Raley v. Hyundai Motor Company, Ltd., et al

Filing

[9875623] Dismissed; Terminated on the merits after oral hearing; Written, signed, published; Judges Lucero, McKay and Gorsuch, authoring judge. Mandate to issue.

FILED
Appellate Case: 10-6080

Document: 01018657774

United States Court of Appeals
Date Filed: 06/14/2011 Page: 1
Tenth Circuit

June 14, 2011
PUBLISH

Elisabeth A. Shumaker
Clerk of Court

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
TENTH CIRCUIT

MISTY RALEY, individually and as
parent and next friend of C.G., W.G.,
and C.A.G., minor children,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
HYUNDAI MOTOR COMPANY,
LTD., a Korean corporation; and
HYUNDAI MOTOR AMERICA, a
California corporation,

No. 10-6080

Defendants-Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Western District of Oklahoma
(D.C. No. 08-CV-00376-HE)

John M. Merritt, Merritt & Associates, P.C., Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, for
Plaintiff-Appellant.
Gene C. Schaerr, Winston & Strawn LLP, Washington, D.C. (Jacob R. Loshin,
Winston & Strawn LLP, Washington, D.C.; James A. Jennings, Linda Kaufmann
and Derrick Teague, Jennings, Cook & Teague, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; and
Thomas N. Vanderford, Jr., Hyundai Motor America, Fountain Valley, California,
with him on the brief) for Defendants-Appellees.

Before LUCERO, McKAY, and GORSUCH, Circuit Judges.

GORSUCH, Circuit Judge.

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Can you appeal a final judgment rendered against someone else?
Especially when you aren’t a named party to the lawsuit and voluntarily left the
case long ago? At least generally, and specifically in this case, the answer is no.
Misty Raley brought this lawsuit against Hyundai alleging that a car it
manufactured was defectively designed and responsible for injuries she suffered
in an accident. But before trial began, Ms. Raley filed a motion pursuant to Fed.
R. Civ. P. 25(c) asking the district court to substitute BancFirst in her place as
“the real party in interest” and sole plaintiff in the case. Aplt. App. Vol. 5 at
1513. Ms. Raley explained that a state probate court had appointed BancFirst to
serve as guardian for her and her minor children. In light of this development,
she represented, all “interest” in the lawsuit had been “transferred” to the bank, to
the exclusion of herself and her children. Aplt. App. Vol. 5 at 1514.
Hyundai disputed this. The company argued that substitution under Rule
25(c) would be improper because Ms. Raley, not the bank, remained the real party
in interest in the lawsuit. The company argued, as well, that any substitution
should take place only pursuant to Rule 25(b), not Rule 25(c) — though, the
company stressed, Ms. Raley hadn’t sought relief under Rule 25(b) or
demonstrated the sort of incompetency necessary to invoke it. In the end, the
district court overruled Hyundai’s objections, granted Ms. Raley’s motion, and

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substituted BancFirst as the party-plaintiff in place of Ms. Raley, both in her
individual capacity and as the representative of her children.
After a lengthy jury trial, Hyundai prevailed. But when entering judgment
on Hyundai’s behalf, the district court mistakenly identified Misty Raley, not
BancFirst, as the losing party-plaintiff. Adding to the confusion, Ms. Raley then
proceeded to file a notice of appeal, listing herself — but not BancFirst — as the
plaintiff-appellant seeking to undo the judgment. For its part, BancFirst did not
file a notice of appeal.
Not long after the appeal was docketed, the district court noticed its clerical
error. After obtaining leave pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(a) & 62.1, the district
court issued an amended judgment identifying BancFirst, not Ms. Raley, as the
only party-plaintiff to its judgment. In response, Ms. Raley filed another notice
of appeal, this time seeking to contest the district court’s Rule 60(a) ruling and
the amended judgment. Again, she listed herself, not BancFirst, as the only
plaintiff-appellant in the case. Again, BancFirst filed nothing.
It is this that poses a problem. Generally speaking, only named parties to a
lawsuit in the district court may appeal an adverse final judgment. See United
States ex. rel. Eisenstein v. City of New York, 129 S. Ct. 2230, 2234-35 (2009);
Marino v. Ortiz, 484 U.S. 301, 304 (1988) (per curiam); Karcher v. May, 484
U.S. 72, 77 (1987); United States ex rel. Louisiana v. Boarman, 244 U.S. 397,
402 (1917); S. Utah Wilderness Alliance v. Kempthorne, 525 F.3d 966, 968 (10th
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Cir. 2008). After all, it is usually only parties who are sufficiently aggrieved by a
district court’s decision that they possess Article III and prudential standing to be
able to pursue an appeal of it. See West v. Radio-Keith-Orpheum Corp., 70 F.2d
621, 624 (2d Cir. 1934) (Learned Hand, J.) (“[I]f not a party, the putative
appellant is not concluded by the decree, and is not therefore aggrieved by it.”);
Thomas v. Metro. Life Ins. Co., 631 F.3d 1153, 1159 (10th Cir. 2011) (“[T]o have
standing on appeal, one must be aggrieved by the order from which appeal is
taken.” (internal alterations and quotation omitted)).
Problem is, we have no appeal from a named party in this case. The only
named party-plaintiff in the lawsuit after the district court granted Ms. Raley’s
substitution motion was and is BancFirst. Yet, the bank has not filed a notice of
appeal. And this presents a particular difficulty because of Rules 3(c) and 4 of
the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure. Rule 3(c) says that a notice of appeal
“must . . . specify the party or parties taking the appeal.” Fed. R. App. P.
3(c)(1)(A). And Rule 4 states that a complaint notice “must be filed” in most
civil cases like this one within 30 days after judgment. Fed. R. App. P.
4(a)(1)(A). Both of these rules are “mandatory” in nature and, taken together,
form a “single jurisdictional threshold” to appellate review. Torres v. Oakland
Scavenger Co., 487 U.S. 314, 315 (1988); see also Becker v. Montgomery, 532
U.S. 757, 765 (2001); Edelman v. Lynchburg Coll., 535 U.S. 106, 116 (2002).
And the threshold, simply put, is this: the “[f]ailure to name the proper party
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taking the appeal,” within the time allotted by Rule 4, can and “will result in the
dismissal of an appeal for lack of appellate jurisdiction.” Riggs v. Scrivner, Inc.,
927 F.2d 1146, 1149 (10th Cir. 1991).
Of course, the rules of contemporary civil litigation are replete with
exceptions, perhaps too many exceptions — and this rule itself is no exception.
Those who are the subject of civil contempt orders, sanctioned attorneys, class
members who object to a judgment settling their rights — among others — may
sometimes be parties to an appeal even though they were not named parties in the
district court litigation. See, e.g., Devlin v. Scardelleti, 536 U.S. 1, 14 (2002);
U.S. Catholic Conference v. Abortion Rights Mobilization, Inc., 487 U.S. 72, 76
(1988); Hinckley v. Gilman, Clinton & Springfield R.R., 94 U.S. 467, 469 (1876);
Blossom v. the Milwaukee &c., R.R., 68 U.S. (1 Wall.) 655, 656 (1863); In re
Woosley, 855 F.2d 687, 688 (10th Cir. 1988); Dietrich Corp. v. King Res. Co.,
596 F.2d 422, 424 (10th Cir. 1979); Plain v. Murphy Family Farms, 296 F.3d
975, 979-81 (10th Cir. 2002). Like named parties, these individuals possess
Article III standing in the sense that they have been injured by a district court
ruling and a favorable decision on appeal would ameliorate that injury. They also
possess prudential standing; they do because they don’t seek to pursue another
person’s legal rights, litigate a mere generalized grievance, or raise a challenge
falling outside the zone of interests protected by the law involved. Devlin, 536
U.S. at 7. And of particular note, the individuals in each of these situations (1)
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personally appeared in district court; (2) suffered a real and concrete injury as a
result of a district court ruling that is entitled to preclusive effect; and (3) possess
interests that would not, on appeal, be adequately represented by the named
parties to the district court lawsuit. See, e.g., Devlin, 536 U.S. at 7-9; Bode v.
Clark Equip. Co., 807 F.2d 879, 880-81 (10th Cir. 1986) (per curiam); Dietrich,
596 F.2d at 424; West, 70 F.2d at 624; see also Joan Steinman, Irregulars: The
Appellate Rights of Persons Who Are Not Full-Fledged Parties, 39 Ga. L. Rev.
411 (2005).
In light of this, the question naturally arises whether Ms. Raley might be
allowed to proceed as a party to this appeal even though she was, by the time the
district court rendered its rulings, no longer a named party to the district court
proceedings. But while the question naturally arises, it isn’t one Ms. Raley has
sought to answer. She makes no mention of this possibility in her opening or
reply brief. Curious still about the question, we drew the parties’ attention to it at
oral argument. In response, Hyundai filed a Rule 28(j) letter attempting to
address our inquiry. But Ms. Raley had nothing to say on the subject at oral
argument or later.
Where an appellant fails to lead, we have no duty to follow. It is the
appellant’s burden, not ours, to conjure up possible theories to invoke our legal
authority to hear her appeal. Neither are we comfortable guessing for ourselves,
without her help, what the answer might be to the complex question whether and
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when a substituted and now former party to the district court proceedings is
eligible to appear as a party to an appeal. Accordingly, we leave all that for
another case another day. See United States v. Ceballos-Martinez, 387 F.3d 1140,
1143 (10th Cir. 2004) (“[T]he party claiming appellate jurisdiction bears the
burden of establishing our subject-matter jurisdiction.”); see also United States ex
rel. Ramseyer v. Century Healthcare Corp., 90 F.3d 1514, 1518 n.2 (10th Cir.
1996) (stating that arguments in support of jurisdiction may be waived like any
other contention).
In this case, we will focus on, and limit our attention to, the three
arguments that Ms. Raley has chosen to pursue in an effort to sustain her appeal.
First and primarily, she tries a factual angle. She urges us to read the
district court’s Rule 25(c) substitution order as permitting her to remain a named
party to the district court lawsuit along with BancFirst. But this we cannot do.
Back when she filed her motion, Ms. Raley didn’t seek to add BancFirst as a
plaintiff. Instead, she claimed that she had transferred all interest in the lawsuit
to the bank, she represented that the bank had become the sole “real party in
interest,” and she asked the court to recognize the bank as the only plaintiff “in
the place and stead of” herself. Aplt. App. Vol. 5 at 1513, 1517. The district
court granted the relief she requested, ruling that the bank was “SUBSTITUTED
as the plaintiffs in this case.” Aplt. App. Vol. 6 at 2270. Before this court, Ms.
Raley makes much of the fact that the district court proceeded in its substitution
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order to prohibit the parties from making any reference to the substitution order at
trial. But in doing so the district court was clearly and simply seeking to prevent
either side from making tactical use of the substitution order before the jury. And
this does not alter the fact that Ms. Raley received exactly the relief she requested
— substitution of BancFirst for herself as the sole party-plaintiff.
Our holding shouldn’t be mistaken for more than it is. We are not
suggesting that Ms. Raley’s Rule 25(c) motion was necessarily a proper one. It
may well be, as Hyundai once argued, that a Rule 25(c) substitution wasn’t
appropriate in this case because Ms. Raley hadn’t actually transferred her interest
in the litigation to the bank; the bank was merely acting as her guardian. Our
holding in this case is merely one of fact and peculiar to this case. We reject
only, but dispositively, Ms. Raley’s post-hoc reading of the district court’s order.
For better (as she thought then) or worse (as she thinks now) the district court
granted her motion for substitution. And no litigant can count on winning an
appeal by complaining about a possible legal error she invited in the district
court. See United States v. Shaffer, 472 F.3d 1219, 1227 (10th Cir. 2007).
Second, even if she did win her motion for substitution, Ms. Raley says we
can undo it. She has filed a motion in this court asking us to substitute BancFirst
in her stead as the sole party-appellant before us — effectively asking us to undo
the very substitution order she sought and won in the district court. This sort of
“un-substitution,” she says, can and will repair any damage she may have done.
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But it will not. To entertain a motion to substitute the appellant we must
first have an appeal. And here we don’t. Without a timely notice of appeal from
someone we can be confident is a party to the appeal, we have no authority to
hear a challenge to the district court’s judgment, let alone grant a motion in such
a (non-existent) appeal. No court of appeals can reach the merits of a
motion in an appeal it is without jurisdiction to hear. And no more persuasive
application of this rule could be found than in this case, where the relief sought is
essentially to permit a district court party (BancFirst) to file a conforming notice
of appeal out of time, a result that would (quite improperly) “vitiate” the
mandatory and jurisdictional deadline set forth by Rules 3 and 4. See Torres, 487
U.S. at 315; see also Kowaleski v. Dir., Ofc. of Workers’ Comp., U.S. Dep’t of
Labor, 879 F.2d 1173, 1177 (3d Cir. 1989). 1
Third and in a very different direction, Ms. Raley asks us to infer
BancFirst’s intent to appeal from the record of this case outside the notices of
appeal. She points out that BancFirst is represented by the same counsel as she.

1

Neither does a motion for substitution “relate back” to Ms. Raley’s
timely but defective notices of appeal. In Becker v. Montgomery, 532 U.S. 757
(2001), the Court held that an appellant’s failure to sign a notice of appeal could
be cured after the deadline to file the notice. But in explaining this holding, the
Court took care to note that, while the timing and content requirements for the
notice of appeal were “jurisdictional in nature,” the signature requirement was
not. Id. at 765-66; Edelman, 535 U.S. at 116. This is so, of course, because that
signature requirement is not among those listed in Rule 3(c)(1). Instead, Federal
Rule of Civil Procedure 11 “alone calls for and controls that requirement,” and
Rule 11 is not jurisdictional like Rules 3 and 4. Becker, 532 U.S. at 765-66.
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And she stresses that the bank has joined her motion in this court seeking leave to
substitute it as the appellant. From these facts, she says, we should surmise that
BancFirst intended all along to participate in this appeal.
This, too, we cannot do. The test for determining whether a particular party
has appealed is whether a timely notice of appeal, filed within the period specified
by Rule 4, makes it “objectively clear that [the] party [in question] intended to
appeal,” either by naming the specific party or by using a term (whether “et al.” or
“all plaintiffs” or “the defendants”) that encompasses that party. Fed. R. App. P. 3
advisory committee note (1993 amendment). And the notices of appeal in this
case plainly fail this test. They don’t name BancFirst. They don’t use terms that
objectively and clearly encompass the bank. Instead, both notices mention only
Ms. Raley. Neither may we look beyond the notice of appeal and scour the record
to figure out who does and doesn’t wish to appeal. Rule 3(c) expressly requires
that a party’s intent to participate in the appeal be objectively clear “from the
notice” itself. Fed. R. App. P. 3(c)(4) (emphasis added); see also Billino v.
Citibank, 123 F.3d 723, 726-27 (2d Cir. 1997); Magicsilk Corp. of N.J. v. Vinson,
924 F.2d 123, 125 (7th Cir. 1991); Becker, 532 U.S. at 765-66.
If anything, our current test for determining a party’s intent to appeal is
more forgiving than it used to be. In Torres, the notice of appeal omitted the name
of one of sixteen plaintiffs, but appeared to encompass even the unnamed plaintiff
through use of the term “et al.” (literally, “and others.”). 487 U.S. at 317-18. The
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Supreme Court, however, held this general term was “utterly” insufficient to
afford it jurisdiction to hear an appeal from the unnamed plaintiff. Id. at 318. The
Court’s holding led to a rash of “satellite litigation” over whether and when a
notice of appeal that contains “some indication of the appellants’ identities but
does not name the appellants” might be sufficient. Fed. R. App. P. 3 advisory
committee note (1993 amendment). In response, the rulemakers went to work and,
at their recommendation, Congress in 1993 adopted an amendment liberalizing
Rule 3(c), permitting appellants to use “such terms as ‘all plaintiffs’ [or] ‘the
defendants’” to identify the appealing parties. Fed. R. App. P. 3(c)(1)(A). This
language was expressly designed to “prevent the loss of a right to appeal through
the inadvertent omission of a party’s name or continued use of such terms as ‘et
al.,’ which are sufficient in all district court filings after the complaint.” Fed. R.
App. P. 3 advisory committee note (1993 amendment). But even as amended, the
Rule still unambiguously limits the scope of inquiry to the notice of appeal itself
— it does not allow us to forage through the record for indicia of a putative
appellant’s intent.
To be sure, just as we now construe more liberally what is in the notice of
appeal, we also liberally construe what is a notice of appeal, treating timely filings
that otherwise comply with Rule 3(c) as the “functional equivalent” of a notice of
appeal even when they are not formally denominated as such. See Smith v. Barry,
502 U.S. 244, 247-48 (1992); B. Willis, C.P.A. Inc. v. B.N.S.F. Ry., 531 F.3d 1282,
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1296 (10th Cir. 2008); see also Grimsley v. MacKay, 93 F.3d 676, 678 (10th Cir.
1996). But none of this means we may look beyond what is labeled as or
functionally equivalent to a notice of appeal to figure out who is and is not seeking
to appeal.
It may seem “harsh” to insist that a party manifest an objectively clear
intent to appeal in the notice of appeal itself. But, as Justice Marshall emphasized
in Torres, the results flowing from the application of Rule 3(c) are results
“imposed by the legislature” and the rulemaking process, results courts are not
free to rewrite according to their policy preferences. 487 U.S. at 318 (internal
quotation omitted). Neither, as it happens, are Rule 3(c)’s requirements just empty
procedures without purpose. By requiring an objectively verifiable indication of
who is appealing in the notice of appeal itself, the Rule “serves both the interests
of finality, in that courts of appeal may not exercise jurisdiction over unnamed
parties . . . and of fairness [by] . . . provid[ing] notice both to the opposition and to
the court of the identity of the appellant or appellants.” DeLuca v. Long Island
Lighting Co., 862 F.2d 427, 429 (2d Cir. 1988) (internal quotation omitted). And
both considerations are surely at work here. Throughout most of the briefing of
this appeal it was unclear whether BancFirst wanted to pursue an appeal, and we
are loath simply to guess whether someone wishes to invoke and become subject to
our jurisdiction. Likewise, it is manifestly unfair to any responding appellee to
have to write its briefs and prepare its arguments without any way of being sure
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who is, and who is not, seeking to undo its district court victory. Who is appealing
should be something everyone can easily and readily know, not a guessing game.
Truth is, the problems with this appeal were likely avoidable. A timely
notice of appeal by BancFirst, assuming it had really wished to appeal as Ms.
Raley represents, would have done the trick. Alternatively, Ms. Raley might have
sought some form of relief from the district court other than total substitution. Or
she might have sought to argue that she can challenge the judgment because of
precedent permitting some individuals who are not parties to the district court
litigation to appear as parties to an appeal. But we rule on the cases as they come
to us. And this one comes to us in a posture where none of these options was
pursued and so where we have little left we can do. As it stands, this appeal, like
a nearly identical appeal the Third Circuit faced in Kowaleksi, “strikingly
illustrates the necessity for lawyers to be familiar with applicable legal procedural
rules and to comply with them.” 879 F.2d at 1174. Many procedural missteps we
can forgive or overlook, others we can correct. But Rules 3(c) and 4 are
jurisdictional rules. And jurisdictional rules are just that. The failure to abide
them can, and in this case does, mean that we cannot reach the merits, however
unfortunate that may be.
This appeal is dismissed for lack of jurisdiction. The motions for
substitution and remand are dismissed as moot.

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