Judgment – Attorney’s Fees

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7^th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: Norma L. Cooke v. Jackson National Life Insurance Company

Case No.: 17-2080

Officials: EASTERBROOK and BARRETT, Circuit Judges, and STADTMUELLER, District Judge.

Focus: Judgment – Attorney’s Fees

In this suit under the diversity jurisdiction, the district court entered summary judgment for Norma Cooke. The judge ordered two kinds of relief: first, that Jackson National Life Insurance Co. pay Cooke the death benefit on her husband Charles’s policy; second, that Jackson reimburse Cooke’s legal expenses. The first kind of relief rested on a conclusion that Charles died before the end of a grace period allowed for late payments of premiums. The second rested on a conclusion that Jackson should have expedited the litigation by attaching documents to its answer to the complaint and by making some arguments sooner. See 243 F. Supp. 3d 987 (N.D. Ill. 2017). The district court then entered this order, which the parties have treated as the final judgment:

Cooke wants more than an order dismissing Jackson’s appeal. She has filed a motion under Fed. R. App. P. 38 seeking attorneys’ fees that she has incurred in responding to what she now calls a frivolous appeal.

We deny this motion, because any costs that Cooke has incurred are largely self-inflicted. Cooke could have filed a motion months ago (before briefing) asking us to dismiss Jackson’s premature appeal, but she did not do so. Indeed, the jurisdictional section of Cooke’s brief on the merits does not point out that an unquantified award isn’t final. Not until this court raised the issue at oral argument did Cooke address the significance of the district judge’s failure to say how much Jackson owes. If it were permissible for a court to order both sides to pay a penalty—say, into the law clerks’ holiday-party fund—we would be inclined to do so. But there’s no such appellate power and no good reason for us to order Jackson to pay something to Cooke as a result of a problem that both sides missed.

Jackson’s appeal is dismissed for want of jurisdiction. Any successive appeal from an order quantifying the award will be heard by this panel and decided without a new oral argument. (The merits were covered during the argument already held.) Unless either side wants to contest the amount of the award, it should be possible to submit a successive appeal for decision on the existing briefs. The parties should inform us promptly after any new appeal is taken whether they want to supplement the briefs already on file.

Dismissed

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Attorney Derek A. Hawkins is the managing partner at Hawkins Law Offices LLC, where he heads up the firm’s startup law practice. He specializes in business formation, corporate governance, intellectual property protection, private equity and venture capital funding and mergers & acquisitions. Check out the website at www.hawkins-lawoffices.com or contact them at 262-737-8825.