Date: 01-20-2022

Case Style:

Diana Garner v. US West Disability

Case Number: 06-1199 06-1218

Judge: Harris Hartz

Court:

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS TENTH CIRCUIT

On appeal from The United States District Court for the District of Colorado - Denver

Plaintiff's Attorney: United States Attorney’s Office

Defendant's Attorney:

Denver, CO - Best Disability Lawyer Directory

Tell MoreLaw About Your Litigation Successes and MoreLaw Will Tell the World.

Re: MoreLaw National Jury Verdict and Settlement

Counselor:
MoreLaw collects and publishes civil and criminal litigation information from the state and federal courts nationwide. Publication is free and access to the information is free to the public.

MoreLaw will publish litigation reports submitted by you free of charge

Info@MoreLaw.com - 855-853-4800

Description:

Denver, CO – Disability lawyer represented defendant contesting the remand order for the Plan for reconsideration the claim.

Ms. Garner, who has rheumatoid arthritis, was an employee of US West
(now Qwest) from 1969 to 2000. In 2000 she applied for and received shortterm-disability benefits under the Plan. After these benefits were exhausted, she
began receiving long-term-disability (LTD) benefits on January 29, 2001,
retroactive to December 29, 2000. In 2004 her LTD benefits were terminated.
The letter terminating her benefits explained that a physical examination and
subsequent evaluation indicated that she was not entitled to LTD benefits under
the Plan. Ms. Garner timely appealed the denial, and on October 8, 2004, the
Plan issued a final denial, finding no medical support for total disability.
Ms. Garner filed a complaint on January 24, 2005, in the United States
District Court for the District of Colorado. She claimed that the Plan’s denial of
LTD benefits was arbitrary and capricious and violated ERISA. She alleged
various errors in the Plan’s consideration of her claims, including that it had
Appellate Case: 06-1199 Document: 010128354 Date Filed: 09/07/2007 Page: 2
-3-
failed to consider her depression as the cause of a mental disability. She sought
an order (1) awarding past benefits, costs, attorney fees, and other “relief as this
Court deems necessary,” Aplt. App. Vol. I at 13; (2) enjoining the Plan from
violating 29 C.F.R. § 2560.503-1 (describing the minimum requirements for
employee-benefit-plan procedures pertaining to claims for benefits); and (3)
instructing the Plan to approve her continuing claim for LTD benefits.
Following a motion for summary judgment by the Plan, the district court
issued the order being appealed. The order rejected most of Ms. Garner’s
arguments regarding her entitlement to LTD benefits but ruled that the Plan’s
consideration of evidence of her mental disability was arbitrary and capricious. It
remanded the case to the Plan “for further administrative review as to plaintiff’s
claim for disability based on her alleged major depression, by itself or in
conjunction with her physical ailments.” Aplt. App. Vol. II at 549. It then
directed the clerk of court “to administratively close th[e] case subject to
reopening only upon motion for good cause shown.” Id. at 550 (emphasis
omitted). Ms. Garner appeals, challenging (among other things) the district
court’s remand of the case to the Plan and the Plan’s denial of benefits based on
physical disability. The Plan cross-appeals, claiming that its decision to deny
Ms. Garner benefits based on mental disability was not arbitrary and capricious,
but also contending that “the ruling of the district court is not a final decision
over which this Court has jurisdiction.” U. S. West Br. at 2.
Appellate Case: 06-1199 Document: 010128354 Date Filed: 09/07/2007 Page: 3
-4-
II. DISCUSSION
We must first consider whether we have jurisdiction. Circuit courts
generally have jurisdiction only over “final decisions of the district courts.”
28 U.S.C. § 1291; cf. id. § 1292 (describing circuit courts’ jurisdiction over
interlocutory decisions). In Rekstad v. First Bank System, Inc., 238 F.3d 1259,
1263 (10th Cir. 2001), we held that a district-court order remanding a case to an
ERISA plan administrator for a determination of LTD benefits was not a final
appealable decision over which we had jurisdiction. Accord Graham v. Hartford
Life & Accident Ins. Co., Nos. 06-5054 & 06-5142, 2007 WL 2405264 (10th Cir.
Aug. 24, 2007) (dismissing for lack of jurisdiction when the district court had
concluded that substantial evidence did not support a denial of benefits and
remanded the claim to the plan for redetermination). The district court in Rekstad
had concluded that the plan administrator’s decision to deny benefits was
arbitrary and capricious, and remanded the case to the plan administrator to
determine what, if any, benefits the plaintiff should receive. 238 F.3d at 1261.
We noted “the well-accepted rule that an order determining liability but leaving
damages to be calculated is not final unless the correct amount of damages is selfevident and not likely to be the subject of a future appeal.” Id. at 1262. We then
observed that in that case the plaintiff’s “eligibility for disability damages must
still be addressed on remand” and that “the correct amount is far from obvious.”
Id. The relief sought by the plaintiff—which included benefits, attorney fees,
Appellate Case: 06-1199 Document: 010128354 Date Filed: 09/07/2007 Page: 4
-5-
costs, and other damages to be determined later—was sufficiently open-ended to
foreclose jurisdiction on appeal. See id. We stressed, however, that the
determination of whether ERISA remand orders were final “should be made on a
case-by-case basis applying well-settled principles governing ‘final decisions.’”
Id. at 1263.
Ms. Garner has not persuaded us that her case is distinguishable from
Rekstad in any meaningful way. The district court in this case concluded that the
Plan’s denial of benefits based on mental disability was arbitrary and capricious,
and remanded the case “to the Plan for further administrative review as to [her]
claim for disability based on her alleged major depression, by itself or in
conjunction with her physical ailments.” Aplt. App. Vol. II at 549. As in
Rekstad, Ms. Garner’s eligibility for benefits, if any, must still be determined on
remand. Moreover, her request for relief in the district court also sought costs,
attorney fees, and “further relief as [the district court] deems necessary.” Id. Vol.
I at 13. “Given this open-ended request, we cannot say that the appropriate
award, if any, is self-evident or that the process would not result in future
appeals.” Rekstad, 238 F.3d at 1262.
Ms. Garner makes four arguments in favor of jurisdiction. First, she points
out that “the District Court itself characterized its Order as final.” Garner Br. at
8. But a district court’s characterization of its own order is not dispositive. See
Metzger v. UNUM Life Ins. Co. of Am., 476 F.3d 1161, 1164 (10th Cir. 2007)
Appellate Case: 06-1199 Document: 010128354 Date Filed: 09/07/2007 Page: 5
-6-
(holding order interlocutory even though district court determined that it was
final). Rather, “when we question the finality of a district court’s decision to
remand a benefits determination to the plan administrator, we analyze the
substance of the district court’s decision, not its label or form.” Graham,
Nos. 06-5054 & 06-5142, 2007 WL 2405264, at *6 (internal quotation marks
omitted).
Second, Ms. Garner claims that this case is distinguishable from Rekstad,
238 F.3d 1259, because in that case “the district court told the clerk to close the
case file ‘subject to a motion to re-open, if such a motion is necessary to obtain
review of the issues remanded by this order,’” id. at 1261 (quoting district-court
judgment), whereas here the court stated that the case could be reopened “only
upon motion for good cause shown,” Aplt. App. Vol. II at 550. We have
previously held, however, that an order closing a case subject to “reopen[ing]
upon a showing of good cause” is not final. Quinn v. CGR, 828 F.2d 1463, 1465
(10th Cir. 1987) (internal quotation marks omitted). And in Graham the district
court’s docket entry said that the court was “‘dismissing/terminating’” the case
and the court order made no mention of the possibility of reopening. Graham,
Nos. 06-5054 & 06-5142, 2007 WL 2405264, at *2 (internal quotation marks
omitted) (quoting docket). Again, it is the nature of the remand that controls, not
the district court’s own characterization of finality or termination of the case.
Appellate Case: 06-1199 Document: 010128354 Date Filed: 09/07/2007 Page: 6
-7-
Ms. Garner next claims that we have jurisdiction over her appeal because
the district court’s order amounted to a refusal of her request for an injunction to
stop the Plan from allegedly violating 29 C.F.R. § 2560.503-1. See 28 U.S.C.
§ 1292(a)(1) (granting circuit courts jurisdiction over district-court orders
refusing injunctions). But the Supreme Court
ha[s] construed the statute narrowly to ensure that appeal as of right
under § 1292(a)(1) will be available only in circumstances where an
appeal will further the statutory purpose of permitting litigants to
effectually challenge interlocutory orders of serious, perhaps
irreparable, consequence. Unless a litigant can show that an
interlocutory order of the district court might have a serious, perhaps
irreparable, consequence, and that the order can be effectually
challenged only by immediate appeal, the general congressional
policy against piecemeal review will preclude interlocutory appeal.
Carson v. Am. Brands, Inc., 450 U.S. 79, 84 (1981) (brackets, citation, and
internal quotation marks omitted); see also Switz. Cheese Ass’n, Inc. v. E.
Horne’s Mkt., Inc., 385 U.S. 23, 24–25 (1966) (denial of summary-judgment
motion seeking a permanent injunction was not appealable under § 1292(a)(1));
Everett v. US Airways Group, Inc., 132 F.3d 770, 774–75 (D.C. Cir. 1998) (in
ERISA action, district court dismissed two claims as subject to mandatory
arbitration under Railway Labor Act and stayed third claim pending outcome of
arbitration; district court’s alleged refusal “to enjoin [the employer] to interpret
pension provisions in a certain fashion” was not appealable under § 1292(a)(1) as
denial of injunction because district court’s order could be “adequately challenged
by appeal from a final judgment” and plaintiffs would “suffer no harm sufficient
Appellate Case: 06-1199 Document: 010128354 Date Filed: 09/07/2007 Page: 7
The Court described the collateral-order doctrine as follows: 2
Whereas 28 U.S.C. § 1291 gives courts of appeals jurisdiction over
all final decisions of district courts that are not directly appealable to
(continued...)
-8-
to invoke the interlocutory review provisions of § 1292(a)(1)”). Ms. Garner
makes no attempt to show that the district court’s remand order may have a
serious or irreparable consequence, or that an immediate appeal is necessary to
challenge effectually the district court’s order, except to suggest that if she cannot
appeal now, she will have to participate in a remand that the district court lacked
authority to order. But Ms. Garner has given us no reason to believe that the
remand order could not be reviewed after further proceedings.
To be sure, the inability to appeal at this stage will compel Ms. Garner to
participate in a remand that she contends was improperly ordered, and that burden
cannot be fully cured through a later appeal. But courts do not ordinarily treat the
burden of having to participate in litigation as one that justifies appeal from a
nonfinal order. Recently, in Will v. Hallock, 126 S. Ct. 952 (2006), the Supreme
Court considered an appeal by customs officers who were sued in a Bivens action.
The district court had denied their motion to dismiss the suit as barred by the
Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA). The Court held that the denial of the officers’
motion was not a final order and therefore not appealable. Although a districtcourt order could be deemed a final order and appealable under the collateralorder doctrine if it was “effectively unreviewable on appeal from a final 2
Appellate Case: 06-1199 Document: 010128354 Date Filed: 09/07/2007 Page: 8
(...continued) 2
us, the collateral order doctrine accommodates a small class of
rulings, not concluding the litigation, but conclusively resolving
claims of right separable from, and collateral to, rights asserted in the
action. The claims are too important to be denied review and too
independent of the cause itself to require that appellate consideration
be deferred until the whole case is adjudicated.
The requirements for collateral order appeal have been
distilled down to three conditions: that an order [1] conclusively
determine the disputed question, [2] resolve an important issue
completely separate from the merits of the action, and [3] be
effectively unreviewable on appeal from a final judgment.
Id. at 957 (citations and internal quotation marks omitted; brackets in original).
-9-
judgment,” id. at 957 (internal quotation marks omitted), the Court explained that
an order is not “‘effectively’” unreviewable just because it requires a party to
submit to a trial unless “avoidance of a trial . . . would imperil a substantial
public interest,” id. at 959. If avoidance of trial were always sufficient ground to
deem an order effectively unreviewable, explained the Court, “the final order
requirement of § 1291 [would be left] in tatters.” Id. at 958. The Court decided
that the FTCA bar invoked by the officers “has no claim to greater importance
than the typical defense of claim preclusion,” id. at 960, and remanded to the
court of appeals with instructions to dismiss the appeal. Likewise, we see no
substantial public interest here in protecting against a remand to the Plan.
Finally, for the first time in her reply brief, Ms. Garner also contends that
her case “fits well within the ‘practical finality rule.’” Garner Reply Br. at 8.
Under this rule, “an order is final only if finality is necessary to ensure that the
Appellate Case: 06-1199 Document: 010128354 Date Filed: 09/07/2007 Page: 9
An argument that this court lacks jurisdiction can be made at any time, see 3
United States v. Clayton, 416 F.3d 1236, 1238 (10th Cir. 2005), but Ms. Garner is
arguing that we have jurisdiction.
-10-
court of appeals is able to review an important legal question which the remand
made effectively unreviewable.” Metzger, 476 F.3d at 1165 (brackets and internal
quotation marks omitted). Ms. Garner claims that holding her appeal nonfinal
will prevent this court from reaching her argument that the district court lacked
jurisdiction to remand the case to the Plan. This argument, of course, comes too
late, see Stump v. Gates, 211 F.3d 527, 533 (10th Cir. 2000) (“This court does not
ordinarily review issues raised for the first time in a reply brief.”), and her 3
underlying jurisdictional claim is of questionable validity, see United States v.
Jones, 336 U.S. 641, 671 (1949) (district courts “have power . . . to remand the
cause to the [administrative agency] for further proceedings”); Rekstad v. U.S.
Bancorp, 451 F.3d 1114, 1121 (10th Cir. 2006) (remanding ERISA case to district
court “with instructions that the case be returned to [the employer] for
reconsideration”). But more importantly, and as we have already stated,
Ms. Garner has given us no reason to believe that a remand to the Plan at this
juncture would prevent us from considering her argument in a later appeal
following a final order, see Graham, Nos. 06-5054 & 06-5142, 2007 WL
2405264, at *5; Rekstad, 238 F.3d at 1262. “[T]his is not a situation in which
remand may make either the district court’s earlier decision . . . or the merits of
[the Plan’s] decision on [Ms. Garner’s] claim for benefits effectively
Appellate Case: 06-1199 Document: 010128354 Date Filed: 09/07/2007 Page: 10
-11-
unreviewable.” Graham, Nos. 06-5054 & 06-5142, 2007 WL 2405264, at *5
(internal quotation marks omitted).

Outcome: The appeal is DISMISSED for lack of jurisdiction.

Plaintiff's Experts:

Defendant's Experts:

Comments: