Civil Procedure & Federal Courts Blog

Case-Linked Jurisdiction and the Ford Cases (Guest Post by Howard M. Erichson, John C. P. Goldberg & Benjamin C. Zipursky)

Howie Erichson, John Goldberg, and Ben Zipursky present the following guest post on the much-anticipated Ford cases that will be argued next week:

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On October 7, an eight-member Supreme Court will hop on the phone and hear oral argument in a pair of cases carried over from last term: Ford Motor Company v. Montana Eighth Judicial District Court and Ford Motor Company v. Bandemer. Because these cases focus on personal jurisdiction, Justice Ginsburg will be especially missed. A former civil procedure professor, Justice Ginsburg was the most important voice on the Court in this area of the law. Here, as elsewhere, she occupied positions of principle that cut across political divides.

The Court will need wisdom for these cases because they present a surprisingly difficult legal problem whose resolution could have a significant impact on future civil litigation. Suits were brought on behalf of a Montana resident and a Minnesota resident involved in car accidents in their respective home states. The Montana resident was killed and the Minnesotan suffered a severe brain injury. In both cases, the injury was allegedly caused by a product malfunction in the Ford vehicle in which they rode: a Ford Explorer with rollover problems in the Montana case and a Ford Crown Victoria with defective airbags in Minnesota. Ford has argued that, because the Explorer was first sold by a Ford dealer in Washington State, rather than Montana, the Montana courts have no personal jurisdiction over it. Similarly, it has argued that because the Crown Victoria was first sold by a Ford dealer in North Dakota, rather than Minnesota, the Minnesota courts have no personal jurisdiction over it. The high courts of Montana and Minnesota rejected Ford’s arguments, but Ford successfully petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to hear both cases. Due to COVID-19, the oral argument originally scheduled in May of 2020 was pushed over until the Term that is about to begin.

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Steinman on Appellate Courts and Civil Juries

I posted on SSRN a draft of my article, Appellate Courts and Civil Juries. Here’s the abstract:

In federal civil litigation, decisionmaking power is shared by juries, trial courts, and appellate courts. This article examines an unresolved tension in the different doctrines that allocate authority among these institutions, which has led to confusion regarding the relationship between appellate courts and civil juries. At base, the current uncertainty stems from a longstanding lack of clarity regarding the distinction between matters of law and matters of fact. The high-stakes Oracle-Google litigation—which is now before the Supreme Court—exemplifies this. In that case, the Federal Circuit reasoned that an appellate court may assert de novo review over a jury's verdict simply by characterizing a particular issue as legal rather than factual. But this approach misperceives the approach demanded by Rule 50 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which permits judicial override of a jury's verdict only when "a reasonable jury would not have a legally sufficient evidentiary basis" to reach such a verdict.

Rule 50's reasonable-jury standard does not permit de novo review of a jury's verdict on a particular issue. Rather, it requires deference to the jury's conclusion on that issue unless the reviewing court can explain why principles of substantive law or other aspects of the trial record render that verdict unreasonable. This deferential standard of review faithfully implements the text and structure of the Federal Rules and respects the jury's role in our federal system. Yet it also preserves appellate courts' ability to provide meaningful clarification that will guide future decisionmakers.

As the abstract indicates, the Supreme Court may be wrestling with this issue this coming Term in Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc., which is scheduled for oral argument (telephonically) next Wednesday.

Thanks to the Southeastern Association of Law Schools for letting me present an earlier draft of this paper back in July at the SEALS 2020 Annual Conference Federal Courts and Procedure Panel. I got a lot of great feedback.  

 

 

 

Call for Submissions: Cardozo Law Review Special SCOTUS Nomination Issue

Below is an announcement from the Cardozo Law Review seeking submissions for a special issue on Supreme Court nominations.

Download Call for Submissions - Special SCOTUS Nomination Issue

 

Sixth Circuit Panel Reverses Certification of a Negotiation Class in the Opioid MDL

Yesterday, the Sixth Circuit issued a 2-1 decision in In re National Prescription Opiate Litigation, a much-anticipated case about the certification of a negotiation class in the Opioid MDL.

The majority reversed the district court’s certification of a negotiation class. Judge Clay’s majority opinion called it a “novel form of class action.” He observes that Rule 23 “does not mention certification for purposes of ‘negotiation’ or anything along those lines” and writes that “a new form of class action, wholly untethered from Rule 23, may not be employed by a court.” He also found that the district court’s certification of the negotiation class had “papered over the predominance inquiry” required by Rule 23(b)(3).

Judge Moore disagrees, with a 40+ page dissent that begins:

The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure were not written and have never been interpreted to manacle district courts that innovate within the Rules’ textual borders. The district court has breathed life into a novel concept—a class certified for negotiation purposes—to aid in its Promethean duty to secure the just, speedy, and inexpensive resolution of this byzantine multidistrict litigation. We should be in the business of encouraging, not exterminating, such resourcefulness. Certifying a negotiation class honors the Rules’ equitable heritage, complements the settlement class’s history, hews to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23’s textual requisites, and stirs no constitutional or policy qualms. So, with respect, I dissent.

The entire dissent is worth a read. Before proceeding to analyze whether the district court properly certified the proposed negotiation class, Part I of Judge Moore’s opinion addresses the proper approach to interpreting and applying the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and Part II provides an engaging history of Rule 23.

 

 

 

Campos on the Civil Procedure Unavailability Workshop

Today on the Courts Law section of JOTWELL is Sergio Campos’s essay, Stay (Faraway, So Close!) in Touch with Civil Procedure, which discusses the Civil Procedure Unavailability Workshop series (covered earlier here).

 

 

RBG & Civil Procedure

There have been lots of wonderful tributes and remembrances in the wake of Justice Ginsburg’s passing.

Monday’s episode of the Strict Scrutiny podcast—with Leah Litman, Melissa Murray, Anne Joseph O’Connell, and Kate Shaw—has an interesting exchange about RBG and civil procedure (starting at around 14:00).

 

 

Yale Law Journal Submissions Deadline: Wednesday 9/23

A quick update on the fall law review submission season: The Yale Law Journal has announced that its deadline for Articles & Essays submissions is this Wednesday September 23, 2020.

More details here. 

 

Trump Files Cert Petition in Emoluments Case

Last week, Donald Trump filed a petition for certiorari challenging the Fourth Circuit’s en banc decision in In re Trump. That case arises from a lawsuit filed in Maryland federal court alleging violations of the Emoluments Clauses. As covered earlier, the Fourth Circuit ultimately allowed the lawsuit to proceed, refusing to grant Trump a writ of mandamus directing the district court to dismiss the case.

The pending Supreme Court case is captioned Trump v. District of Columbia, and the questions are focused on appellate jurisdiction:

1. Whether a writ of mandamus is appropriate because, contrary to the holding of the court of appeals, the district court’s denial of the President’s motion to dismiss was clear and indisputable legal error.

2. Whether a writ of mandamus is appropriate, contrary to the holding of the court of appeals, where the district court’s refusal to grant the President’s motion to certify an interlocutory appeal was a clear abuse of discretion under 28 U.S.C. 1292(b).

You can follow the Supreme Court filings at the Court’s website or at SCOTUSblog.

If folks are interested, I talk about some of these issues in a recent article Appellate Jurisdiction and the Emoluments Litigation, which was part of the Akron Law Review’s recent symposium on federal appellate procedure.

 

 

 

SCOTUS will hold October oral arguments remotely

As folks will recall, the last Supreme Court Term ended with oral arguments being held telephonically.

Today the Supreme Court issued a press release stating that “[t]he Court will hear all oral arguments scheduled for the October session by telephone conference, following the same format used for the May teleconference arguments.” And:

The Court will provide a live audio feed of the October oral arguments to a media pool as it did for the May arguments. The pool participants will in turn provide a simultaneous feed for the oral arguments to livestream on various media platforms for live public access. The oral argument audio and a transcript of the oral arguments will also be posted on the Court’s website following oral argument each day.

Stay tuned.

 

 

 

Deadline Approaching: Nominations for the Pound Institute Civil Justice Scholarship Award (Monday, September 14)

As covered earlier, Monday is the deadline to nominate books or articles for the Pound Civil Justice Institute’s Civil Justice Scholarship Award. The award comes with honoraria of $7,000 for a book and $3,000 for an article.

Here are links to the award criteria and nomination form.

 

 

Mangat on Weinstein-Tull on Local Courts

Today on the Courts Law section of JOTWELL is Leonardo Mangat’s essay, Unshrouding Our Day-to-Day Courts. Leonardo reviews Justin Weinstein-Tull’s article, The Structures of Local Courts, which is forthcoming in the Virginia Law Review.

 

 

Interesting 11th Circuit Decision on Qualified Immunity

Last week the Eleventh Circuit issued a decision in Cantu v. City of Dothan, reversing the district court’s grant of qualified immunity. Judge Ed Carnes’ opinion for the panel begins with a quote from Rick Bragg’s The Prince of Frog Town:

When Rick Bragg wrote about “a gothic story” in which “you can see the bad luck tumbling, as if the devil himself had shaved the dice,” he was talking about his father’s tragic life, but those words could also describe Robert Earl Lawrence’s effort to help a stray dog he found in a Walmart parking lot.

The introductory paragraphs describe the events that would lead to Lawrence’s death:

When the backup officer arrived at the shelter parking lot, still more words were exchanged. That officer told Lawrence that if he didn’t stop talking he was going to jail. Lawrence didn’t stop talking and the backup officer, with the assistance of the other two officers on the scene, attempted to arrest and handcuff him. Lawrence would not submit and resisted –– not aggressively, but vigorously. He refused to put his hands behind his back as ordered, he struggled, and twice he temporarily freed himself from an officer’s grip and ran around the car trying to get away, but officers caught up with him. In the last moments of the encounter, while trying to get free from three officers again, he put his hand either on an officer’s taser, or on the officer’s wrist or hand that was holding the taser. In response, an officer pulled her service weapon and without warning, and to the surprise of the other two officers, shot Lawrence while he was being held. He was taken to a hospital where he died from the gunshot wound.

The district court granted summary judgment on qualified immunity grounds to the officer who shot Lawrence. But the panel unanimously reverses and remands for further proceedings:

Taking the facts in the light most favorable to [the plaintiff], a reasonable jury could find that Woodruff violated Lawrence’s clearly established constitutional rights by shooting him. As a result, Woodruff is not entitled to summary judgment based on qualified immunity or based on state agent immunity.

 

 

Freer on Diversity Jurisdiction

Rich Freer has posted on SSRN a draft of his article, The Political Reality of Diversity Jurisdiction, which is forthcoming in the Southern California Law Review. Here’s the abstract:

Diversity of citizenship jurisdiction has been a staple of federal civil dockets since 1789. In the mid- to late-twentieth century, academics and some high-profile federal judges led a significant effort to abolish diversity jurisdiction. They were confident that diversity had outlived its purpose, which, they said, was to provide a federal court for out-of-state litigants who feared bias in the local state courts.

But diversity survived. Today, it represents a burgeoning percentage of the federal civil docket and is supported by an efficiency rationale that did not exist at the founding. Academics and judges seem relatively ambivalent toward, and even accepting of, this form of federal jurisdiction. We are in the midst of a resurgence of academic interest in diversity – not to abolish it, but to rationalize the various threads of its doctrine.

These efforts should be informed by the lessons that should have been learned by those who sought to abolish diversity jurisdiction. First, diversity is not a free-standing phenomenon. It is part of a carefully constructed constitutional plan intended to promote the free flow of commerce and a national identity. Second, what is usually presented as the traditional justification for diversity is sclerotic and understates the value of diversity jurisdiction. Third, as a matter of political power, the bar embraces diversity jurisdiction and will fight to keep it. At one level, we retain diversity for raw political reason. But the bar’s embrace is important for another reason: it likely manifests rational choices made in the interests of litigation clients. At least, the embrace should spur meaningful study of the interests served by diversity jurisdiction (study that remains to be done). And that study must appreciate that, over two centuries, an elaborate legal culture has emerged concerning the relations of state and federal courts.

Online Civil Procedure Workshop Resumes Today

After a brief hiatus, the Unavailability Civil Procedure Workshop resumes today, on a monthly basis. Here are the fall sessions:

September 1, 2020: Howie Erichson -- Distinguishing Between Facts And Conclusions Under Iqbal

October 6, 2020: Portia Pedro -- Remedies and Civil Procedure

November 10, 2020: Zach Clopton & Colleen Shanahan -- State Civil Procedure