The Eleventh Circuit explained when the reversal of summary judgment in district court is not appealable to the court of appeals.
The defendant won a motion for summary judgment in bankruptcy court, dismissing an adversary proceeding brought by a bankruptcy trustee. The trustee appealed and won when the district judge set aside the grant of summary judgment upon determining there were disputed issues of fact requiring trial.
When the defendant appealed to the Eleventh Circuit, the court of appeals dismissed the appeal for lack of appellate jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 158(d). The per curiam opinion on June 28 said the district court’s order was not “even a marginally final order.”
The bankruptcy court’s order granting summary judgment and dismissing the complaint was final and appealable. Under traditional notions of finality, the district court’s order was not final, the circuit court ruled, because “the district court directed the bankruptcy court to conduct a substantial amount of judicial proceedings on remand.”
Moreover, the order in district court was not final because the “adversary proceeding has not yet ended on the merits and none of the substantive rights of the parties have yet been conclusively determined.”
The appeals court distinguished some of its own decisions where the reversal of a grant of summary judgment had yielded a final, appealable order. The orders in those cases were final because the district court had resolved all issues and there was nothing remaining for the bankruptcy court to do except declare the parties’ rights or determine who was entitled to interpleaded funds.
Even under the “flexible bankruptcy standard of finality,” the order was not appealable, the circuit said, because the district court “did not resolve any claims against any parties, or even effectively resolved [sic] any claims as a practical matter, because it determined that genuine issues of material fact exist that need to be resolved at trial.”
The circuit court ended the opinion by expressing no view on the defendant’s pending motion in district court for certification of an interlocutory appeal.