Martinez v. SullivanMartinez v. Sullivan
The parties have been advised that this court was considering summary dismissal of this appeal for lack of appellate jurisdiction.
This case began in 1971 when the original plaintiffs sought an injunction requiring appellants to provide hearings to Medicare home health patients before cutting off their benefits. On remand from this court, the district court issued an order in 1973 enjoining appellants from terminating home health care benefits to the individual plaintiffs and “to all those Medicare beneficiaries similarly situated without first providing an evidentiary hearing on the merits of their terminations.” Order of April 23, 1973, at 4.
In 1986, appellees initiated the present enforcement proceedings, asking the district court to require appellants to comply with the 1973 order or be held in contempt. In response, appellants argued that because of an intervening change in the law they should be relieved of any obligations under the 1973 injunction. On October 14, 1986, the district court found that appellants had failed to comply with the 1973 order and that no change of law requiring relief from the order had occurred. The court ordered appellants to submit a plan for implementing the 1973 order. 655 F.Supp. 95.
On May 1, 1987, after considering proposals from the parties, the district court issued an order setting forth a detailed implementation plan (hereinafter referred to as the Remedial Order). Appellees, citing Rule 59(e), filed a “Motion to Clarify, Alter or Amend” the Remedial Order on May 15, 1987. On June 25, 1987, appellants filed a notice of appeal with this court seeking review of the Remedial Order. Appellees’ Rule 59(e) motion was still pending when this notice of appeal was filed.
On August 6, 1987, this court notified the parties that it was considering sua sponte dismissal of appellants’ appeal for lack of jurisdiction. On September 16, 1987, the district court denied appellees’ Rule 59(e) motion. Appellants notified this court of the denial by letter dated September 24, 1987 but did not file a new notice of appeal following the district court‘s resolution of appellees’ motion. We now dismiss the present appeal because the only notice of appeal reflected in the record is a nullity under
Appellants argue first that
In any event, under
We must next determine whether appellees’ motion is properly characterized as falling under
A motion will be considered to fall under
In the same vein, this court “has consistently held that ... a motion questioning the correctness of a judgment ... will be treated under
Our review of the district court‘s Remedial Order and the appellees’ motion reveals that, under the standard outlined above, the motion must be considered to fall under
The motion thus raised an issue that had important substantive ramifications for the implementation of the Remedial Order. The appellants argued before the district court that “the proposed amendment would deprive the remedial order of any meaning and distort the legislative scheme upon which the Medicare program is based.” Had the district court approved the proposed amendment, appellants most certainly would have raised the issue in this appeal. Thus, the motion most certainly involved “reconsideration of matters properly encompassed in [the] decision on the merits,” and is properly characterized as falling under
Because the June 25, 1987 notice of appeal is a nullity, and because appellants failed to file a separate notice of appeal after the district court denied appellees’
For the above reasons, the appeal is DISMISSED.