Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Decision of Interest: Fifth Circuit on Mandamus Review of District Court's Refusal to Remand

Last week the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued a decision in In Re Crystal Power Co., Ltd. (No. 11-40115). In March the same panel had issued a writ of mandamus instructing the district court to remand the case to state court (2011 WL 944371). The more recent decision (2011 WL 1833874) withdraws that order and denies the mandamus petition. With some very robust footnotes omitted, Judge Patrick Higginbotham writes:

We are now persuaded that the petition does not meet the stringent demands of the All Writs Act for extraordinary relief. Supreme Court precedent does not ordinarily allow mandamus review of district court decisions that, while not immediately appealable, can be reviewed at some juncture. The Court has instructed that our review of an erroneous refusal to remand must await appeal from a final judgment, even when this forces the parties to submit to proceedings before a tribunal that lacks competent jurisdiction over their dispute. To the same end, the Court has advised that the ordinary costs of trial and appeal are not a sufficient burden to warrant mandamus relief.

Three questions remain. First, whether a zone of review under the All Writs Act remains for cases where post-judgment review of an interlocutory order is an illusion—where the promise of review at some later time is not meaningful. Second, whether mandamus may remain available when delay would cause greater hardship than the normal cost of trying a case to judgment. Third, whether the precedent of this circuit can be defended on these grounds.

Since Crystal Power has not proffered any reason why post-judgment review would be ineffective or why the cost of delay would be atypical, we can leave these questions to another day.

In footnote 5, Judge Higginbotham notes that Supreme Court decisions on the propriety of mandamus relief in this situation "cast a heavy shadow on certain case law of this circuit. See, e.g., In re Hot-Hed, Inc., 477 F.3d 320, 322 (5th Cir. 2007) (granting mandamus where district court’s denial of remand was based on clearly erroneous assertion of federal question jurisdiction); In re Dutile, 935 F.2d 61, 63–64 (5th Cir. 1991) (granting mandamus where district court denied remand on an explicitly non-removable claim). Adding to the confusion, other circuits have held that when a district court denies a motion to dismiss for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction, rather than a motion to remand, mandamus relief may be available. See, e.g., Bell v. Sellevold, 713 F.2d 1396, 1402–05 (8th Cir. 1983); First Jersey Sec., Inc. v. Bergen, 605 F.2d 690, 700–02 (3d Cir. 1979); United States v. Boe, 543 F.2d 151, 157–61 (C.C.P.A. 1976); BancOhio Corp. v. Fox, 516 F.2d 29, 32–33 (6th Cir. 1975); Erie Bank v. U.S. Dist. Ct. for the Dist. of Colo., 362 F.2d 539, 540–41 (10th Cir. 1966)."

Additonal coverage in BNA's U.S. Law Week (79 U.S.L.W. 2566). Six law professors had joined an amicus brief urging rehearing of the Fifth Circuit's earlier ruling.

--A

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/civpro/2011/05/decision-of-interest-fifth-circuit-on-mandamus-review-of-district-courts-refusal-to-remand.html

Federal Courts, Recent Decisions, Subject Matter Jurisdiction | Permalink

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