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SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
_________________
No. 13–1174
_________________
ELLEN GELBOIM, et al., PETITIONERS
v. BANK OF
AMERICA CORPORATION et al.
on writ of certiorari to the united states court of appeals for
the second circuit
[January 21, 2015]
Justice Ginsburg delivered the opinion of the Court.
An unsuccessful litigant in a federal district court may take an
appeal, as a matter of right, from a “final decisio[n] of the
district cour[t].”28 U. S. C. §1291. The question here
presented: Is the right to appeal secured by §1291 affected when a
case is consolidated for pretrial proceedings in multidistrict
litigation (or MDL) authorized by28 U. S. C. §1407?
Petitioners Ellen Gelboim and Linda Zacher filed in the United
States District Court for the Southern District of New York a
class-action complaint raising a single claim. They alleged that a
number of banks, acting in concert, had violated federal antitrust
law. Their case was consolidated for pretrial proceedings together
with some 60 other cases, commenced in different districts, raising
“one or more common questions of fact,” §1407(a).
The defendant banks, respondents here, moved to dismiss the
Gelboim-Zacher complaint on the ground that the plaintiffs had
suffered no antitrust injury. The District Court granted the
motion, denied leave to amend the complaint, and dismissed the case
in its entirety. Other cases made part of the multidistrict
pretrial proceedings, however, presented discrete claims and
remained before the District Court.
The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, acting on its own
motion, dismissed the appeal filed by Gelboim and Zacher for want
of appellate jurisdiction. We reverse the Second Circuit’s judgment
and hold that the Gelboim-Zacher complaint retained its independent
status for purposes of appellate jurisdiction under §1291.
Petitioners’ right to appeal ripened when the District Court
dismissed their case, not upon eventual completion of multidistrict
proceedings in all of the consolidated cases.
I
Three legal prescriptions figure in this case: Title 28
U. S. C. §§1291 and 1407, and Federal Rule of Civil
Procedure 54(b).
Section 1291 gives the courts of appeals jurisdiction over
appeals from “all final decisions of the district courts of the
United States.” A “final decision” is one “by which a district
court disassociates itself from a case.”
Swint v.
Chambers County Comm’n,514 U. S. 35,42 (1995). While
decisions of this Court have accorded §1291 a “practical rather
than a technical construction,”
Mohawk Industries, Inc. v.
Carpenter,558 U. S. 100,106 (2009) (quoting
Cohen v.
Beneficial Industrial Loan Corp.,337
U. S. 541,546 (1949)), the statute’s core application is to
rulings that terminate an action, see
Catlin v.
United
States,324 U. S. 229,233 (1945) (final decision is “one
which ends the litigation on the merits and leaves nothing for the
court to do but execute the judgment”).
Rule 54(b) permits district courts to authorize immediate appeal
of dispositive rulings on separate claims in a civil action raising
multiple claims:
“When an action presents more than one claim for relief
. . . or when multiple parties are involved, the court
may direct entry of a final judgment as to one or more, but fewer
than all, claims or parties only if the court expressly determines
that there is no just reason for delay.”[
1]
Rule 54(b) relaxes “the former general practice that, in
multiple claims actions,
all the claims had to be finally
decided before an appeal could be entertained from a final decision
upon any of them.”
Sears, Roebuck & Co. v.
Mackey,351 U. S. 427,434 (1956). The Federal Rules
allow a plaintiff to “state [in one complaint] as many separate
claims . . . as it has.” Rule 8(d)(3). Rule 54(b) was
adopted in view of the breadth of the “civil action” the Rules
allow, specifically “to avoid the possible injustice” of
“delay[ing] judgment o[n] a distinctly separate claim [pending]
adjudication of the entire case.” Report of Advisory Committee on
Proposed Amendments to Rules of Civil Procedure 70 (1946)
(explaining that Rule 54(b) was recast in 1946 to avoid confusion
and misapplication); see
Dickinson v.
Petroleum
Conversion Corp.,338 U. S. 507,511 (1950) (Rule 54(b)
responded to liberalized joinder of claims and parties under the
Federal Rules, which “increased the danger of hardship and denial
of justice through delay if each issue must await the determination
of all issues as to all parties before a final judgment can be
had”). The Rule thus aimed to augment, not diminish, appeal
opportunity.
Section 1407 is of more recent vintage. Enacted in 1968 in
response to a growing number of complex but related cases filed in
multiple districts, §1407 authorizes the Judicial Panel on
Multidistrict Litigation (JPML) to transfer civil actions
“involving one or more common questions of fact . . . to
any district for coordinated or consolidated pretrial proceedings”
in order to “promote the just and efficient conduct of such
actions.” §1407(a); see H. R. Rep. No. 1130, 90th Cong., 2d
Sess., 2 (1968) (§1407 codified procedures used in the early 1960’s
to resolve more than 1,800 separate actions filed against
electrical equipment manufacturers in 33 District Courts, all of
the actions seeking damages for antitrust law violations).
Transfer under §1407 aims to “eliminate duplication in
discovery, avoid conflicting rulings and schedules, reduce
litigation cost, and save the time and effort of the parties, the
attorneys, the witnesses, and the courts.” Manual for Complex
Litigation §20.131, p. 220 (4th ed. 2004). “Each action”
transferred pursuant to §1407, the provision instructs, “shall be
remanded by the panel at or before the conclusion of
. . . pretrial proceedings to the district from which it
was transferred unless it shall have been previously terminated.”
§1407(a).
II
The London InterBank Offered Rate (LIBOR) is a benchmark
interest rate disseminated by the British Bankers’ Association
based on the rate at which certain banks predict they can borrow
funds. LIBOR is a reference point in determining interest rates for
financial instruments in the United States and globally.
In August 2011, the JPML established MDL No. 2262 (LIBOR MDL)
for cases involving allegations that the banks named as defendants
understated their borrowing costs, thereby depressing LIBOR and
enabling the banks to pay lower interest rates on financial
instruments sold to investors.
In re Libor-Based Financial
Instruments Antitrust Litigation, 802 F. Supp. 2d 1380
(JPML 2011). Composing the LIBOR MDL, over 60 actions, commenced in
California, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New
Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and
Wisconsin, were coordinated or consolidated for pretrial
proceedings in the United States District Court for the Southern
District of New York.
In June 2012, the District Court entertained a motion to dismiss
four categories of cases included in the MDL. The first three
categories involved putative class actions, each with a single lead
case: (1) the Gelboim-Zacher action, filed on behalf of purchasers
of bonds with LIBOR-linked interest rates; (2) an action filed on
behalf of purchasers of over-the-counter LIBOR-based instruments
(OTC plaintiffs); (3) an action filed on behalf of purchasers of
LIBOR-based instruments on exchanges (Exchange plaintiffs). The
fourth category, not relevant here, comprised a set of individual
actions filed by Charles Schwab Corporation and related entities.
The Gelboim-Zacher complaint asserted a federal antitrust claim
under §1 of the Sherman Act, 15 U. S. C. §1, and that
claim only, while the complaints in the other actions asserted a
federal antitrust claim in addition to other differently based
federal and state claims.
Determining that no plaintiff could assert a cognizable
antitrust injury, the District Court granted the banks’ motion to
dismiss plaintiffs’ antitrust claims—the sole claim raised in the
Gelboim-Zacher complaint. Assuming that the Gelboim-Zacher
plaintiffs were entitled to an immediate appeal of right under
§1291 because their suit had been “dismissed in [its] entirety,”
App. to Pet. for Cert. 219a, the District Court granted Rule 54(b)
certifications to the OTC and Exchange plaintiffs authorizing them
to appeal the dismissal of their antitrust claims while their other
claims remained pending in the District Court.
On its own initiative, the Second Circuit dismissed the
Gelboim-Zacher appeal because the “orde[r] appealed from did not
dispose of all claims in the consolidated action.”
Id., at
2a.[
2] The District Court thereafter withdrew its
Rule 54(b) certifications in the OTC and Exchange plaintiffs’
actions and, “given the reaction of the Second Circuit,” App. 294,
denied petitioners’ request for a Rule 54(b) certification.
We granted review of the Second Circuit’s judgment dismissing
the Gelboim-Zacher appeal. 573 U. S. ___ (2014). Before this
Court, petitioners Gelboim and Zacher contend that the order
dismissing their case in its entirety removed them from the
consolidated proceeding, thereby triggering their right to appeal
under §1291. Respondent banks urge that consolidated cases proceed
as one unit for the duration of the consolidation. Consequently,
they maintain, there is no appeal of right from an order dismissing
fewer than all consolidated claims, thus the sole avenue for appeal
while the consolidation continues is Rule 54(b). Agreeing with
Gelboim and Zacher, we reverse the Court of Appeals’ judgment.
III
Cases consolidated for MDL pretrial proceedings ordinarily
retain their separate identities,[
3] so an order
disposing of one of the discrete cases in its entirety should
qual-ify under §1291 as an appealable final decision. Section 1407
refers to individual “actions” which may be transferred to a single
district court, not to any monolithic multidistrict “action”
created by transfer. See
Lexecon Inc. v.
Milberg Weiss
Bershad Hynes & Lerach,523 U. S. 26,37 (1998) (§1407 does
not “imbu[e] transferred actions with some new and distinctive . .
. character”).[
4] And Congress anticipated that,
during the pendency of pretrial proceedings, final decisions might
be rendered in one or more of the actions consolidated pursuant to
§1407. It specified that “at or before the conclusion of
. . . pretrial proceedings,” each of the transferred
actions must be remanded to the originating district “
unless
[the action] shall have been previously terminated.” §1407(a)
(emphasis added).
The District Court’s order dismissing the Gelboim-Zacher
complaint for lack of antitrust injury, without leave to amend, had
the hallmarks of a final decision. Ruling on the merits of the
case, the District Court completed its adjudication of petitioners’
complaint and terminated their action. As a result of the District
Court’s disposition, petitioners are no longer participants in the
consolidated proceedings. Nothing about the initial consolidation
of their civil action with other cases in the LIBOR MDL renders the
dismissal of their complaint in any way tentative or incomplete. As
is ordinarily the case, the §1407 consolidation offered convenience
for the parties and promoted efficient judicial administration, but
did not meld the Gelboim-Zacher action and others in the MDL into a
single unit. Cf.
supra, at 6, n. 3.[
5]
The banks’ view that, in a §1407 consolidation, no appeal of
right accrues until the consolidation ends would leave plaintiffs
like Gelboim and Zacher in a quandary about the proper timing of
their appeals. Under Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 4, which
this Court has called “jurisdictional,”
Bowles v.
Russell,551 U. S. 205,209 (2007), a notice of appeal in
a civil case must be filed “within 30 days after entry of the
judgment or order appealed from,” Rule 4(a)(1)(A). If plaintiffs
whose actions have been dismissed with prejudice by a district
court must await the termination of pretrial proceedings in all
consolidated cases, what event or order would start the 30-day
clock? When pretrial consolidation concludes, there may be no
occasion for the entry of any judgment. Orders may issue returning
cases to their originating courts,[
6] but an
order of that genre would not qualify as the dispositive ruling
Gelboim and Zacher seek to overturn on appeal. And surely would-be
appellants need not await final disposition of all cases in their
originating districts, long after pretrial consolidation under
§1407 could even arguably justify treating the cases as a judicial
unit.
The sensible solution to the appeal-clock trigger is evident:
When the transferee court overseeing pretrial proceedings in
multidistrict litigation grants a defendant’s dispositive motion
“on all issues in some transferred cases, [those cases] become
immediately appealable . . . while cases where other
issues remain would not be appealable at that time.” D. Herr,
Multidistrict Litigation Manual §9:21, p. 312 (2014).
The banks express concern that plaintiffs with the weakest cases
may be positioned to appeal because their complaint states only one
claim, while plaintiffs with stronger cases will be unable to
appeal simultaneously because they have other claims still pending.
Brief for Respondents 46–47. Rule 54(b) attends to this concern.
District courts may grant certifications under that Rule, thereby
enabling plaintiffs in actions that have not been dismissed in
their entirety to pursue immediate appellate review. That is just
what happened in this very case. The District Court granted Rule
54(b) certifications to the OTC and Exchange plaintiffs so they
could appeal at the same time Gelboim and Zacher could. See
supra, at 5. And if the MDL court believes that further
proceedings might be relevant to a claim a defendant moves to
dismiss, the court ordinarily can defer ruling on the motion, thus
allowing all plaintiffs to participate in the ongoing MDL
proceedings.
While Rule 54(b) can aid parties with multiple-claim
complaints—here, the OTC and Exchange plaintiffs,
supra, at
5—the Rule, properly read, is of no avail to Gelboim and Zacher.
Rule 54(b) addresses orders finally adjudicating fewer than all
claims presented in a civil action complaint. It “does not apply to
a single claim action nor to a multiple claims action in which all
of the claims have been finally decided.”
Mackey, 351
U. S., at 435; see
Liberty Mut. Ins. Co. v.
Wetzel,424 U. S. 737–743 (1976) (Rule 54(b)
inapplicable where “complaint advanced a single legal theory which
was applied to only one set of facts”). In short, Rule 54(b) is
designed to permit acceleration of appeals in multiple-claim cases,
not to retard appeals in single-claim cases.[
7]
Section 1292(b), the banks conceded at argument, see Tr. of Oral
Arg. 40–41, is inapposite here. It allows district courts to
designate for review
interlocutory orders “not otherwise
appealable,” where immediate appeal “may materially advance the
ultimate termination of the litigation.” §1292(b). The designation
may be accepted or rejected in the discretion of the court of
appeals.
Ibid. See generally Solimine, Revitalizing
Interlocutory Appeals in the Federal Courts, 58 Geo. Wash.
L. Rev. 1165 (1990); Note, Interlocutory Appeals in the
Federal Courts Under 28 U. S. C. §1292(b), 88 Harv.
L. Rev. 607 (1975). It suffices to note that there is nothing
“interlocutory” about the dismissal order in the Gelboim-Zacher
action.
* * *
For the reasons stated, we reverse the judgment of the
U. S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit deeming the
District Court’s dismissal of the Gelboim-Zacher complaint unripe
for appellate review, and we remand the case for further
proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
