:: Tenth Circuit Holds That Participant Cannot Appeal Order Remanding Case To Plan Administrator
We must first consider whether we have jurisdiction. Circuit courts generally have jurisdiction only over “final decisions of the district courts.†28 U.S.C. § 1291; cf. id. § 1292 (describing circuit courts’ jurisdiction over interlocutory decisions). In Rekstad v. First Bank System, Inc., 238 F.3d 1259, 1263 (10th Cir.2001), we held that a district-court order remanding a case to an ERISA plan administrator for a determination of LTD benefits was not a final appealable decision over which we had jurisdiction. Accord Graham v. Hartford Life & Accident Ins. Co., Nos. 06-5054 & 06-5142, 2007 WL 2405264 (10th Cir. Aug. 24, 2007) (dismissing for lack of jurisdiction when the district court had concluded that substantial evidence did not support a denial of benefits and remanded the claim to the plan for redetermination). Garner v. US West Disability Plan, — F.3d —-, 2007 WL 2570221 (C.A.10 (Colo.)) (September 07, 2007)
In yet another decision on the scope of judicial review of district court orders remanding claims decisions back to plan administrators, the Tenth Circuit continues to thin the federal docket of such issues. Garner emphasizes that the Tenth Circuit views remand orders as essentially nonappealable except in narrow circumstances.
The District Court Order
The Garner case arrived at the Tenth Circuit via the following route:
Following a motion for summary judgment by the Plan, the district court issued the order being appealed. The order rejected most of Ms. Garner’s arguments regarding her entitlement to LTD benefits but ruled that the Plan’s consideration of evidence of her mental disability was arbitrary and capricious. It remanded the case to the Plan “for further administrative review as to plaintiff’s claim for disability based on her alleged major depression, by itself or in conjunction with her physical ailments.†It then directed the clerk of court “to administratively close th[e] case subject to reopening only upon motion for good cause shown.â€
Ms. Garner appeals, challenging (among other things) the district court’s remand of the case to the Plan and the Plan’s denial of benefits based on physical disability.
Factors That Fail To Render An Order “Final”
The Tenth Circuit held that the remand order was not final and therefore not appealable. The opinion provides guidance on factors the Court views as irrelevant to the evaluation of an order’s finality.
#1 District Court’s Characterization Of Order As “Final”
How a district court terms its order makes no difference. The district court described its order as final, but
a district court’s characterization of its own order is not dispositive. See Metzger v. UNUM Life Ins. Co. of Am, 476 F.3d 1161, 1164 (10th Cir.2007) (holding order interlocutory even though district court determined that it was final). Rather, “when we question the finality of a district court’s decision to remand a benefits determination to the plan administrator, we analyze the substance of the district court’s decision, not its label or form.†Graham, Nos. 06-5054 & 06-5142, 2007 WL 2405264, at *6 (internal quotation marks omitted).
#2 District Court’s Terms Of Further Review
This item derives from the same principle as the prior point. The district court stated in its order that the plan administrator’s decision was only reviewable “only upon motion for good cause shown”. The Court held this was of no consequence either since, “it is the nature of the remand that controls, not the district court’s own characterization of finality or termination of the case.”
#3 Denial Of Request For Injunction
Nor does a denial of an request for an injunction add any weight to the finality argument.
Ms. Garner next claims that we have jurisdiction over her appeal because the district court’s order amounted to a refusal of her request for an injunction to stop the Plan from allegedly violating 29 C.F.R. § 2560.503-1. See 28 U.S.C. § 1292(a)(1) (granting circuit courts jurisdiction over district-court orders refusing injunctions).
Unless a litigant can show that an interlocutory order of the district court might have “a serious, perhaps irreparable, consequence, and that the order can be effectually challenged only by immediate appeal”, the denial of an injunction request will not make the order appealable.
#4 Burden Of Further Proceedings Or Trial
Related to the previous factor, the point nonetheless is worthy of specific attention. That the remand may result in further proceedings, or even a trial, that might be unnecessary were the district court’s order incorrect will not constitute sufficient grounds for appeal.
The “general congressional policy against piecemeal review will preclude interlocutory appeal” even in the face of objections that the remand order will result in an unnecessary trial. The Tenth Circuit opined:
To be sure, the inability to appeal at this stage will compel Ms. Garner to participate in a remand that she contends was improperly ordered, and that burden cannot be fully cured through a later appeal. But courts do not ordinarily treat the burden of having to participate in litigation as one that justifies appeal from a nonfinal order.
Note: In discussing interlocutory orders (see #3 above), the Court discussed, but found inapplicable, the collateral order doctrine as well as the practical finality rule.
- The Court noted that the collateral order doctrine applied only to a small class of cases and that the requirements for the doctrine to apply were “stringent”.
Whereas 28 U.S.C. § 1291 gives courts of appeals jurisdiction over all final decisions of district courts that are not directly appealable to us, the collateral order doctrine accommodates a small class of rulings, not concluding the litigation, but conclusively resolving claims of right separable from, and collateral to, rights asserted in the action. The claims are too important to be denied review and too independent of the cause itself to require that appellate consideration be deferred until the whole case is adjudicated.
The appellant’s claims failed to meet this standard:
Ms. Garner makes no attempt to show that the district court’s remand order may have a serious or irreparable consequence, or that an immediate appeal is necessary to challenge effectually the district court’s order, except to suggest that if she cannot appeal now, she will have to participate in a remand that the district court lacked authority to order. But Ms. Garner has given us no reason to believe that the remand order could not be reviewed after further proceedings.
- The appellant did not raise the practical finality rule except in her reply brief, so the Court refused to give it consideration:
Finally, for the first time in her reply brief, Ms. Garner also contends that her case “fits well within the ‘practical finality rule.’ “ Garner Reply Br. at 8. Under this rule, “an order is final only if finality is necessary to ensure that the court of appeals is able to review an important legal question which the remand made effectively unreviewable.†Metzger, 476 F.3d at 1165
Jurisdictional Issues - Unless an order is final, the federal Courts of Appeal do not have jurisdiction. In Garner, therefore, the Tenth Circuit dismissed the appeal for lack of jurisdiction. Some tension may be found here, however, between the rules applied in evaluating finality of orders remanding cases to the plan administrator and the trend described in :: Third Circuit Holds That Exhaustion of Administrative Remedies Does Not Constitute A Jurisdictional Issue
See also -:: Returning The ERISA Case To The Plan Administrator: Administrative Agency Analogies (Part 1)
