Hassanati v. Int'l Lease Finance Corp. , 643 F. App'x 620 ( 2016 )

FILED
NOT FOR PUBLICATION
MAR 22 2016
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
MMADI MLATAMOU HASSANATI, as No. 14-55348
the personal representative for
MOHAMED ABDOU SAID, deceased; et D.C. No. 2:11-cv-02251-MMM-
al., MA
Plaintiffs - Appellants,
MEMORANDUM*
v.
INTERNATIONAL LEASE FINANCE
CORPORATION,
Defendant - Appellee.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Central District of California
Margaret M. Morrow, District Judge, Presiding
Argued and Submitted March 10, 2016
Pasadena, California
Before: REINHARDT, MURGUIA, and OWENS, Circuit Judges.
Plaintiff Mmadi Mlatamou Hassanati, and others, appeal from the district
court’s order (1) denying their motion for appointment as personal representatives
*
This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by 9th Cir. R. 36-3.
and, in the alternative, their request for additional time to seek appointment from a
California state court; and (2) granting summary judgment in favor of Defendant
International Lease Finance Corporation (ILFC). As the parties are familiar with
the facts, we do not recount them here. We have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C.
§ 1291, and we affirm.1
1. The district court did not err in denying Plaintiffs’ motion for
appointment as decedents’ personal representatives. Under the probate exception,
federal courts lack jurisdiction over probate matters. See Marshall v. Marshall,
547 U.S. 293, 311-12 (2006). The district court correctly determined that
appointment of a personal representative falls within the probate exception because
it, essentially, seeks that a court issue letters of administration. See In re Marshall,
392 F.3d 1118, 1132-33 (9th Cir. 2004), rev’d on other grounds, 547 U.S. 293(2006).
Furthermore, under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 17(b), one’s capacity to
sue is determined “by the law of the state where the court is located,” and under
California law, a foreign individual seeking appointment as a personal
1
We grant the Plaintiffs’ requests for judicial notice “to the extent [that they
are] compatible with Fed. R. Evid. 201 and ‘do[] not require the acceptance of
facts subject to reasonable dispute.’” Associated Gen. Contractors of Am. v. Cal.
Dep’t of Transp., 713 F.3d 1187, 1190 n.1 (9th Cir. 2013) (citation omitted).
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representative must open probate proceedings. See Smith v. Cimmet, 132 Cal.
Rptr. 3d 276, 282-83 (Ct. App. 2011). Therefore, even if the district court had the
authority to appoint Plaintiffs, it correctly denied Plaintiffs’ motion as Plaintiffs
did not comply with the requirements for such appointments under California
probate law. For example, Plaintiffs’ motion did not contain a copy of the
decedents’ wills, the name, age, address, and relation to the decedent of each heir
and devisee, or the decedents’ addresses at the time of death, see Cal. Prob. Code
§ 8002, or an affidavit showing that notice of the potential appointments had been
given to interested parties, see id. § 8124.
2. The district court did not abuse its discretion in denying Plaintiffs’
request for additional time to seek appointments as personal representatives in
California state court as moot because it concluded that it would not allow
Plaintiffs to relate back amendments reflecting such appointments. Under Federal
Rule of Civil Procedure 15(c), the district court has discretion to relate back an
amendment to a complaint to the filing of the original pleading when, among other
things, “the amendment asserts a claim or defense that arose out of the conduct,
transaction, or occurrence set out–or attempted to be set out–in the original
pleading.” Additionally, under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 17(a)(3), a court
“may not dismiss an action for failure to prosecute in the name of the real party in
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interest until, after an objection, a reasonable time has been allowed for the real
party in interest to ratify, join, or be substituted into the action.” In making this
determination courts look at, among other things, whether an “understandable
mistake” was made in naming the appropriate party or whether the defendant
would be prejudiced by the substitution and amendment. See United States for Use
& Benefit of Wulff v. CMA, Inc., 890 F.2d 1070, 1073-75 (9th Cir. 1989).
In light of the procedural history in this case, we conclude that Plaintiffs’
close to two-year delay in seeking appointment was unreasonable and not an
understandable mistake. In its September 2011 order, the district court made it
clear that a court appointment was necessary to bring this action. Despite this clear
instruction, counsel for Plaintiffs did not seek appointment until July 2013, after
the statute of limitations had expired. Plaintiffs failed, in their briefing and at oral
argument, to provide an acceptable explanation for this delay. Counsel for
Plaintiffs admitted that a declaration that he signed explaining the delay was “not
the basis of the delay” and “not a complete basis or explanation.” Furthermore,
giving Plaintiffs additional time would further delay this action, thereby
prejudicing Defendant, which has already expended significant resources
defending this lawsuit. Moreover, nothing in Rule 15 or 17 permits counsel to so
blatantly ignore the district court’s schedule and the need for complete candor.
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Accordingly, we affirm the district court’s decision to deny Plaintiffs’ request for
additional time.
3. The district court did not err in granting summary judgment in favor
of Defendant. A Death on the High Seas Act (DOHSA) action can only be brought
by the personal representative of a decedent. See 46 U.S.C. § 30302. Here, there
is no genuine issue of material fact that Plaintiffs have not been appointed as
personal representatives by a court and, therefore, did not have the capacity to
bring the action.
AFFIRMED.
5
FILED
Hassanati v. International Lease Finance Corp. 14-55348
MAR 22 2016
Reinhardt, Circuit Judge, dissenting: MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
Plaintiffs allege that more than forty people died as a result of Defendant’s
negligence and seek damages for the eligible relatives of the victims. The district
court found that these claims¯meritorious or not¯were forfeited because their
attorneys waited too long to fulfill a complex technical requirement: having
California appoint personal representatives, who are all French or Comorian
citizens, for the victims’ estates. The district court did not consider whether this
delay prejudiced Defendant in its analysis of whether Plaintiffs future appointment
as personal representatives could relate back to their initial complaint under Rules
15(c) and 17(a). This was a legal error and thus an abuse of discretion. I therefore
dissent from the majority’s contrary finding.
In applying Rule 15 we have held that the district court commits reversible
error if it fails to “provide a contemporaneous specific finding of prejudice to the
opposing party” in denying the amendment of a party as untimely. Bowles v.
Reade, 198 F.3d 752, 758 (9th Cir. 1999). Likewise, in applying Rule 17(a) we
have held in a well-reasoned, albeit unpublished, disposition that “[t]he advisory
notes to Rule 17(a) make clear that equitable principles should apply to a district
court's decision . . . . The District Court erred in failing to consider the prejudice to
1
the parties or the court's interest in litigating suits on their merits.” Cont'l Ins. Co.
v. N.A.D., Inc., 16 F. App'x 659, 661 (9th Cir. 2001). This comports with the law
of the other circuits. See, e.g, Esposito v. United States, 368 F.3d 1271, 1276 (10th
Cir. 2004) (Rule 17(a) cases focus “primarily on whether the plaintiff engaged in
deliberate tactical maneuvering (i.e. whether his mistake was “honest”), and on
whether the defendant was prejudiced thereby.”); Sun Ref. & Mktg. Co. v.
Goldstein Oil Co., 801 F.2d 343, 345 (8th Cir. 1986) (looking to prejudice under
17(a)); Suda v. Weiler Corp., 250 F.R.D. 437, 440 (D.N.D. 2008) (“District courts
should consider certain factors . . . [including] whether the defendant would be
prejudiced by a substitution.”).
Had the district court looked, it would have found that there was little or no
prejudice. Substituting the Plaintiffs as personal representatives would not change
anything about the case. It would not affect the persons who would recover, or the
negligence claims themselves. “Rule 17(a) substitution of plaintiffs should be
liberally allowed when the change is merely formal and in no way alters the
original complaint's factual allegations as to the events or the participants.”
Advanced Magnetics, Inc. v. Bayfront Partners, Inc., 106 F.3d 11, 20 (2d Cir.
1997). Defendant contends that Plaintiffs’ delay could have forced them to defend
against other suits by relatives of the same victims. It did not, however. Defendant
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also does not contest Plaintiffs’ claim that the litigation proceeded forward at a
normal pace during 2011 to 2013, aside from the personal representative question.
Although allowing Plaintiffs a couple of months to go to the state probate court
might have delayed the proceedings, this is a minor inconvenience that hardly
compares with the loss of claimants’ ability to obtain redress for Defendant’s
alleged negligence which killed a “spouse, parent, child,” or relative on whom they
depended for financial support. 46 U.S.C. § 30302; see also Bowles, 198 F.3d at
758 (“Undue delay by itself, however, is insufficient to justify denying a motion to
amend.”).
There is no doubt that Plaintiffs’ counsel should have acted far more
quickly. The district court found that although Plaintiffs had not engaged in any
tactical maneuvering or other dishonest conduct, the delay was unreasonable.
Without considering prejudice, however, the district court could not properly
decide whether this delay warranted the considerable penalty the court imposed.
Indeed, courts have permitted delays of the same length at issue here if there is no
prejudice to defendants. In Brohan v. Volkswagen for example, the court permitted
the appointment of plaintiff as personal representative to relate back to a previously
filed complaint nearly two years after defendants had first contended the suit could
not continue because the plaintiff was not the personal representative. See 97
3
F.R.D. 46, 49 (E.D.N.Y. 1983). The court found:
No one has been misled in the slightest degree as to the nature of the
claim or the issues at stake . . . . Rule 1 requires the court to construe
the "reasonable time" allowed by Rule 17(a) in such a way as to
secure the "just" as well as the speedy and inexpensive determination
of the action. It would hardly be "just" to hold that plaintiff was too
late to correct the situation where no prejudice to the defendants has
occurred and there is no evidence that the delay was a tactic
undertaken in bad faith.
Id. at 50.
The same is true here. Accordingly I would, at a minimum, vacate and
remand the district court’s decision.
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