Court Opinion

ID: 9481551
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:22:36.045531+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:23.768696
License: Public Domain

*1208RIPPLE, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I would vacate the order granting leave to appeal on the ground that the order was entered improvidently. •
The majority concedes that the validity of the first service may be “immaterial” in light of the second service. Ante at 1205. Thus, as the majority also recognizes, the question on which this section 1292(b) interlocutory appeal was certified may not be dispositive — or, in the word of the statute, “controlling.” Nonetheless, the majority holds that, if this court discovers only after accepting jurisdiction that the question is not controlling, we are permitted, but not required, to vacate the appeal as having been improvidently granted. Id. at 1205-06. I have a different view of our responsibilities under section 1292(b).
The majority, relying on cases dealing with other statutes regulating our appellate jurisdiction, notes that the existence of the prerequisites to jurisdiction generally ought to be evaluated when the case is filed. Section 1292(b) is, however, a unique statute. Contrary to the general scheme of federal appellate jurisdiction, it permits interlocutory appeals. Notably, such appeals are permitted only when both the district court and the court of appeals are convinced that the issue certified meets the statutory criteria. In short, this court, no less than the district court, has the responsibility to determine that any appeal taken under this statute is compatible with the congressional intent to abrogate the general rule of finality only in the most narrow of circumstances.
The majority correctly notes that mootness, or any other problem rendering the case nonjusticiable in the constitutional sense, would prevent our deciding an issue certified to us by a district court. However, the absence of such a problem hardly leaves us with unfettered discretion to accept an appeal under section 1292(b). We still must determine whether proceeding to decision would be compatible with the purpose of the statute. Courts of appeals have long recognized that responsibility.1
The majority appears to recognize that we are bound to heed this congressional mandate when it concedes that it “might have been inclined to dismiss the appeal had it not been briefed and argued before the potential significance of the second service was brought forcefully to our attention.” Id. at 1206.2 In fact, the motions *1209panel was informed about the second service of process before it granted permission to proceed with this interlocutory appeal. On the first page of Plaintiff Johnson’s Answer to Petition for Permission to Appeal Interlocutory Order, he stated that the defendant “was properly served again (by registered mail) in November of 1989, making this issue moot.” Thus, that panel was on notice that the validity of the first service might no longer be a controlling question in this case.3
In this case, another factor counsels extreme circumspection before we permit an interlocutory appeal. Prior to the removal of this case to federal court, a state court, in the normal course of litigation, had ruled on the issue of the validity of service of process through certified rather than registered mail. While we are not bound by the law of the case doctrine, such matters of local state practice seem particularly inappropriate for discretionary review. Whether the plaintiffs use of certified mail amounted to substantial compliance with the statute is a matter, given considerations of federalism, that we ought not address unnecessarily. With our present heavy caseload, this otherwise routine state law tort suit should have been resolved by further proceedings in the district court rather than interrupted by an interlocutory appeal. I respectfully dissent.

. For instance, Molybdenum Corp. of America v. Kasey, 279 F.2d 216, 217 (9th Cir.1960) (per curiam), cited by the majority, ante at 1205, held that, "when it eventually appears that the question presented [for appeal under section 1292(b) ] should await further ripening, we hold our duty is ... clear to vacate the initial order." See also Paschall v. Kansas City Star Co., 605 F.2d 403, 407 (8th Cir.1979) ("interlocutory review is not appropriate" when merits panel determines that “the record must be more fully developed so that we can make a precise decision upon a precise record — not an abstract answer to an abstract question”); United States Rubber Co. v. Wright, 359 F.2d 784, 785 (9th Cir.1966) (per curiam) (merits panel has “duty” to vacate order granting interlocutory appeal if it determines that certified issue is "relevant to only one of several causes of action alleged below, and no disposition we might make of this appeal on its merits could materially affect the course of the litigation in the district court"); cf. Federal Deposit Ins. Corp. v. Hartford Ins. Co. of Illinois, 877 F.2d 590, 594 (7th Cir.1989) (permission to appeal should be vacated because government "has declined to argue [which entity] is the proper defendant in the third-party action") (separate opinion of Ripple, J.), cert. denied, - U.S. -, 110 S.Ct. 865, 107 L.Ed.2d 948 (1990).
In United States v. Bear Marine Services, 696 F.2d 1117, 1118-19 (5th Cir.1983), the primary issue certified for interlocutory appeal was resolved by the decision in a separate Fifth Circuit case. Although other issues existed in the Bear Marine Services case, the court refused to retain jurisdiction:
The merits panel has the benefit of full briefs and frequently, as in this case, oral argument. It also has the opportunity to consider events that took place after the motions panel preliminarily allowed the appeal. With this perspective, the merits panel may conclude that the initial decision to hear the appeal was, or was later rendered, improvident. If the merits panel reaches that conclusion, it must vacate the earlier order granting leave to appeal and must remand the case to the district court.
Id. at 1119.

. Investment of time is hardly a justification for gratuitous adjudication. As the Fifth Circuit noted in Bear Marine Services, 696 F.2d at 1120:
That is no reason for the court to dissipate further energies on the appeal or to decide questions that may prove to be hypothetical. *1209Moreover, it is evident the trial will be short, and nothing we might do is likely to abbreviate it significantly.
Cf. Palandjian v. Pahlavi, 782 F.2d 313, 314 (1st Cir.1986) (per curiam) ("fact that appreciable trial time may be saved is not determinative, for such would often be true of interlocutory appeals”).

. The failure of the motions panel to take into account this development suggests that we ought to reevaluate our procedures for determining whether to grant review of such a certification. I agree fully with my brothers’ observation that decisions by motions panels are summary in character, ante at 1204-05. Perhaps such decisions afford too little opportunity for collegial evaluation of petitions for leave to appeal.