Swint v. Chambers County Comm'n, 514 U.S. 35, 11 (1995)

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Cite as: 514 U. S. 35 (1995)

Opinion of the Court

Petitioners join respondent Chambers County Commission in urging that the Eleventh Circuit had pendent appellate jurisdiction to review the District Court's order denying the commission's summary judgment motion. Both sides emphasize that § 1291's final decision requirement is designed to prevent parties from interrupting litigation by pursuing piecemeal appeals. Once litigation has already been interrupted by an authorized pretrial appeal, petitioners and the county commission reason, there is no cause to resist the economy that pendent appellate jurisdiction promotes. See Supplemental Brief for Petitioners 16-17; Supplemental Brief for Respondent 5, 9. Respondent county commission invites us to adopt a " 'libera[l]' " construction of § 1291, and petitioners urge an interpretation sufficiently "[p]ractical" and "[f]lexible" to accommodate pendent appellate review as exercised by the Eleventh Circuit. See id., at 4; Supplemental Brief for Petitioners 14.

These arguments drift away from the statutory instructions Congress has given to control the timing of appellate proceedings. The main rule on review of "final decisions," § 1291, is followed by prescriptions for appeals from "inter-locutory decisions," § 1292. Section 1292(a) lists three cate-injunction order "extends to all matters 'inextricably bound up' with th[at] order"); Robinson v. Volkswagenwerk AG, 940 F. 2d 1369, 1374 (CA10 1991) (pendent appellate jurisdiction is properly exercised where "review of the appealable issue involves consideration of factors closely related or relevant to the otherwise nonappealable issue" and judicial economy is served by review), cert. denied, 502 U. S. 1091 (1992); Stewart v. Baldwin County Bd. of Ed., 908 F. 2d 1499, 1509 (CA11 1990) ("Pendent jurisdiction is properly exercised over nonappealable decisions of the district court when the reviewing court already has jurisdiction over one issue in the case."); Consarc Corp. v. Iraqi Ministry, 27 F. 3d 695, 700 (CADC 1994) ("This Circuit has invoked [pendent appellate jurisdiction] only in a narrow class of cases, to review an interlocutory order that itself is not yet subject to appeal but is 'closely related' to an appealable order.").

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