Flexibility on Finality: Over Dissent, First Circuit Splits from Majority in Holding That Orders Denying Relief from Stay Are Not Always Final

Contributed by Debra McElligott
The United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit contributed to a circuit split regarding jurisdiction in its recent decision in Pinpoint IT Services, LLC v. Rivera (In re Atlas IT Export Corp.). In this case, the court considered whether orders denying relief from the automatic stay are final and appealable as a matter of right. Over a dissent, and contrary to the decision of seven of the eight circuits that have considered the question, the court held that such orders are not final unless they have definitively decided a discrete, fully-developed issue that is unreviewable in another forum.
Dueling Lawsuits
Pinpoint, a Virginia company, and Atlas, a Puerto Rico company, had a prepetition contract that became the subject of two simultaneous federal court actions prior to Atlas’s bankruptcy. Pinpoint sued Atlas for breach of contract in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. Atlas, a Puerto Rico company, moved to change venue to the United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico and then sued Pinpoint in that court before the Virginia judge could rule on the motion. Atlas then filed for chapter 7 protection in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Puerto Rico, and the bankruptcy court granted the debtor a modification of the automatic stay that allowed only the Puerto Rico action to go forward. Pinpoint ultimately sought a modification of the stay in the bankruptcy court, arguing that the stay was preventing the Eastern District of Virginia from applying the common-law “first-filed” rule. Generally, the “first-filed” rule requires that, where two district courts have jurisdiction over the same controversy, the court with the “first-filed” action has the first chance to decide the case.
The bankruptcy court denied Pinpoint’s motion to lift the stay for failure to show cause, after which Pinpoint appealed to the Bankruptcy Appellate Panel in the First Circuit. The Bankruptcy Appellate Panel dismissed the appeal for lack of jurisdiction, concluding that the order did not amount to a final decision from which Pinpoint could appeal as a matter of right. The panel reasoned that the order only decided that Pinpoint could not presently proceed in the Eastern District of Virginia, not that it was prevented from “trying to prove its case, or from arguing the ‘first-to-file rule,’” in the District of Puerto Rico. Pinpoint then appealed to the First Circuit.
A Flexible Approach to Finality
The First Circuit considered Pinpoint’s argument that the court had jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 158(d)(1), which allows federal courts to review appeals from “final decisions, judgments, orders, and decrees” by the Bankruptcy Appellate Panel. The court thus examined whether the Bankruptcy Appellate Panel’s dismissal of Pinpoint’s appeal amounted to a “final order” within the language of the statute and noted that the answer depended on whether the bankruptcy court’s order denying Pinpoint stay relief constituted a “final order.”
Primarily, the court noted that, although federal court actions are generally treated as a “single judicial unit” from which one appeal can be made, the length and complexity of bankruptcy cases allows for a “flexible approach to finality.” In bankruptcy, “final” does not refer only to the last order entered in the case, but to any order that decides all the issues “of a ‘discrete dispute within a larger case.’” The First Circuit chose to depart from the rule accepted by the majority of circuits,which is that all orders denying stay relief are final and appealable as of right. In doing so, the court contributed to the circuit split initiated by the Third Circuit in In re West Electronics, Inc., which drew a distinction between orders “‘conclusively’ deciding the contested issue” and those demonstrating signs of nonfinality – for example, orders denying stay relief because of ongoing discovery or further required research. The First Circuit adopted the West court’s “fact-specific, case-by-case style of analysis” and the viewpoint that orders that do not decide a discrete, fully-developed issue are not final.
Policy Concerns
The court also examined policy justifications underlying the majority rule that all orders denying motions for relief from stay are final. Among these was the argument that the automatic stay is “like an injunction, and so is final and appealable.” The court noted that the operation of the automatic stay is the default position in a bankruptcy, and that Congress has already decided the “balance of equities” (one of the four elements for a preliminary injunction) by automatically imposing it upon a debtor’s filing. The court also explained that judicial economy will be served by a rule that does not allow all denials of stay relief to be appealed, as parties would have to consider the finality of their order rather than “reflexively appeal.”
Application and Dissent
Applying its rule, the First Circuit held that the bankruptcy court’s order denying relief from stay was not final. The court dismissed Pinpoint’s arguments to the contrary, finding that the underlying dispute related to venue and the first-filed rule, which the bankruptcy court avoided addressing by expressly stating that both could be litigated in the District of Puerto Rico action. Because the order did not resolve that dispute, it was not final.
The court issued its opinion over Judge Kayatta’s dissent. The judge noted the value of uniformity in the context of bankruptcy and highlighted not only that the Third Circuit has “never encountered an order that fell within the exception it hypothesized” in West, but also that the majority did not point to any appeal “that would have been precluded or rendered less difficult” by their rule. He also explained that the purpose of the finality rule was judicial economy and that an “ad hoc, case sensitive approach” to deciding jurisdiction over orders denying relief from stay would not serve this purpose.
The First Circuit’s decision in this case stands alone in the realm of jurisdiction over orders denying stay relief. Not only does it depart from the decision of seven of the eight circuits that have considered the question, but it goes farther than the Third Circuit’s decision in West, which merely proposed an example of an order that would not be final. It will be interesting to see whether the First Circuit’s departure from the majority rule will create efficiency by lessening the number of appeals (perhaps at the price of a simple, “blanket rule”), or whether it will create confusion and delay by requiring an analysis of whether an order is final before it can be appealed.