Conrad v. Phone Directories Co., Inc.Conrad v. Phone Directories Co., Inc.
In this appeal we are asked to decide, for the first time in this circuit, whether we have jurisdiction over an interlocutory appeal of the denial of a motion to dismiss premised on the existence of an arbitration agreement, notwithstanding the fact that the defendants did not explicitly move to stay the litigation or compel arbitration under the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”). We hold that we do not. Based on the plain text of the FAA, our canons of construction of jurisdictional statutes, and the Supreme Court’s recently-expressed categorical approach to the FAA’s appellate jurisdiction provision, we hold that in order to properly invoke appellate jurisdiction under the Act, the movant must either explicitly move to stay litigation and/or compel arbitration pursuant to the Federal Arbitration Act, or it must be unmistakably clear from the four corners of the motion that the movant seeks relief provided for in the FAA. We thus dismiss this appeal for lack of jurisdiction and remand the case to the district court.
I. Background
Plaintiff Sean Conrad sued his former employer, Phone Directories Co., and its chief executive and financial officers (defendants Marc and Mike Bingham, respectively; all three defendants will be collectively referred to as “PDC”) on state-law tort and breach-of-contract claims. Subject-matter jurisdiction in the district court was premised on diversity of citizenship; Conrad is a citizen of Oklahoma and defendants are domiciled in Utah, and Conrad sought more than $75,000 in damages.
See
PDC argues, however, that Conrad signed a later employment agreement that included a clause requiring all disputes between PDC and Conrad to be submitted to arbitration. In response to Conrad’s complaint, PDC filed a motion to dismiss under
While the arbitration agreement was an important part of PDC’s motion to dismiss, the motion did not ask the court to enforce the agreement under the FAA. The portion of PDC’s motion that addressed the agreement asserted only that “Plaintiffs Complaint should be dismissed ... because Plaintiff agreed to arbitrate all claims relating to his employment with [PDC.]” (App. at 33.) Only once in its memorandum in support of the motion, at the outset of its arbitration argument, did PDC mention the possibility of any outcome other than outright dismissal.
(Id.
at 49 (“If the Court does not dismiss this matter for improper venue, the Court should issue an order compelling arbitration and dismissing Plaintiffs claims.”).) PDC’s motion did not, however, explicitly ask the district court to stay the proceeding pending arbitration or to compel arbitration under either § 3 or § 4 of the
The district court granted PDC’s motion with respect to some of Conrad’s state-law tort claims, but denied the motion to dismiss the complaint in full under the arbitration agreement. In the district court’s view, “[a]t a minimum, genuine issues of material fact exist as to the applicability of [the second employment agreement] to the parties’ relationship and [Conrad’s] claims herein and as to the enforceability of [the second agreement,] assuming any applicability.” (App. at 142.) PDC filed an immediate appeal of this denial, asserting that its appeal was “taken pursuant to
II. Appellate Jurisdiction
Before addressing the merits of PDC’s arguments, we must first assure ourselves that we possess jurisdiction over this appeal. Though neither party initially briefed the question of our appellate jurisdiction, we ordered supplemental briefing on the issue of whether FAA
Title 28, section 1291 of the United States Code grants Courts of Appeals jurisdiction over “all final decisions of the district courts of the United States.” A final decision “is a decision by the district court that ‘ends the litigation on the merits and leaves nothing for the court to do but execute the judgment.’ ”
Utah ex rel. Utah State Dept. of Health v. Kennecott Corp.,
The FAA, however, contains a statutory exception to the final decision rule for certain categories of ordinarily non-final orders. Under the statute,
(a) An appeal may be taken from—
(1) an order—
(A) refusing a stay of any action under section 3 of this title,
(B) denying a petition under section 4 of this title to order arbitration to proceed,
(C) denying an application under section 206 of this title to compel arbitration,
(D) confirming or denying confirmation of an award or partial award, or
(E) modifying, correcting, or vacating an award;
(2) an interlocutory order granting, continuing, or modifying an injunction against an arbitration that is subject to this title; or
(3) a final decision with respect to an arbitration that is subject to this title.
Had PDC brought a motion either to stay proceedings or to compel arbitration under FAA § § 3 or 4, and had the district court then denied that motion, our jurisdiction would be clear.
Cf. Chelsea Family Pharmacy, PLLC v. Medco Health Solutions, Inc.,
Whether a Court of Appeals can or should treat a motion to dismiss as a motion under the FAA for the purposes of
A. Text of FAA
When interpreting a term in a statute, “we turn first to the text.”
Johnson v. Riddle,
The term at issue in
The structure of
Canons of construction also support the notion that “under section 3 [or section 4]” should be interpreted only to encompass motions brought explicitly pursuant to the FAA or those in which it is plainly apparent that the applicant seeks only arbitration. Because of the limited and defined nature of the jurisdiction of the federal courts, we are bound to construe statutes conferring jurisdiction narrowly.
Weber v. Mobil Oil Corp.,
Finally, two policy maxims also argue in favor of our conclusion. First, this court has recognized that, where jurisdictional matters are concerned, we prefer clear, bright-line rules.
See McCauley v. Halliburton Energy Servs., Inc.,
The administrative problems of the alternative rule are illustrated in this case, where we are asked to give controlling weight to some incidental phrase or reference otherwise buried in a motion that would not typically alert a judge that relief is being requested under § § 3 or 4 of the FAA. The possible connection to the FAA is even more attenuated here because the clear (almost exclusive) thrust of the motion to dismiss was to ask the court to examine the merits of the case and to dismiss it for lack of merit. This relief is inconsistent with a request to have the arbitrator decide the case. It is clearly inconsistent with the policy behind the FAA to ask the court to decide the merits of the case and then almost incidentally suggest that if the court does not rule in the movant’s favor, then the movant would like a second bite at the apple before the arbitrator. 2
On the whole, thus, a bright-line analysis grounded in the plain text of § 16 seems the better approach to this jurisdictional issue. Therefore, based on the text and the overall structure of the statutory provision, as well as canons of construction and policy considerations, we conclude that
B. The Supreme Court’s Interpretation in Arthur Andersen, L.L.P. v. Car-lisle
While it does not control the outcome of the question presented here, the Supreme Court’s recent decision in
Arthur Andersen, L.L.P. v. Carlisle,
— U.S. -,
The Court answered that question in the affirmative, and in doing so it admonished courts to avoid conflating the question of
In dissent, three Justices argued that whether the party against whom enforcement of an arbitration agreement is sought is a party to the agreement should be a threshold question to the application of
While the question facing this court is different, the methodology we adopt today is consistent with the Supreme Court’s admonition. PDC’s preferred approach would require courts of appeals carefully to parse the district court motions and memoranda to determine, factually, whether the arguments pressed in the district court sufficiently raised the concerns of the FAA to deem the motion brought “under section 3” or “under section 4.” To us, this is akin to the type of factbound threshold determination the respondents urged the Supreme Court to adopt in Arthur Andersen, and that the Court rejected. By focusing on “the category of the order appealed from,” as the Arthur Andersen Court did, we avoid conflating the jurisdictional question and the merits of the appeal and reach our jurisdictional answer in a simple, streamlined process.
C. Approaches Taken in Other Circuits
The opinions of our sister circuits to have considered the question also support the conclusion we reach today. While the other circuits have not explicitly characterized the analysis under
The D.C. Circuit, for example, in
Bombardier Corp. v. Nat’l R.R. Passenger Corp.,
D. Our Analytical Approach to
Given the foregoing, we hold that, in order to invoke the appellate jurisdiction provided in
The first, simplest, and surest way to guarantee appellate jurisdiction under
Given our expressed preference for bright-line rules, an approach that looks exclusively to the caption of a motion may seem tempting, but it would be unworkable, for two reasons. First, we feel that to look only at the caption of a motion would violate the spirit of notice pleading embodied in our Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
See Robbins v. Oklahoma,
If a motion denied by the district court is not explicitly styled as a motion under the FAA, or the court suspects that the motion has been mis-captioned in an attempt to take advantage of
If, on the other hand, the movant in the district court requests a judicial remedy that is inconsistent with the position that the issues involved may be decided only by the arbitrator, the movant is no longer proceeding exclusively under the FAA and has forfeited their right to interlocutory review under
E. Application to PDC’s Appeal
Under the test as we have articuláted it, PDC’s motion does not meet the criteria to support jurisdiction under
To be sure, PDC did mention that the court might compel arbitration in one sentence of its memorandum, and did cite to one Third Circuit case addressing § § 3 and 4 of the FAA. But these two offhand references do not serve to make it plainly apparent that the essence of the motion is a request for relief under the FAA. Therefore, we find that we do not possess jurisdiction to review the district court’s denial of PDC’s motion to dismiss Conrad’s Complaint.
Conclusion
For the foregoing reasons, we DISMISS this appeal for lack of jurisdiction and REMAND to the district court for further proceedings.
Notes
. Because § 16 was added to the FAA in 1988,
see
Pub.L. 100-702, § 1019(a), 102
. If a party files a motion under FAA § § 3 or 4, that motion is denied by the court, and the denial is affirmed on interlocutory appeal, nothing prevents that party from then filing a