Page v. Preisser, 78-1004

• Decision Date: 02 October 1978
• Docket Number: No. 78-1004,78-1004
• Parties: Janice Ann PAGE, Individually and on behalf of all other persons similarly situated, Appellant, v. Victor PREISSER, Commissioner of the Iowa Department of Social Services, Marjorie Lidgett, Income Maintenance Administrator of the Pottawattamie County Office of the Iowa Department of Social Services, Jean Potter, Assistant Income Maintenance Administrator and ADC Supervisor for the Pottawattamie County Office of the Iowa Department of Social Services, Individually and in their official capacities, Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

Page 336

585 F.2d 336

Janice Ann PAGE, Individually and on behalf of all other

persons similarly situated, Appellant, v. Victor PREISSER, Commissioner of the Iowa Department of

Social Services, Marjorie Lidgett, Income Maintenance

Administrator of the Pottawattamie County Office of the Iowa

Department of Social Services, Jean Potter, Assistant Income

Maintenance Administrator and ADC Supervisor for the

Pottawattamie County Office of the Iowa Department of Social

Services, Individually and in their official capacities, Appellees.

No. 78-1004.

United States Court of Appeals,

Eighth Circuit.

Submitted May 18, 1978.

Decided Oct. 2, 1978.

John G. Hinde, Legal Services Corp. of Iowa, Council Bluffs, Iowa (argued), and Janice M. Woolley, Council Bluffs, Iowa, on brief for appellant.

Stephen C. Robinson, Sp. Asst. Atty. Gen., Des Moines, Iowa (argued), Richard C. Turner, Atty. Gen., Theodore R. Boecker, and John J. Piazza, Asst. Attys. Gen., Des Moines, Iowa, on brief for appellees.

Before HEANEY and STEPHENSON, Circuit Judges, and SCHATZ, ^* District Judge.

HEANEY, Circuit Judge.

Janice Ann Page commenced this action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 on behalf of herself and all others similarly situated, challenging certain regulations issued by the Iowa Department of Social Services (the Department). ¹ She argued that: (1) the Iowa regulations are inconsistent with regulations of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) and are void under the supremacy clause of the Constitution, and (2) the Iowa regulations violated her right to due process under the Fourteenth Amendment. ² The District Court granted the Department's motions for summary judgment on both issues. We hold that the Iowa regulations are inconsistent with the HEW regulations and violative of the supremacy clause and reverse.

Janice Page's application for Aid to Families With Dependent Children (AFDC) and Medicaid benefits had been denied by the Department. In the course of her administrative appeal, she requested access to her case file. The Department refused to permit total access but offered only those portions of her file the Department intended to use in the administrative appeal. She then sought in the District Court a temporary restraining order to enjoin the Department from conducting her administrative hearing until the court had an opportunity to resolve her claims.

The District Court confronted the supremacy clause question first ³ and held that the Iowa regulations were not inconsistent with the federal regulations. It granted the Department's motion for summary judgment. Then, pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 54(b), ⁴ the court, finding no just reason for delay, ordered final judgment to be entered upon the supremacy clause issue. No appeal was taken from that order. Approximately a year later, the court granted the Department's motion for summary judgment and entered final judgment on the due process clause issue. Page appeals from that order of the court. In this appeal, she raises both the supremacy clause and due process issues.

I.

A. Initially, we decide whether Janice Page can raise the supremacy clause issue in this appeal. Ordinarily, the period of time for taking an appeal begins to run from the time the district court certifies a claim as appropriate for immediate appeal under Fed.R.Civ.P. 54(b). 10 C. Wright & A. Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure § 2661 at 90 (1973). Page did not appeal from the District Court's denial of her supremacy clause argument. She contends, however, that because her lawsuit involves only a single claim rather than multiple claims, the court improperly certified the supremacy clause issue as a separate claim under Rule 54(b). If the court erred in certifying the supremacy clause issue, she argues, she is not precluded from raising it, together with her due process argument, in this appeal.

It is clear that a district court's decision to issue a Rule 54(b) certificate is not conclusive. Appellate courts have broad reviewing power in determining whether a district court has properly applied the rule and correctly certified an appeal. See Schwartz v. Compagnie General Transatlantique, 405 F.2d 270, 274 (2d Cir. 1968); RePass v. Vreeland,357 F.2d 801, 804-805 (3d Cir. 1966); 10 C. Wright & A. Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure § 2655 at 35 (1973). In most cases, however, unlike the present action, the party challenging the certification takes a timely appeal from the court's order. Our research has failed to disclose any cases specifically deciding whether a party who neglects to take a timely appeal from a district court's Rule 54(b) certification may challenge the propriety of that certification after the period of time for taking an appeal has expired; and if the certification is held to have been erroneous, whether the party may, in his appeal from the court's final judgment of the remaining claims, seek review of the district court's adverse decision on the substantive claim underlying the Rule 54(b) certification.

We hold that such challenges may be made; and when a district court erroneously certifies a claim as appropriate for immediate appeal under Rule 54(b), a party may raise that claim in a timely appeal from an adverse decision on the remaining claims in the lawsuit. While, technically, the period for taking an appeal begins to run from the time the district court enters final judgment pursuant to the Rule 54(b) certification, if the certification is erroneous, there is, in fact, no proper final judgment from which a party must appeal. Thus, if an action involving a single claim is incorrectly categorized by the district court as one involving multiple claims, a party ought not be precluded from raising the propriety of the court's certification in a timely appeal from an adverse judgment on the other claims in the lawsuit.

Thus, we turn to Page's contention that this lawsuit involves only a single claim with alternative arguments for relief and was improperly categorized by the District Court as a multi-claim action to which the application of Rule 54(b) was appropriate.

B. Rule 54(b) was originally enacted to avoid the possible injustice that might result if judgment of a distinctly separate claim were delayed until adjudication of the entire case. See Advisory Committee on Rules for Civil Procedure (1946), Reprinted in 5 F.R.D. 472 (1946). The rule did not, however, purport to amend or dilute the fundamental rule against splitting a cause of action and deciding appellate cases piecemeal. See In re Bromley-Heath Modernization Committee, 448 F.2d 1271 (1st Cir. 1971). See also Sears, Roebuck & Co. v. Mackey, 351 U.S. 427, 435, 76 S.Ct. 895, 100 L.Ed. 1297 (1956). Thus, Rule 54(b) allows an appeal only from a judgment on a separate claim and both courts and commentators have expressed the exceptional nature of a Rule 54(b) certification. See 10 C. Wright & A. Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure § 2654 at 33 (1973). Rule 54(b) certifications should not be entered routinely or as a courtesy or accommodation to counsel. See Panichella v. Pennsylvania Railroad, 252 F.2d 452, 455 (3d Cir. 1958), cert. denied, 361 U.S. 932, 80 S.Ct. 370, 4 L.Ed.2d 353 (1960).

Courts have struggled in attempting to delineate a precise definition of "claim" for purposes of Rule 54(b). See Liberty Mutual Insurance Co. v. Wetzel, 424 U.S. 737, 743 n.4, 96 S.Ct. 1202, 47 L.Ed.2d 435 (1976); 6 J. Moore, Federal Practice PP 54.24, 54.33 (2d ed. 1976). It is clear that a claimant who presents a number of alternative legal theories, but whose recovery is limited to only one of them, has only a single claim of relief for purposes of Rule 54(b). See Edney v. Fidelity & Guaranty Life Insurance Company, 348 F.2d 136, 138 (8th Cir. 1965). One commentator has aptly summarized the policies underlying this view.

The trial judge is generally not permitted to certify the dismissal of fewer than all of a party's counts when his remaining counts deal with the same transaction or occurrence as those appealed. * * * By thus forbidding certification of an order dismissing fewer than all of a party's legal theories based on the same transaction, the courts leave open the possibility that the party will still be awarded relief, an event that would render unnecessary an appellate determination on the dismissal; this possibility disappears where no alternative theory for relief remains. * * * In addition to eliminating unnecessary appeals, (this approach) avoids appellate review of the same evidence on more than one appeal.

Note, Appealability in the Federal Courts, 75 Harv.L.Rev. 351, 360-361 (1961).

In her complaint in the District Court, Page sought to have certain Iowa regulations invalidated. She asserted alternative constitutional theories in support of her argument. Her complaint, however, arose out of a single transaction and asserted only a single claim. See Edney v. Fidelity & Guaranty Life Insurance Company, supra, 348 F.2d at 138. As the Supreme Court has recently stated:

Rule 54(b) "does not apply to a single claim action. * * * It is limited expressly to a multiple claims actions in which 'one or more but less than all' of the multiple claims have been finally decided and are found otherwise to be ready for appeal."

Liberty Mutual Insurance Co. v. Wetzel, supra, 424 U.S. at 743, 96 S.Ct. at 1206, Citing Sears, Roebuck & Co. v. Mackey, supra, 351 U.S. at 435, 76 S.Ct. 895.

Thus, the District Court erroneously held that the supremacy clause issue constituted a separate claim. Because the court improperly certified the supremacy clause issue under Rule 54(b), Page is not precluded from raising that issue in this appeal.

II.

Page contends that certain regulations of the Iowa Department of Social Services conflict with those of HEW and are invalid under the supremacy clause.

Iowa participates in the cooperative federal-state AFDC program. The program, which emerged from the Social Security Act of 1935, As...