Two named plaintiffs brought a putative class action against AT&T Mobility Services, alleging pregnancy-related discrimination in their employment. The district court denied the plaintiffs’ motion for class certification; the 11th Circuit denied their petition for review under Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(f); and the two named plaintiffs settled with AT&T Mobility and voluntarily dismissed their case. The next day, Amanda Curlee filed a motion to intervene, alleging that she would have been a class member if class certification had been granted and seeking to appeal the denial of class certification. The district court granted the motion to intervene, and Curlee immediately filed a notice of appeal. The Eleventh Circuit dismissed the appeal for lack of a final decision within the meaning of 28 U.S.C. § 1291. Allen v. AT&T Mobility Servs., 2024 WL 2812328 (11th Cir. June 3, 2024).
In an opinion written by Judge Brasher, the court noted three potentially relevant jurisdictional questions—whether there was a final appealable judgment; whether the stipulation of dismissal, which had not been signed by an earlier-dismissed defendant, was effective; and whether the district court had jurisdiction to grant Curlee’s motion to intervene after the stipulation of dismissal was filed—but reached only the first one. Acknowledging that “[i]t is well established that a potential member of a putative class can intervene in a putative class action if class certification is denied,” the court determined that in the case before it, where “the district court has not ruled on the merits of anyone’s claims,” there was no final decision and no appellate jurisdiction. Even assuming that the stipulation of dismissal had resolved all claims pending when the stipulation was filed, “that resolution was fleeting,” and Curlee’s claims had not been considered, much less resolved, by the district court.
Curlee argued that she was entitled to step into the shoes of the original plaintiffs, seeking what the court characterized as “a special kind of privileged appellate review that we purportedly afford to putative class action intervenors.” But whether or not an intervenor steps into another’s shoes as a general matter, “[t]he issue here is that no one has ever had the right to appeal,” given that the original plaintiffs’ stipulation of a dismissal did not result in an appealable final judgment. Accordingly, there was no final decision and no appellate jurisdiction.
Judge Jordan concurred, noting that “I understand why Ms. Curlee proceeded the way she did given the current state of the law on post-judgment class action intervention appeals.” In United Airlines, Inc. v. McDonald, 432 U.S. 385 (1977), Judge Jordan observed, the Supreme Court held that a putative class member may intervene, after resolution of the named plaintiffs’ claims, for the purpose of appealing a denial of class certification. But McDonald “did not deal with the jurisdictional issue of finality,” and the court typically does not imply a jurisdictional holding where jurisdictional issues are not directly addressed. “All of this is to say,” Judge Jordan concluded,” that the jurisprudential interplay between appellate jurisdiction and class action litigation can be murky, with a number of issues still to be resolved by either the Supreme Court or Congress.”