). The government thus sought the denial of the stay because it believed that the stay would postpone the hearing. Now the opportunity for a show cause hearing, which both sides anticipated, apparently has been precluded by the majority on the dubious theory that the district court failed to enter a temporary stay on day 90 while it considered whether to enter a regular stay. This treatment seems to me to be manufacturing technicalities out of whole cloth.
I believe that the majority has rushed to judgment here relying on an indefensible reading of district court procedure and has taken the matter out of the hands of the district court, which for whatever reason has elected to allow postponement of the promised hearing. Since we have no jurisdiction, I will not comment on the majority’s discussion of the merits.
Albiero certainly does not dispose of these complex facts, and I therefore respectfully dissent.