The Eleventh Circuit this month weighed in on the appealability and scope of Florida’s litigation privileges in the context of a defamation lawsuit. In Grippa v. Rubin, No. 23-11717, 2025 WL 997347 (11th Cir. Apr. 3, 2025), the court allowed—under the collateral-order doctrine—immediate appeal of an interlocutory order denying application of the absolute litigation privilege…
Category: Appellate Procedure
Changes to Eleventh Circuit Filing Rules
On April 1, 2025, two important changes to the Eleventh Circuit’s filing rules will take effect. First, all sealed documents must be sealed through ECF. See 11th Cir. R. 25-3(h). Instructions for doing so are available on the Eleventh Circuit’s website. Second, the court will no longer accept submission of paper copies of briefs and…
Rule 41(a) May Only Dismiss an Entire Action, Not a Single Count
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41(a) outlines the procedure for voluntary dismissals of “an action” at the parties’ request. The Eleventh Circuit, in an opinion written by Judge Britt Grant, has again emphasized that “[a]ny attempt to use this rule to dismiss a single claim, or anything less than the entire action will be invalid.”…
No Right to Interlocutory Appeal of Order Compelling Insurance Appraisal
A divided Eleventh Circuit panel held that an order compelling an appraisal under an insurance policy provision and staying the litigation pending the appraisal’s outcome is not appealable of right. Positano Place at Naples I Condo Ass’n, Inc. v. Empire Indemnity Insurance Co., 2023 WL 3730876 (11th Cir. May 31, 2023)…
Full Court Nixes Appeal of Antitrust Immunity Ruling
Sitting en banc, the Eleventh Circuit unanimously held in SmileDirectClub, LLC v. Battle, 2021 U.S. App. LEXIS 21393 (11th Cir. July 20, 2021), that an interlocutory appeal may not be taken under the collateral order doctrine from the denial of the state-action antitrust immunity conferred by Parker v. Brown, 317 U.S. 341 (1943). The case…
Appeal on the Merits Untimely, and Costs Award to Defendant Under Rule 68 Affirmed, in FLSA Case
In a hectic end to 2020, we almost overlooked an interesting appellate procedure opinion affecting FLSA cases, Vasconcelo v. Miami Auto Max, Inc., 981 F.3d 934 (11th Cir. 2020). In Vasconcelo, the Eleventh Circuit dismissed an FLSA plaintiff’s appeal on the merits as untimely; affirmed the district court’s attorneys’ fees award, which awarded less than…
Too Late At The District Court Is Still Too Late At The Appellate Court
The Eleventh Circuit’s opinion in Corley v. Long-Lewis, Inc., 2020 WL 4006602 (11th Cir. July 16, 2020), delivered by Judge William Pryor, primarily concerned questions of appellate jurisdiction, all of which were resolved in favor of hearing the appeal. The multi-faceted procedural history set the stage for the issues of appellate jurisdiction: A case that…
Appellate Lapses Ding Body Shops’ Antitrust Appeal
In another appeal from the body shops vs. insurers antitrust MDL, Automotive Alignment & Body Service, Inc. v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co., 2020 WL 1074420 (Mar. 6, 2020), the Eleventh Circuit first delved into two procedural questions arising from lapses by appealing plaintiffs, one concerning appealability; the other, reviewability. The appellants were three…
Appeal time runs from stipulation of dismissal filing—not subsequent order
Fed. R. Civ. P. 41(a)(1)(A)(ii) provides that an action may be dismissed, without a court order, by filing “a stipulation of dismissal signed by all parties who have appeared.” Almost invariably, however, district courts respond to the filing of a stipulation of dismissal with their own order of dismissal, as if to make the dismissal…
Eleventh Circuit Begins Posting Oral Arguments to Public Website
After years of quiet reluctance, the Eleventh Circuit has finally begun posting oral-argument recordings on its website. The court thus joins the U.S. Supreme Court and the majority of U.S. Courts of Appeals that already make recordings of oral arguments publicly available online. The court’s change in policy toward oral-argument recordings is reflected in amendments to…