Gary & Hayes v. Sheahan
| Decision Date | 07 October 1999 |
| Docket Number | No. 99-8013,99-8013 |
| Citation | 188 F.3d 891 |
| Parties | (7th Cir. 1999) Kenya Gary and Tania Hayes, on behalf of themselves and a class of others similarly situated, Plaintiffs-Respondents, v. Michael F. Sheahan, Sheriff of Cook County, Illinois, Defendant-Petitioner |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit |
On Petition for Leave to Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. No. 96 C 7294--David H. Coar, Judge.
Before Easterbrook, Diane P. Wood, and Evans, Circuit Judges.
As in Blair v. Equifax Check Services, Inc., No. 99-8006 (7th Cir. June 22, 1999), we have been asked to approve an interlocutory appeal under Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(f). See also 28 U.S.C. sec.1292(e); Fed. R. App. P. 5. And as in Blair, there is a preliminary question about appellate jurisdiction. Rule 23(f) authorizes us to "permit an appeal from an order of a district court granting or denying class action certification under this rule if application is made to it within ten days after entry of the order." Blair held an appeal may be filed either from the order itself or from the disposition of a request for reconsideration filed within the time for appeal. Now we drop the other shoe: if the request for reconsideration is filed more than ten days after the order "granting or denying class action certification under this rule", then appeal must wait until the final judgment.
This case was certified as a class action on April 10, 1997. In August 1998 defendant asked the district court to decertify the class. Defendant's motion was denied on March 31, 1999, and a petition for leave to appeal was filed within ten days of that order. (Ten rule days, not ten calendar days; under Fed. R. Civ. P. 6(a) weekends and holidays do not count when a time limit prescribed by the civil rules is ten days or fewer.) Blair shows that a motion to reconsider filed more than ten days after the order is too late to preserve the possibility of appeal under Rule 23(f), and we do not think that it matters what caption the litigant places on the motion to reconsider. This case demonstrates why that limit is essential. Otherwise, by styling a motion to reconsider as a motion to decertify the class, a litigant could defeat the function of the ten-day line drawn in Rule 23(f).
Interlocutory appeals are rare, because they may disrupt progress of the case. Because the decision whether a suit will proceed as a class action is so vital, and sometimes so hard to review at the end of the case, Rule 23(f) permits the court of appeals to accelerate appellate review; but to ensure that there is only one window of potential disruption, and to permit the parties to proceed in confidence about the scope and stakes of the case thereafter, the window of review is deliberately small.
Blair analogizes a motion for reconsideration to a post-judgment motion under Fed. R. Civ. P. 50 or 59(e). That analogy also...
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