Pendent Appellate Jurisdiction Under Swint Does Not Generally Extend To Appeals Of Unquantified Sanctions

In Orenshteyn v. Citrix Systems, Inc., No. 11-1308 (Fed. Cir. July 26, 2012), the Federal Circuit dismissed an appeal from a district court order granting sanctions to Citrix Systems, Inc. ("Citrix") because an unquantified award of sanctions is not an appealable final decision.

Alexander S. Orenshteyn filed a complaint in 2002 against Citrix alleging patent infringement. In 2003, the district court granted Citrix's motions for SJ and Fed. R. Civ. P. 11 sanctions against both Orenshteyn and his prior counsel. The Federal Circuit subsequently reversed both decisions and remanded the case in 2009. As of the date of the Federal Circuit's first order, the district court had yet to determine the amount of sanctions. The district court on remand again granted motions for SJ and sanctions in favor of Citrix, and referred determination of the sanctions amount to a magistrate judge.

Before the sanctions were quantified, Orenshteyn appealed both the final judgment and the grant of sanctions. Citrix moved to dismiss the sanctions portion of the appeal, arguing that the district court's order of unquantified sanctions was not a final appealable decision and thus outside of the Court's appellate jurisdiction.

The Federal Circuit agreed. The Court first disposed of the possible statutory bases of its jurisdiction. While the district court's grant of SJ to Citrix was "final and reviewable," its sanctions order was neither "final" as required by 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(1), nor an appealable interlocutory order as specified in 28 U.S.C. § 1292. Slip op. at 2. Without a statutory basis, the Court turned its focus to considering whether its "pendent appellate jurisdiction" should extend to Orenshteyn's sanctions appeal.

Here, the Court found its reasoning guided by Swint v. Chambers County Commission, 514 U.S. 35 (1995), in which the Supreme Court held that the courts of appeal may exercise pendent jurisdiction over a nonappealable decision when it is either "inextricably intertwined" with an appealable decision, or "when review of the non-appealable decision is necessary to review the appealable one." Slip op. at 4 (citing Swint, 514 U.S. at 51). While recognizing that Swint declined to "definitively or preemptively settle" the scope of pendent appellate jurisdiction, the Court observed that subsequent Supreme Court cases and its own precedent had cemented the two tests of Swint as the relevant standard. "[N]otwithstanding the qualifying language in Swint, this...