SYNOPSYS, INC. V. USDOL, No. 20-16416 (9th Cir. 2022)
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The Center for Investigative Reporting (“CIR”) brought a FOIA action against the Department of Labor (“DOL”), claiming that the DOL was improperly withholding workforce demographic data that Synopsys and other companies had submitted pursuant to federal-contractor reporting regulations. The district court granted CIR summary judgment. Seven weeks after that judgment was entered, and eleven days before the deadline to file a notice of appeal, Synopsys moved to intervene as a defendant. About five months after the deadline for filing a notice of appeal of the judgment, the district court denied Synopsys’ motion to intervene but granted their limited intervention for the sole purpose of appealing the judgment. Synopsys then filed a notice of appeal from the judgment.
The Ninth Circuit dismissed for lack of appellate jurisdiction prospective intervenor Synopsys’ untimely appeal of the district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of CIR and dismissed as moot CIR’s and DOL’s cross-appeals. The court reasoned that although generally, only parties may appeal an adverse judgment, it does not follow that the deadline to file a notice of appeal for prospective intervenors is different from the deadline for parties. Further, Synopsys’s motion to intervene could not be construed as a notice of appeal because that motion did not satisfy the requirements of Fed. R. App. P. 3. The court also held that because Synopsys did not file a timely notice of appeal of the judgment in favor of CIR, the court lacked jurisdiction to hear the merits of that appeal.
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Court Description: Timely Notice of Appeal / Intervenor. The panel dismissed for lack of appellate jurisdiction prospective intervenor Synopsys, Inc.’s untimely appeal of the district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of The Center for Investigative Reporting (“CIR”); and dismissed as moot CIR’s and the U.S. Department of Labor (“DOL”)’s cross-appeals. CIR brought a FOIA action against DOL, claiming that DOL was improperly withholding workforce demographic data that Synopsys and other companies had submitted pursuant to federal-contractor reporting regulations. The district court granted CIR summary judgment. Seven weeks after that judgment was entered, and eleven days before the deadline to file a notice of appeal, Synopsys moved to intervene as a defendant. About five months after the deadline for filing a notice of appeal of the judgment, the district court denied Synopsys’s motion to intervene for the purpose of asserting a crossclaim but granted Synopsys limited intervention for the sole purpose of appealing the judgment. Synopsys then filed a notice of appeal from the judgment. The district court had granted CIR’s motion for summary judgment on December 10, 2019, and entered judgment the same day. The deadline for a party to file a notice of appeal was February 10, 2020. See 28 U.S.C. § 2107(b); Fed. R. 4 EVANS V. SYNOPSYS App. P. 26(a)(1)(C). Synopsys filed a notice of appeal on July 22, 2020. The panel held that Synopsys failed to timely appeal the district court’s grant of summary judgment. Synopsys argued that the time to appeal prescribed by § 2107(b) applies only to parties and not to prospective intervenors. The panel disagreed. Although generally only parties may appeal an adverse judgment, it does not follow that the deadline to file a notice of appeal for prospective intervenors is different from the deadline for parties. The text of § 2107 foreclosed Synopsys’s argument. The panel held that all litigants in a given case face the same jurisdictional deadline to file a notice of appeal under § 2107. The deadline runs from the entry of the judgment being appealed. For Synopsys’s appeal to be timely, it must have either extended its time to file a notice of appeal or filed a notice of appeal by the statutory deadline of February 10, 2020. The panel rejected Synopsys’s argument that the district court properly extended Synopsys’s time to appeal. The district court twice stated that Synopsys’s time to appeal was being preserved. The panel held that Fed. R. App. P. 26(b) makes clear that Fed. R. App. P. 4 provides the only mechanism by which a litigant may request, and a court may grant, an extension to file a notice of appeal. Here, Synopsys needed to seek an extension under Rule 4(a)(5) by March 11, 2020. Synopsys never filed a formal motion requesting an extension of time to appeal. The panel held that the extension mechanism of Rule 4(a)(5) was available to a prospective intervenor who had not yet been granted party status. The panel further held that Synopsys failed to file a document that complied with the requirements of Rule 4(a)(5). The district court could not construe Synopsys’s motion to intervene or the emergency motion for a stay as a EVANS V. SYNOPSYS 5 motion to extend the time to file a notice of appeal under Rule 4(a)(5). The district court’s statements about preserving Synopsys’s time to appeal were therefore ineffective, and the panel rejected Synopsys’s argument that DOL and CIR forfeited their objection by not making it sooner. The panel rejected Synopsys’s argument in the alternative that its motion to intervene and brief in support of that motion, both filed eleven days before the deadline to appeal the judgment, should be construed as a timely notice of appeal. The panel held that Synopsys’s motion to intervene could not be construed as a notice of appeal because that motion did not satisfy the requirements of Fed. R. App. P. 3. Because Synopsys was still actively seeking substantive relief from the judgment in the district court, its motion to intervene logically would not have been a notice of appeal. The panel held that because Synopsys did not file a timely notice of appeal of the judgment in favor of CIR, this court lacked jurisdiction to hear the merits of that appeal. This determination mooted DOL’s and CIR’s cross-appeals of the district court’s decision to grant Synopsys intervention to appeal the judgment. The panel concurrently filed a memorandum disposition resolving additional matters raised by the parties. 6 EVANS V. SYNOPSYS
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