Castaneda v. Greyhound Retirement and Disability Plan
| Decision Date | 06 December 1990 |
| Docket Number | No. 89-3457,89-3457 |
| Citation | 919 F.2d 740 |
| Parties | Unpublished Disposition NOTICE: Seventh Circuit Rule 53(b)(2) states unpublished orders shall not be cited or used as precedent except to support a claim of res judicata, collateral estoppel or law of the case in any federal court within the circuit. Ignacio CASTANEDA and Joseph Klaw, individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. GREYHOUND RETIREMENT AND DISABILITY PLAN and Greyhound Lines, Inc.--Amalgamated Council Retirement and Disability Trust, Defendants-Appellants. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit |
Before FLAUM and RIPPLE, Circuit Judges, and ESCHBACH, Senior Circuit Judge.
Greyhound Retirement and Disability Plan and its successor, Greyhound Lines, Inc.--Amalgamated Council Retirement and Disability Trust appeal the district court's judgment on behalf of a class of former employees of Greyhound's Chicago terminal (referred to collectively as the Chicago Employees). For the following reasons, we dismiss the appeal for want of jurisdiction.
The Chicago Employees challenge this court's jurisdiction to decide this appeal. They contend that the district court's judgment was not final because it decided only liability while reserving jurisdiction to grant relief. They rely in large part on Liberty Mutual Insurance Co. v. Wetzel, 424 U.S. 737 (1976). In that case, the Supreme Court held that a district court order was not appealable when that order declared that an employer's practices violated federal anti-discrimination law but granted respondents none of the relief that they expressly sought in their complaint: "They requested an injunction, but did not get one; they requested damages, but were not awarded any; they requested attorneys' fees, but received none." Id. at 742.
An exhaustive study of the record leaves us uncertain as to whether the district court intended to terminate the litigation. See Soo Line R.R. v. Escanaba & L.S.R.R., 840 F.2d 546, 550 (7th Cir.1988). Accordingly, we dismiss this appeal for want of jurisdiction. First, we note that the district court entered its order on the basis of a crossmotion for summary judgment as to liability. Moreover, prior to the ruling, counsel explicitly had invited the attention of the court to the limited nature of the motion and the court explicitly had acknowledged that limitation. R. 73 at 4. In ruling on the matter, the district court explicitly acknowledged that it was ruling on the "crossmotion for summary judgement as to defendants' liability." Mem. op. at 15 (emphasis supplied). No disposition was made of the plaintiffs' requests for consequential damages....
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