Retail Flooring Dealers of America, Inc. v. Beaulieu of America, LLC

Opinion by Judge BEEZER; Dissent by Judge FERNANDEZ

OPINION

Retail Flooring Dealers of America (“Retail Flooring”) appeals the district court’s award of a Fed.R.Civ.P. 11 sanction for $5,000 to Beaulieu of America (“Beau-lieu”). Beaulieu cross-appeals the amount of the sanction as insufficient. We reverse the district court’s award of the Rule 11 sanction.

I

In 1998, Dale Cox, president of Retail Flooring, filed a complaint (the “Cox complaint”) in state court against Beaulieu (and other carpet manufacturers). The Cox complaint alleged claims of unfair business practices under California’s Unfair Competition Law 1 and claims under California’s Song-Beverly Consumer Warranty Act 2 .

The defendants removed the Cox complaint to federal court and the case was assigned to Judge Kelleher. Cox moved to remand the complaint to state court, arguing that the district court lacked jurisdiction. Judge Kelleher (1) remanded to state court the claims under the Song-Beverly Consumer Warranty Act because the defendants could not show that those claims satisfied the amount-in-controversy requirement necessary for diversity jurisdiction and (2) retained the Unfair Competition Law claims…

Dissenting.

I dissent from the majority’s determination that we have jurisdiction over this appeal. Therefore, I will not comment on the merits.

I dissent because I thoroughly disagree with the failure to follow Ninth Circuit authority, and the immasking of the creation of an intracircuit split with the notion that a non-party to this appeal is, indeed, a party to this appeal.

In this case, sanctions were awarded against an attorney, but only his client purported to appeal those sanctions. I see no virtue in recitation of and reflection upon a 1993 change in the rules on appeal, which now provide that an appeal “must not be dismissed ... for failure to name a party whose intent to appeal is otherwise clear from the notice[of appeal].” See Fed. R.App. P. 3(c)(4). Of course, to say that the attorney did intend to appeal the sanction himself, when only his client actually appealed, begs the question. Did the attorney truly intend to file an appeal for himself? How can we tell? Here, the attorney was never even directly alluded to in the notice which said: “Comes Now Plaintiff RETAIL FLOORING DEALERS OF AMERICA, INC., ... and appeals to the United States Court of Appeal for the…