Gary Walters v. Fast AC, LLC ( 2023 )

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[PUBLISH]
In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Eleventh Circuit
____________________
No. 21-13879
____________________
GARY WALTERS,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
versus
FAST AC, LLC,
Florida limited liability company,
FTL CAPITAL PARTNERS, LLC,
foreign limited liability company,
d.b.a. FTL Capital Finance,
Defendants-Appellees.
____________________
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2 Opinion of the Court 21-13879
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Middle District of Florida
D.C. Docket No. 2:19-cv-00070-JLB-MRM
____________________
Before LAGOA, BRASHER, and ED CARNES, Circuit Judges.
BRASHER, Circuit Judge:
This appeal is about Article III standing. Gary Walters
agreed to purchase air conditioning repairs he could not afford
from Fast AC, LLC, by taking out a loan with FTL Capital Partners,
LLC. He did so after a Fast AC employee lied about the price of
FTL’s loan and prevented Walters from viewing FTL’s loan paper-
work. The Truth in Lending Act (“TILA”), 15 U.S.C. § 1601 et seq.,
requires a lender like FTL to provide certain disclosures about the
cost of the loan. Walters sued FTL, claiming that it violated TILA
because it did not provide him those disclosures. According to Wal-
ters, had he received the proper disclosures, he would not have ac-
cepted the loan.
The only question on appeal is whether Walters has stand-
ing to bring this TILA claim against FTL. According to FTL, Wal-
ters’s injuries are not traceable to FTL’s disclosure paperwork be-
cause Fast AC never showed Walters any paperwork. We agree
that, if Fast AC’s conduct was independent of FTL, then Walters’s
injuries are not traceable to FTL. But Walters argues that Fast AC
is not independent of FTL because Fast AC was acting as FTL’s
agent. Under this agency theory of liability, Walters argues that
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21-13879 Opinion of the Court 3
FTL is liable under TILA for Fast AC’s failure to provide the re-
quired disclosures. Because we conclude that Walters has standing
to raise this agency-based TILA claim against FTL, we reverse.
I.
TILA imposes “mandatory disclosure requirements on
those who extend credit to consumers in the American market.”
Mourning v. Fam. Publ’ns. Serv., Inc., 411 U.S. 356, 363 (1973). The
specific disclosures TILA requires vary depending on whether the
credit provided is “closed-end” or “open-end.” The details of the
two credit types and their respective disclosure obligations are un-
important here. Suffice it to say that TILA requires lenders extend-
ing closed-end credit (but not those extending open-end credit) to
disclose, among other things, the number of monthly payments,
the cost of those payments, and the total loan amount. See 15
U.S.C. § 1638(a); 12 C.F.R. § 1026.18.
FTL Capital Partners, LLC finances home-improvement
loans for heating and air conditioning products. FTL partners with
contractors who provide those products to customers who wish to
pay for the contractor’s products through financing. Customers
who want to pay for a contractor’s services through financing must
apply to FTL. If FTL approves the application, FTL sends loan doc-
uments, including applicable disclosures, to the customer’s per-
sonal email. Customers must answer security verification ques-
tions before they can access the loan documents in their inbox.
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Fast AC, LLC was an FTL-registered contractor from 2016
until 2019, when it was “expelled” for falsely representing to FTL
“various times” that it had completed installation work it never
performed. During that time, Fast AC employees would go to con-
sumers’ homes to sell them its heating and cooling services on
credit financed by FTL.
One of those consumers was Gary Walters, a 70-year-old,
retired army veteran who lives in Florida with his wife. Walters
suffers from Parkinson’s disease and other health issues. He cannot
walk long distances and uses a wheelchair.
Because we are reviewing a grant of summary judgment, we
accept Walters’s testimony as true, “affording all justifiable infer-
ences” to Walters. Sconiers v. Lockhart, 946 F.3d 1256, 1260 (11th
Cir. 2020). According to Walters, Fast AC contacted him, offering
to conduct a free cleaning and inspection of Walters’s AC unit. Fast
AC sent its employee, Mike, to Walters’s home to perform the
work. After spending a few minutes in Walters’s attic (with no tools
or cleaning supplies), Mike told Walters that his unit’s ductwork
was “shot” and that, if Walters did not replace it “real soon,” he
would “have really bad problems.” The total cost of replacing the
ductwork was $5,500—more than Walters could afford—but Mike
falsely told Walters that it would cost only $50 a month if he se-
cured financing with FTL.
Walters reluctantly agreed. But Walters did not himself fill
out FTL’s credit application or even see any of the loan paperwork.
Instead, Mike got on Walters’s computer and “took care” of all the
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21-13879 Opinion of the Court 5
necessary financing paperwork for him by completing, e-signing,
and submitting the loan application in Walters’s name, thereby
concealing FTL’s loan documents from him.
Before Fast AC began the ductwork repair, Walters changed
his mind and decided to cancel the job. Although he was able to
cancel the repairs themselves, Fast AC’s representative told him
that, to cancel the financing agreement, Walters would have to
“call the finance company” directly. Over the next several weeks,
there was an unproductive back-and-forth between Walters, Fast
AC, and FTL via telephone. FTL sent Walters bills, past-due no-
tices, and demand letters to pay for the ductwork repair that Fast
AC never performed. Walters never paid FTL, but FTL did not re-
lease him from the loan. Instead, FTL reported negative payment
activity on Walters’s credit report to TransUnion.
Walters testified in his deposition that the unpaid loan neg-
atively impacted his credit score and prevented him from purchas-
ing a truck and from refinancing his home. Additionally, Walters
said he spent money faxing documents to his attorney and experi-
enced emotional distress because of the disputed debt.
Walters sued Fast AC and FTL in the Middle District of Flor-
ida. He asserted various state law consumer protection claims
against Fast AC. Against FTL, he asserted state law claims and one
federal TILA claim. Walters’s TILA claim against FTL is the sole
basis for federal subject matter jurisdiction over his suit. See 28
U.S.C. § § 1331, 1367(a). On the merits of that claim, Walters al-
leged that his loan from FTL was a closed-end transaction, but that
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6 Opinion of the Court 21-13879
FTL did not disclose the loan amount, finance charge, or monthly
payments. FTL’s credit agreement—which Walters never saw—in-
cluded only open-end disclosures.
The district court concluded that Walters lacked standing to
bring his TILA claim and granted summary judgment for FTL. Spe-
cifically, the district court determined that Walters had not suffered
an injury in fact because his injuries were not caused by FTL’s TILA
violation. Because Walters’s TILA claim against FTL was the only
claim over which the district court had original jurisdiction, the
court did not exercise supplemental jurisdiction over Walters’s re-
maining state law claims against Fast AC and FTL. See 28 U.S.C.
§ 1367(a). In an order denying Walters’s motion for reconsidera-
tion, the district court rejected Walters’s argument that its sum-
mary judgment order had conflated the injury-in-fact element with
traceability. The district court also concluded that Walters had not
alleged in his complaint that Fast AC was acting as FTL’s agent to
provide the required disclosures.
Walters appealed.
II.
We must decide whether Walters has standing to bring his
TILA claim against FTL in federal court. This “is a threshold juris-
dictional question that we review de novo.” Muransky v. Godiva
Chocolatier, Inc., 979 F.3d 917, 923 (11th Cir. 2020) (en banc).
“The requisite elements of Article III standing are well estab-
lished . . . .” Fed. Election Comm’n v. Cruz, 142 S. Ct. 1638, 1646
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21-13879 Opinion of the Court 7
(2022). The plaintiff must show (1) “that he suffered an injury in
fact that is concrete, particularized, and actual or imminent,” (2)
that the injury is traceable to—that is, “was likely caused by”—the
defendant’s legal violation, and (3) “that the injury would likely be
redressed by judicial relief.” TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, 141 S.
Ct. 2190, 2203 (2021) (citing Lujan v. Defs. of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555,
560–61 (1992)). The party invoking federal jurisdiction bears the
burden of proving each of these standing elements “with the man-
ner and degree of evidence required at the successive stages of the
litigation.” Lujan, 504 U.S. at 561. Thus, “in response to a summary
judgment motion, ‘the plaintiff . . . must “set forth” by affidavit or
other evidence specific facts’” showing he was injured, by the de-
fendant’s legal violation, in a manner amenable to judicial relief.
Ga. Republican Party v. Secs. & Exch. Comm’n, 888 F.3d 1198,
1201 (11th Cir. 2018) (quoting Lujan, 504 U.S. at 561).
We will address each element of standing separately.
A.
We begin with injury in fact. To satisfy this requirement, “a
plaintiff must show that he or she suffered ‘an invasion of a legally
protected interest’ that is ‘concrete and particularized’ and ‘actual
or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical.’” Spokeo, Inc. v.
Robins, 578 U.S. 330, 339 (2016) (quoting Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560).
“An injury is concrete,” we have said, “if it actually exists”—mean-
ing, “it is ‘real, and not abstract.’” Hunstein v. Preferred Collection
& Mgmt. Servs., Inc., 48 F.4th 1236, 1242 (11th Cir. 2022) (en banc)
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8 Opinion of the Court 21-13879
(quoting Spokeo, 578 U.S. at 340). And “[a]n injury is ‘particular-
ized’ if it ‘affect[s] the plaintiff in a personal and individual way.’”
Pedro v. Equifax, Inc., 868 F.3d 1275, 1279 (11th Cir. 2017) (second
alteration in original) (quoting Spokeo, 578 U.S. at 339).
Walters identified several concrete, particularized harms in
this case. He testified in his deposition that (1) he was forced to
spend time disputing his debt; (2) his credit took a hit, preventing
him from making other purchases or refinancing his home; (3) he
spent money faxing documents to his attorney; and (4) he felt anx-
ious, exploited, embarrassed, and worthless.
Our precedent recognizes each of these harms as a concrete
injury in fact. We have held that such injuries include not only
“straightforward economic injuries,” like lost money, but also
“more nebulous” ones, Tsao v. Captiva MVP Rest. Partners, LLC,
986 F.3d 1332, 1338 (11th Cir. 2021), like wasted time, missed credit
opportunities, and emotional distress. See, e.g., Losch v. Nationstar
Mortg. LLC, 995 F.3d 937, 943 (11th Cir. 2021) (“[T]here is no ques-
tion that wasted time is a concrete harm . . . .”); Pinson v. JPMor-
gan Chase Bank, Nat’l Ass’n, 942 F.3d 1200, 1207 (11th Cir. 2019)
(reduced credit score and “lost credit opportunities” are concrete
economic harms). And a plaintiff like Walters, who suffers these
concrete harms himself, necessarily satisfies the particularity re-
quirement, too. See Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560 n.1 (stating an injury is
“particularized” if it “affect[s] the plaintiff in a personal and individ-
ual way”).
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FTL makes three arguments that Walters did not suffer an
injury in fact, notwithstanding our precedent.
First, FTL challenges the sufficiency of Walters’s evidence.
FTL suggests that, to survive summary judgment on standing,
Walters needed to submit “documentation” to corroborate his dep-
osition testimony detailing his injuries. But we have explicitly held
that a plaintiff’s “self-serving and/or uncorroborated” testimony
can be enough on its own “to preclude summary judgment.”
United States v. Stein, 881 F.3d 853, 857–59 (11th Cir. 2018) (en
banc). Here, Walters testified to matters within his personal
knowledge. See Fed. R. Evid. 602. Walters’s deposition testimony
describing his lost time, economic harm, and emotional distress is
sufficient evidence of those injuries to survive summary judgment.
See Losch, 995 F.3d at 943 (plaintiff adequately established “con-
crete injury in the form of emotional distress and time . . . spent”
through his own deposition testimony and affidavit).
Second, FTL relies on caselaw involving intangible, statu-
tory injuries. These authorities establish the “now-familiar admon-
ition” that a procedural statutory violation, standing alone, does
not amount to a concrete injury in fact. Muransky, 979 F.3d at 924
(citation omitted). Instead, a statutory violation gives rise to an in-
jury in fact only if the violation (1) inflicts some separate concrete
harm on the plaintiff or (2) creates a material risk of such harm to
the plaintiff. Id. at 926–27.
These authorities do not support FTL’s position. They share
a dispositive feature that is missing here: they each involved a “bare
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procedural violation” and no “concrete harm.” Spokeo, 578 U.S. at
341. None involved a plaintiff who, like Walters, identified con-
crete harms in addition to a statutory violation. See, e.g., TransUn-
ion, 141 S. Ct. at 2210 (holding “[t]he mere presence of an inaccu-
racy in an internal credit file” in violation of federal statute inflicts
“no concrete harm” unless it is “disclosed to a third party”); Mu-
ransky, 979 F.3d at 929 (holding unlawfully printing customers’
credit card numbers on receipts was not “by itself . . . a concrete
injury”). Walters’s injuries go beyond FTL’s noncompliant disclo-
sures—he provided evidence of lost time, money, and peace. These
are garden-variety injuries in fact under Article III.
Finally, FTL argues (and the district court reasoned) that
Fast AC’s intervening fraud is relevant to assessing whether Wal-
ters suffered an injury in fact. We disagree. In answering the ques-
tion of standing, it is important to separate the element of injury in
fact from the element of traceability. See Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S.
737, 753 n.19 (1984) (stressing the “importan[ce]” of “keep[ing] the
[standing] inquiries separate”), abrogated on other grounds by
Lexmark Int’l, Inc. v. Static Control Components, Inc., 572 U.S. 118(2014). While the former asks whether there has been a concrete
and particularized harm, the latter looks for “a causal connection
between the injury . . . and the challenged action of the defendant.”
Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560 (quotation omitted). Sometimes statutory-
injury opinions use language that arguably blurs the distinction.
See, e.g., Muransky, 979 F.3d at 926, 932 (plaintiffs alleging a pro-
cedural statutory violation satisfy injury in fact by “show[ing] that
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21-13879 Opinion of the Court 11
the statutory violation itself caused a harm,” or that the violation
“caused . . . a material risk of harm”) (emphasis added); TransUn-
ion, 141 S. Ct. at 2214 (“An ‘asserted informational injury that
causes no adverse effects cannot satisfy [the injury-in-fact require-
ment of] Article III.”) (emphasis added) (quoting Trichell, 964 F.3d
at 1004). But it would make little sense, and disrupt longstanding
conceptions of Article III, to conclude that a plaintiff who suffers a
concrete harm but not because of the defendant’s statutory viola-
tion, has really suffered no concrete harm at all.
In any event, we will “heed our own warning to avoid
‘overthinking’ the [injury-in-fact] analysis.” Hunstein, 48 F.4th at
1242 (quoting Muransky, 979 F.3d at 931). We conclude that when
a plaintiff establishes that he personally suffered an actual, concrete
harm, as Walters did here, the injury-in-fact analysis is complete.
Questions about who or what caused the injury in fact are more
appropriately addressed under the element of traceability.
B.
Before assessing the complicated question of traceability, we
will address the simple question of redressability. Redressability re-
quires the plaintiff to show that his injuries are “likely to be re-
dressed by a favorable judicial decision.” Spokeo, 578 U.S. at 338
(citing Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560–61). Walters suffered an injury in fact
in the form of wasted time, economic harm, and emotional dis-
tress. “That, it goes without saying, is an injury which the award of
damages . . . will redress.” Del Valle v. Trivago GMBH, 56 F.4th
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12 Opinion of the Court 21-13879
1265, 1279 (11th Cir. 2022); see Resnick v. AvMed, Inc., 693 F.3d
1317, 1324 (11th Cir. 2012) (“Plaintiffs allege a monetary injury and
an award of compensatory damages would redress that injury.”).
C.
We end with traceability, which requires “a causal connec-
tion” between the plaintiff’s injuries and the defendant’s legal vio-
lation. Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560. Although this element presents the
most difficult question in this appeal, it too is resolved in Walters’s
favor.
Crucial here is that Article III standing requires that the
plaintiff’s injuries be “fairly traceable to the challenged action of the
defendant, and not the result of the independent action of some
third party not before the court.” Id. (cleaned up). Because Wal-
ters’s TILA claim against FTL provides the only basis for federal
jurisdiction, he must establish that his wasted time, financial harm,
and emotional distress are traceable to FTL’s alleged TILA viola-
tion. It will not suffice to show that his injuries are traceable only
to the independent actions of Fast AC. See DaimlerChrysler Corp.
v. Cuno, 547 U.S. 332, 352 (2006) (“[A] plaintiff must demonstrate
standing for each claim he seeks to press.”).
Walters offers two reasons why his injuries are traceable to
FTL’s TILA violation, which we address in turn. Because we accept
one of them, we hold that Walters has standing to pursue his TILA
claim against FTL.
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1.
Walters’s first traceability argument is that both Fast AC’s
concealment of FTL’s loan documents and FTL’s inadequate dis-
closures in those documents caused Walters’s injuries. We disa-
gree. We are not at the pleading stage; we are at summary judg-
ment. And the summary judgment evidence establishes that FTL’s
allegedly inadequate disclosures in its standard loan documents
could not have caused Walters to agree to the harmful loan be-
cause Fast AC’s employee prevented Walters from ever viewing
those documents.
To be sure, traceability is not an exacting standard. It is “less
stringent” than the tort-law concept of “proximate cause,” Cor-
doba v. DIRECTV, LLC, 942 F.3d 1259, 1271 (11th Cir. 2019),
meaning the defendant’s challenged conduct need not be “the very
last step in the chain of causation” for it to be fairly traceable to the
plaintiff’s injury, Wilding v. DNC Servs. Corp., 941 F.3d 1116, 1126
(11th Cir. 2019) (quotation omitted). “[E]ven harms that flow indi-
rectly from the action in question can be . . . ‘fairly traceable’ to
that action for standing purposes.” Focus on the Fam. v. Pinellas
Suncoast Transit Auth., 344 F.3d 1263, 1273 (11th Cir. 2003).
But the requirement is not toothless. A plaintiff must at least
demonstrate factual causation between his injuries and the defend-
ant’s misconduct. See Dep’t of Com. v. New York, 139 S. Ct. 2551,
2566 (2019) (“Article III requires no more than de facto causality
. . . .”) (quotations omitted). Accordingly, we have held traceability
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to be lacking if the plaintiff “would have been injured in precisely
the same way” without the defendant’s alleged misconduct. See,
e.g., Cordoba, 942 F.3d at 1272 (“There’s no remotely plausible
causal chain linking the failure to maintain an internal do-not-call
list to the phone calls received by class members who never said to
Telecel they didn’t want to be called again.”); Swann v. Sec’y, Ga.,
668 F.3d 1285, 1289 (11th Cir. 2012) (“Swann’s failure to provide
the address of the jail on his [absentee-ballot] application inde-
pendently caused his alleged injury[—i.e., not receiving a ballot].
Swann would not have received a ballot at the jail regardless of the
application of the [challenged] statute by the officials.”). Thus, un-
der our precedents, a plaintiff lacks standing to sue over a defend-
ant’s action “if an independent source would have caused him to
suffer the same injury.” Swann, 668 F.3d at 1288.
Here, FTL’s alleged omission of the correct TILA disclo-
sures in its loan paperwork could not have been a “factual cause”
of Walters’s decision to take out the loan because Fast AC’s em-
ployee prevented him from ever seeing that paperwork. There is
no evidence that Walters relied on disclosures he never received.
So he cannot seriously argue that his injuries would have been
avoided if those concealed disclosures had included different infor-
mation. To the extent Walters’s harm was caused by “an independ-
ent source”—Fast AC’s employee—there is no dispute that Walters
would have suffered “precisely the same” harm if FTL had used
different disclosures in its form paperwork. Cordoba, 942 F.3d at
1272; Swann, 688 F.3d at 1288–89.
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Attempting to explain how documents he never read could
have harmed him, Walters relies on the tort-law concept of multi-
ple sufficient causes. This doctrine eases the factual causation re-
quirement in the “rare” occurrence where several “causes inde-
pendently, but concurrently, produce a result.” Burrage v. United
States, 571 U.S. 204, 214 (2014). In such a case, tort law treats each
cause as a factual cause, even though the same injury would have
occurred absent any one of them. See Restatement (Third) of
Torts: Phys. & Emot. Harm § 27 (Am. L. Inst. 2010). Article III
standing, too, “is not defeated merely because the complained of
injury can fairly be traced to multiple parties.” BBX Cap. v. Fed.
Deposit Ins. Corp., 956 F.3d 1304, 1312 (11th Cir. 2020) (citation
omitted).
But this is not a multiple-sufficient-cause case. To apply a
multiple-sufficient-causation analysis, “there must have been mul-
tiple causes of the injury.” In re Hanford Nuclear Rsrv. Litig., 534
F.3d 986, 1010 (9th Cir. 2008) (citation omitted); see June v. Union
Carbide Corp., 577 F.3d 1234, 1243 (10th Cir. 2009) (“The use of
the word sufficient in both Restatements does not mean that either
of them would impose liability for conduct that is not a but-for
cause if only the conduct could have caused the injury.”). Although
Walters’s complaint alleges multiple potential causes of his inju-
ries, the evidence creates no dispute, sufficient to survive summary
judgment, that FTL’s disclosure forms are not one of them. The
summary judgment evidence establishes that Walters accepted
FTL’s loan because Fast AC’s employee hid the true price from
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him. FTL’s allegedly insufficient disclosure forms had nothing to
do with it.
Indeed, Walters’s own example of how his multiple-suffi-
cient-causes test works shows why it fails under these facts. Walters
posits: “If a person is exposed to multiple toxins, or the same toxin
multiple times, each source that would be sufficient on its own to
cause the plaintiff’s injury constitutes a cause of the harm—even if
the other sources, too, would have been sufficient without it.” But
Walters was never “exposed” to FTL’s “toxin”—here, its allegedly
inadequate disclosures. So he cannot trace his injuries to the text of
those disclosures, even under his own conception of the doctrine.
2.
In the alternative, Walters advances another traceability the-
ory, and this one sticks. TILA liability attaches not only to the pro-
vision of incorrect disclosures, but also to the failure to provide any
disclosures at all. Walters’s second theory of traceability is directed
at the latter. According to Walters, even if Fast AC’s misconduct
(including its concealment of the loan documents) was the sole
cause of Walters’s injury, that injury is nonetheless traceable to
FTL because Fast AC was acting as FTL’s agent for the purpose of
providing the disclosures. In other words, Fast AC’s actions were
not “independent” of FTL because it took those actions as an agent
of FTL.
The district court declined to address this argument, con-
cluding that Walters did not properly allege this agency theory in
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his complaint. We disagree. The issue is one of pleading. Although
we consider all the evidence in the record when addressing “a ‘fac-
tual challenge’ to standing” at the summary-judgment phase, when
“making the necessary preliminary determination of what claims
the plaintiff has actually raised (and therefore, what claims he must
have standing to raise), we are bound by the contents of the plain-
tiff’s pleadings, even on summary judgment.” Bochese v. Town of
Ponce Inlet, 405 F.3d 964, 976 (11th Cir. 2005).
We believe Walters sufficiently pleaded that Fast AC was
acting as FTL’s agent when it allegedly signed up Walters for a loan
without disclosing the loan’s terms. Walters’s complaint alleges
that “FTL violated TILA because it never clearly and accurately
disclosed: the finance charge; the amount of the total of payments;
nor the due dates or payment schedule to” Walters. It alleges that
Walters agreed to the loan because “Fast AC never gave him the
statutorily required disclosures.” And it asserts that “FTL con-
tracted with Fast AC who at all times acted as its agent” and that
“FTL is vicariously liable for the harms and losses” caused by Fast
AC’s misconduct by virtue of this agency relationship. These alle-
gations are more than sufficient to raise a TILA claim based on an
agency relationship. Cf. Palm Beach Golf Ctr.-Boca, Inc. v. John G.
Sarris, D.D.S., P.A., 781 F.3d 1245, 1259–61 (11th Cir. 2015) (hold-
ing federal pleading rules do not “require that a theory of vicarious
liability be specifically pled in the complaint”) (citation omitted).
There is no question that, if Fast AC was acting as FTL’s
agent in failing to provide the TILA-mandated disclosures, then
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Walters’s injuries are traceable to FTL. Accordingly, we conclude
that Walters has standing to assert this agency-based TILA claim
against FTL.
We express no opinion, however, on the merits of this
claim. See Dillard v. Chilton Cnty. Comm’n, 495 F.3d 1324, 1330
(11th Cir. 2007) (“[S]tanding is a threshold jurisdictional question
which must be addressed . . . independent of the merits of a party’s
claims.”) (cleaned up). We do not address whether or under what
circumstances a creditor may be held liable under TILA for the ac-
tions of an agent. We also do not address whether there is sufficient
evidence of an agency relationship between FTL and Fast AC. See
Callahan v. U.S. Dep’t of Health & Hum. Servs., 939 F.3d 1251,
1265 (11th Cir. 2019) (“We are wary of diving head-first into claims
that the district court hasn’t yet considered . . . .”). All we hold here
is that Article III allows Walters to litigate these questions in federal
court.
III.
Accordingly, we REVERSE the district court’s entry of sum-
mary judgment for FTL and REMAND for additional proceedings
consistent with this opinion.