The case you spent years successfully litigating was firmly
planted in federal court. At the time, you had no reason to
think otherwise. Whether your case began in federal district
court or was channeled there by virtue of the removal process, the
court’s authority to both hear and rule upon your cause was
never questioned. The party adverse to your favorable
judgment then timely appealed to the United States Court of Appeals
for the Eleventh Circuit. A briefing schedule was set, you
eventually received the other side’s opening brief, and, as a
matter of course, you started preparing to defend the merits of
your hard-fought, district court victory.
But just days into your preparation, the case came to an abrupt
– and entirely unexpected – stop. Why? The
Clerk of the Eleventh Circuit advised you, via letter, that a
potentially fatal defect in your case affects the appellate
court’s ability to proceed. The letter reads:
“After review of the district court docket entries, order
and/or judgment appealed from, and the notice of appeal, it appears
that this court may lack jurisdiction over this appeal. If it
is determined that this court is without jurisdiction, this appeal
will be dismissed.”
The Eleventh Circuit refers to the document that accompanies this
letter as a “jurisdictional question,” the answer to
which theoretically could undo the federal court judgment you
expended considerable time and effort (and money) to secure. And
most often, jurisdictional questions require practitioners to go
all the way back to their case-instituting papers, asking them
whether the pleadings or notice of removal filed in federal court
adequately alleged the parties’ citizenship in order to
invoke the district court’s subject matter jurisdiction on
diversity grounds.
Now, for the first time on appeal, you could be forced to confront
a deficiency in the jurisdictional allegations that either you or
perhaps another attorney drafted years before. As a
consequence, you might “struggle to find jurisdiction that
could have been established with the stroke of a pen,” or, in
an extreme scenario, “the inattention leads to
calamity” due to the risk of dismissal of your case
“for want of complete diversity although it had been tried to
conclusion.”
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.