Skender ex rel. Situated v. Eden Isle Corp.
| Decision Date | 04 May 2022 |
| Docket Number | 21-2365, No. 21-2556 |
| Citation | 33 F.4th 515 |
| Parties | Stetson SKENDER, Individually and on Behalf of All Others Similarly Situated, Plaintiff - Appellee v. EDEN ISLE CORPORATION; Gary Redd, Defendants - Appellants Stetson Skender, Individually and on Behalf of All Others Similarly Situated, Plaintiff - Appellant v. Eden Isle Corporation; Gary Redd, Defendants - Appellees |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit |
Lydia Hicks Hamlet, Sanford Law Firm, Russellville, AR, Josh Sanford, Sanford Law Firm, Little Rock, AR, for Plaintiff-Appellee for Docket No. 21-2365, Plaintiff-Appellant for Docket No. 21-2556.
Daveante Jones, Jane A. Kim, Gary D. Marts, Jr., Wright & Lindsey, Little Rock, AR, for Defendants-Appellants for Docket No. 21-2365, Defendants-Appellees for Docket No. 21-2556.
Before LOKEN, ARNOLD, and KOBES, Circuit Judges.
Soon after Eden Isle Corporation terminated Stetson Skender's employment, he sued Eden Isle and its president, Gary Redd, claiming that they had failed to pay him overtime wages, in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act and the Arkansas Minimum Wage Act. See 29 U.S.C. § 207(a)(1) ; Ark. Code Ann. § 11-4-211(a). The district court1 ultimately entered an order granting summary judgment to the defendants on the ground that Skender did not support his allegations with sufficient evidence. Mere minutes after the court entered its order, but before the clerk had entered a separate judgment dismissing Skender's claims, see Fed. R. Civ. P. 58(b)(1)(C), Skender filed a notice stating that he had accepted an offer of judgment that the defendants had extended him six days earlier, see Fed. R. Civ. P. 68, in which they agreed to pay him four thousand dollars plus costs and reasonable attorneys' fees. He maintained that, under Rule 68(a), he could accept the offer anytime up to fourteen days after the defendants had served him with it, and therefore it had survived the court's grant of summary judgment. The clerk nevertheless entered judgment consistent with the summary-judgment order.
Skender moved the court to amend the judgment to reflect the terms in the offer of judgment. The district court, relying on Perkins v. U.S. W. Commc'ns , 138 F.3d 336, 339 (8th Cir. 1998), granted Skender's motion, and the clerk entered a new judgment. The defendants appeal, maintaining that the judgment should have reflected the court's summary-judgment ruling rather than the offer of judgment. Skender, meanwhile, cross appeals from the court's order denying a post-judgment motion for recusal and from the court's order granting him only one dollar in attorneys' fees. We affirm.
We begin with the defendants' appeal from the court's amendment of the judgment to reflect the terms in the offer of judgment. In Perkins , as here, a party accepted an offer of judgment after the district court had entered an order granting summary judgment for the opposing party, and the offeror did not condition its offer on the outcome of a pending summary-judgment motion. 138 F.3d at 337–39. Finding nothing in the text of the governing rules to suggest that the offer would automatically terminate on the grant of summary judgment, we held that the offer remained open for the time prescribed in Rule 68 "despite an intervening grant of summary judgment by the district court." Id. at 339–40.
As the district court recognized, our opinion in Perkins controls the outcome of the defendants' appeal. Because only our en banc court may overrule a prior panel's decision, we can't grant the defendants' requested relief. See United States v. Escobar , 970 F.3d 1022, 1026 (8th Cir. 2020).
We now turn our attention to Skender's cross appeal, the latest episode in an ongoing and protracted dispute between the district court and Skender's counsel, the Sanford Law Firm, PLLC (SLF). See, e.g. , Oden v. Shane Smith Enters., Inc. , 27 F.4th 631 (8th Cir. 2022). After the court amended its judgment, Skender moved the court to recuse, arguing that the "Court has entered orders and taken other actions in other cases ... that would lead a reasonable person to question the impartiality of this Court with respect to" SLF and attorney Josh Sanford. It asked the clerk to reassign the case to another judge "for purposes of ruling on Plaintiff's Motion for Costs and Attorneys' Fees, filed concurrently herewith." The district court denied the motion in a brief order the same day.
The defendants assert that we lack jurisdiction to consider Skender's challenge to the court's recusal order because his notice of appeal was untimely. Federal law generally requires a party to file a notice of appeal within thirty days after the court enters the order being challenged on appeal. See 28 U.S.C. § 2107(a) ; see also Fed. R. App. P. 4(a)(1)(A). The Supreme Bowles v. Russell , 551 U.S. 205, 209, 127 S.Ct. 2360, 168 L.Ed.2d 96 (2007). Skender filed his notice of appeal 36 days after the court entered its order denying recusal, identifying two orders that Skender wished to challenge: the recusal order and the court's order awarding him only one dollar in attorneys' fees—an order that the court entered earlier on the same day that Skender filed his notice of appeal.
Absent certain exceptions not relevant here, our court has "jurisdiction of appeals from all final decisions of the district courts" within our circuit. See 28 U.S.C. §§ 1291, 1294(1). "Restricting appellate review to ‘final decisions’ prevents the debilitating effect on judicial administration caused by piecemeal appellate disposition of what is, in practical consequence, but a single controversy." Eisen v. Carlisle & Jacquelin , 417 U.S. 156, 170, 94 S.Ct. 2140, 40 L.Ed.2d 732 (1974). In many cases, final decisions are easy to identify, but the border between a final decision and a non-final decision can be "elusive" and "often difficult to ascertain." See Miller v. Alamo , 975 F.2d 547, 549 (8th Cir. 1992). When determining whether an order is final, we undertake a practical, rather than technical, evaluation of the circumstances, including a consideration of "the inconvenience and costs of piecemeal review on the one hand and the danger of denying justice by delay on the other." Id.
At oral argument counsel for Skender explained that he did not appeal the recusal order sooner because he believed the order was not final and appealable. It is true that we have held that orders denying a motion to recuse are not final, appealable orders. See, e.g. , United States v. Brakke , 813 F.2d 912, 913 (8th Cir. 1987) (per curiam); Scarrella v. Midwest Fed. Sav. & Loan , 536 F.2d 1207, 1210 (8th Cir. 1976) (per curiam). The typically clear legal waters are murkier here, though, because the court entered the order denying recusal after it had entered a final judgment on the merits of the case. Orders entered post-judgment are typically more amenable to immediate appeal because, for one thing, "there is little danger that prompt appeal of post-judgment matters will cause confusion, duplicative effort, or otherwise interfere with the trial court's disposition of the underlying merits," and for another, "further proceedings are not likely to produce an order that is any more final than the one at issue." See Jensen v. Minn. Dep't of Human Servs. , 897 F.3d 908, 912 (8th Cir. 2018). In the one case we've found from a circuit court involving the finality of a post-judgment order denying recusal, the court held that the order was final and appealable. See United States v. Yonkers Bd. of Educ. , 946 F.2d 180, 183 (2d Cir. 1991) (per curiam).
But viewing the current circumstances from a practical perspective, which is particularly appropriate when determining whether a post-judgment order is final, see Jensen , 897 F.3d at 912, we hold in this case that Skender's notice of appeal was timely as to the order denying recusal because that order was not yet final and appealable. First, unlike an appeal from most post-judgment orders, an immediate appeal here might have interfered with proceedings before the district court. At the time of the court's order denying recusal, the court had pending before it a motion for an award of costs and attorneys' fees—a motion to which Skender's recusal motion was expressly tethered. So a notice of appeal filed while the court was considering that related motion could arguably have divested the district court of jurisdiction to decide it, see Griggs v. Provident Consumer Disc. Co. , 459 U.S. 56, 58, 103 S.Ct. 400, 74 L.Ed.2d 225 (1982) (per curiam), and thus prevented the court from resolving it until our court resolved the appeal of the recusal order. Second, further proceedings would likely produce an order that was more final than the order denying recusal. The resolution of the motion for attorneys' fees provided a natural terminus after which we could review the fee order and the related, prefatory recusal order.
We do not intend to intimate that no post-judgment recusal orders are final and appealable. Some post-judgment recusal orders, like the one at issue in Yonkers , may respond to recusal motions that do not identify some other motion or proceedings for which recusal is sought and that would soon be resolved. In that circumstance there may be no other court order that would provide a worthwhile or sensible opportunity to review the court's recusal decision. A party should not be able to revive a lost opportunity to appeal after each and every subsequent post-trial order. See 15B Edward H. Cooper, Federal Practice & Procedure § 3916 (2d ed. April 2022 update). But here the recusal motion was expressly connected to a specific motion filed the same day whose resolution could be expected in short order. In these circumstances, we think it more practical to review the orders resolving these motions in one fell swoop after the court has decided...
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