:: Remands To Plan Administrators (Part 2) – A List Of Circuit Courts Of Appeal Decisions
What follows are a series of notes on authorities on the question of when district court orders remanding cases to plan administrators are final and appealable. After a listing of seminal cases, a brief overview follows setting forth possible justifications for finding such orders final and appealable. (The first part of this series is found in :: Returning The ERISA Case To The Plan Administrator: Administrative Agency Analogies (Part 1))
Remands Orders Are Non-Final And Nonappealable
Bowers v. Sheet Metal Workers’ Nat’l Pension Fund, 365 F .3d 535, 537 (6th Cir.2004)
Borntrager v. Central States, Southeast and Southwest Areas Pension Fund, 425 F.3d 1087 (8th Cir. 2005)
Petralia v. AT & T Global Info. Solutions Co., 114 F.3d 352, 354 (1st Cir.1997)
Shannon v. Jack Eckerd Corp., 55 F.3d 561, 563 (11th Cir.1995)
Remand Orders Are Final And Appealable
Perlman v. Swiss Bank Corp. Comprehensive Disability Prot. Plan, 195 F.3d 975, 977-80 (7th Cir.1999)
Orders Evaluated On A Case By Case Basis
Rekstad v. First Bank System, Inc., 238 F.3d 1259, 1263 (10th Cir.2001)
Hensley v. N.W. Permanente P.C. Ret. Plan & Trust, 258 F.3d 986, 994 (9th Cir.2001) ( overruled on other grounds by Abatie v. Alta Health & Life Ins. Co., 458 F.3d 955, 966 (9th Cir.2006)) may fit here, but the case could be an example of the collateral order doctrine.
Exceptions Permitting Appeal
- The “Collateral Order” Doctrine
The essential requirements for a district court order to fall within this exception are that the order:
- conclusively determine the disputed question,
- resolve an important issue completely separate from the merits of the action, and
- be effectively unreviewable on appeal from a final judgment.
See, Will v. Hallock, 126 S.Ct. 952 (2006)
One may be tempted to say the the collateral order doctrine is an exception to the “final decision” requirement. Though common sense might suggest that characterization, the Supreme Court has not favored it (though the Court itself has termed the doctrine an “exception” on at least one occasion). The Supreme Court prefers to say that the collateral order doctrine is “best understood not as an exception to the ‘final decision’ rule laid down by Congress in § 1291, but as a ‘practical construction’ of it.”
- A “Small Class Of Cases”
Nor should one assume the doctrine has broad application. The Supreme Court has observed that:
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.
Will v. Hallock, 126 S.Ct. 952 (2006) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted)
- Stringent Conditions
The conditions for applying the doctrine are “stringentâ€, according to the Court, so as to protect the substantial finality interests § 1291 is meant to further:
judicial efficiency, for example, and the “sensible policy ‘of avoid[ing] the obstruction to just claims that would come from permitting the harassment and cost of a succession of separate appeals from the various rulings to which a litigation may give rise.’
Haddock, at 957 (citing Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. v. Risjord, 449 U.S. 368, 374, 101 S.Ct. 669, 66 L.Ed.2d 571 (1981)
In noting the doctrine’s scope, the Court describes the doctrine as a “narrow” exception to the general rule:
Accordingly, we have not mentioned applying the collateral order doctrine recently without emphasizing its modest scope. See, e.g., Digital Equipment, 511 U.S., at 868, 114 S.Ct. 1992 (“[T]he ‘narrow’ exception should stay that way and never be allowed to swallow the general rule that a party is entitled to a single appeal, to be deferred until final judgment has been entered …†(citation omitted)). And we have meant what we have said; although the Court has been asked many times to expand the “small class†of collaterally appealable orders, we have instead kept it narrow and selective in its membership.
- The ‘Practical Finality” Rule
Described as a rule rather than a doctrine, this concept may be though of as supplying another exception to the final order requirement. 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.â€
This exception is best understood as a part of the administrative agency analogy that federal courts often draw upon in determining the scope of review of benefit claim decisions by plan administrators. For example, the Tenth Circuit, where this rule holds sway, has commented as follows:
. . . consider a district court order remanding a claim to an administrative agency-perhaps the best analogue to an ERISA remand. In the administrative context, a remand order is “generally considered a nonfinal decision … not subject to immediate review in the court of appeals.†Baca-Prieto v. Guigni, 95 F.3d 1006, 1008 (10th Cir.1996). Employing a “practical finality†rule, we have nevertheless reviewed administrative remand orders where it was necessary “ ‘to ensure that the court of appeals was able to review an important legal question which the remand made effectively unreviewable.’ †Id. at 1009 (quoting Travelstead v. Derwinski, 978 F.2d 1244, 1248 (Fed.Cir.1992)). This rule exists in the administrative agency context, if nowhere else, because agencies may be barred from seeking district court (and thus circuit court) review of their own administrative decisions. Consequently, if a district court remands an issue to an administrative agency and essentially instructs the agency to rule in favor of the plaintiff, the agency “ ‘may well be foreclosed from again appealing the district court’s determination at any later stage’ †of the proceeding. Id. at 1008 (quoting Bender v. Clark, 744 F.2d 1424, 1428 (10th Cir.1984)).
Under this rule, the determination of whether the district court’s order is “final” has turned on the fact that the district court allowed for review of the plan administrator’s decision upon motion by either party:
Transporting the practical finality rule to the ERISA context, we still cannot say that the district court’s remand order was final. The remand to the plan administrator will not foreclose future appellate review of any important legal questions because, no matter the administrator’s ultimate decision, the district court has expressly stated that either party may obtain court review of the administrator’s determination simply by filing a motion. In that event, we then could review the final decision of the district court regarding the administrator’s determination along with any other issues that Defendants now ask us to address. If neither party seeks district court review of the plan administrator’s decision on remand, the district court may dismiss or otherwise conclude that aspect of the case and Plaintiff can then properly appeal the ADA claim.
