Will v. Hallock

delivered the opinion of the Court.

The authority of the Courts of Appeals to review “all final decisions of the district courts,” 28 U. S. C. § 1291 , includes appellate jurisdiction over “a narrow class of decisions that do not terminate the litigation,” but are sufficiently important and collateral to the merits that they should “nonetheless be treated as final,” Digital Equipment Corp. v. Desktop Direct, Inc., 511 U. S. 863 , 867 (1994) (internal quotation marks omitted). The issue here is whether a refusal to apply the judgment bar of the Federal Tort Claims Act is open to collateral appeal. We hold it is not.

I

The complaint alleges that Susan Hallock owned a computer software business that she and her husband, Richard, operated from home. After information about Richard Hal-lock’s credit card was stolen and used to pay the subscription fee for a child pornography Web site, agents of the United States Customs Service, investigating the Web site, traced

In July 2002, Susan Hallock and her company brought an action against the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act, invoking the waiver of sovereign immunity, 28 U. S. C. § 1346 , and alleging negligence by the customs agents in executing the search. The merits of the claim were never addressed, for the District Court granted the Government’s motion to dismiss, holding that the agents’ activities occurred in the course of detaining goods and thus fell within an exception to the Act’s waiver of sovereign immunity, § 2680(e). Hallock v. United States, 253 F. Supp. 2d 361 (NDNY 2003).

While the suit against the Government was still pending, Susan Hallock filed this action against the individual agents under Bivens v. Six Unknown Fed. Narcotics Agents, 403 U. S. 388 (1971), alleging in her complaint that the agents had damaged her computers and thus deprived her of property including business income in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. After the District Court dismissed the first suit against the Government, the agents moved for judgment in the Bivens action, citing the judgment bar of the Tort Claims Act, that “the judgment in an action under [§] 1346(b) of this title shall constitute a complete bar to any action by the claimant, by reason of the same subject matter, against the employee of the government whose act or omission gave rise to the claim.” § 2676.

The District Court denied the motion, holding that dismissal of the action against the. Government under the Tort

The collateral order doctrine, identified with Cohen v. Beneficial Industrial Loan Corp., 337 U. S. 541 (1949), is “best understood not as an exception to the ‘final decision’ rule laid down by Congress in § 1291, but as a ‘practical construction’ of it.” Digital Equipment, supra, at 867 (quoting Cohen, supra, at 546 ). Whereas 28 U. S. C. § 1291 “gives courts of appeals jurisdiction over ‘all final decisions’ of district courts” that are not directly appealable to us, Behrens v. Pelletier, 516 U. S. 299 , 305 (1996), the collateral order doctrine accommodates a “small class” of rulings, not concluding the litigation, but conclusively resolving “claims of right separable from, and collateral to, rights asserted in the action,” ibid, (internal quotation marks omitted). The claims are “too important to be denied review and too independent of the cause itself to require that appellate consideration be deferred until the whole case is adjudicated.” Cohen, supra, at 546 .

The requirements for collateral order appeal have been distilled down to three conditions: that an order “ ‘[1] conclusively determine the disputed question, [2] resolve an important issue completely separate from the merits of the action, and [3] be effectively unreviewable on appeal from a final judgment.’ ” Puerto Rico Aqueduct and Sewer Authority v. Metcalf & Eddy, Inc., 506 U. S. 139 , 144 (1993) (quoting Coopers & Lybrand v. Livesay, 437 U. S. 463 , 468 (1978)). The conditions are “stringent,” Digital Equipment, supra,

Accordingly, we have not mentioned applying the collateral order doctrine recently without emphasizing its modest scope. See, e. g., Digital Equipment, 511 U. S., at 868 (“[T]he ‘narrow’ exception should stay that way and never be allowed to swallow the general rule that a party is entitled to a single appeal, to be deferred until final judgment has been entered ...” (citation omitted)). And we have meant what we have said; although the Court has been asked many times to expand the “small class” of collaterally appeal-able orders, we have instead kept it narrow and selective in its membership.

A

Prior cases mark the line between rulings within the class and those outside. On the immediately appealable side are orders rejecting absolute immunity, Nixon v. Fitzgerald, 457 U. S. 731 , 742 (1982), and qualified immunity, Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U. S. 511 , 530 (1985). A State has the benefit of the doctrine to appeal a decision denying its claim to Eleventh Amendment immunity, Puerto Rico Aqueduct, supra, at 144-145, and a criminal defendant may collaterally appeal an adverse ruling on a defense of double jeopardy, Abney v. United States, 431 U. S. 651 , 660 (1977).

The examples admittedly raise the lawyer’s temptation to generalize. In each case, the collaterally appealing party was vindicating or claiming a right to avoid trial, in satisfaction of the third condition: unless the order to stand trial was

“Allowing immediate appeals to vindicate every such right would move § 1291 aside for claims that the district court lacks personal jurisdiction, that the statute of limitations has run, that the movant has been denied his Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial, that an action is barred on claim preclusion principles, that no material fact is in dispute and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law, or merely that the com: plaint fails to state a claim. Such motions can be made in virtually every case.” Id., at 873 (citations omitted).

B

Since only some orders denying an asserted right to avoid the burdens of trial qualify, then, as orders that cannot be reviewed “effectively” after a conventional final judgment, the cases have to be combed for some further characteristic that merits appealability under Cohen; and as Digital Equipment explained, that something further boils down to “a judgment about the value of the interests that would be

Thus, in Nixon, supra, we stressed the “compelling public ends,” id., at 758 , “rooted in . . . the separation of powers,” id., at 749 , that would be compromised by failing to allow immediate appeal of a denial of absolute Presidential immunity, id., at 743, 752, n. 32 . In explaining collateral order treatment when a qualified immunity claim was at issue in Mitchell, supra, we spoke of the threatened disruption of governmental functions, and fear of inhibiting able people from exercising discretion in public service if a full trial were threatened whenever they acted reasonably in the face of law that is not “clearly established.” Id., at 526 . Puerto Rico Aqueduct, 506 U. S. 139 , explained the immediate ap-pealability of an order denying a claim of Eleventh Amendment immunity by adverting not only to the burdens of litigation but to the need to ensure vindication of a State’s dignitary interests. Id., at 146 . And although the double jeopardy claim given Cohen treatment in Abney, supra, did not implicate a right to be free of all proceedings whatsoever (since prior jeopardy is essential to the defense), we described the enormous prosecutorial power of the Government to subject an individual “to embarrassment, expense and ordeal . . . compelling him to live in a continuing state of anxiety,” id., at 661-662 (internal quotation marks omitted); the only way to alleviate these consequences of the Government’s superior position was by collateral order appeal.

In each case, some particular value of a high order was marshaled in support of the interest in avoiding trial: honoring the separation of powers, preserving the efficiency of government and the initiative of its officials, respecting a State’s dignitary interests, and mitigating the government’s

C

Does the claim of the customs agents in this case serve such a weighty public objective that the judgment bar should be treated as an immunity demanding the protection of a collateral order appeal? One can argue, of course, that if the Bivens action goes to trial the efficiency of Government will be compromised and the officials burdened and distracted, as in the qualified immunity case: if qualified immunity gets Cohen treatment, so should the judgment bar to further litigation in the aftermath of the Government’s success under the Tort Claims Act. But the cases are different. Qualified immunity is not the law simply to save trouble for the Government and its employees; it is recognized because the burden of trial is unjustified in the face of a colorable claim that the law on point was not clear when the official took action, and the action was reasonable in light of the law as it was. The nub of qualified immunity is the need to induce officials to show reasonable initiative when the relevant law is not “clearly established,” Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U. S. 800 , 818 (1982); ef. Saucier v. Katz, 533 U. S. 194 , 202 (2001); a quick resolution of a qualified immunity claim is essential.

There is, however, no such public interest at stake simply because the judgment bar is said to be applicable. It is not the preservation of initiative but the avoidance of litigation for its own sake .that supports the judgment bar, and if simply abbreviating litigation troublesome to Government employees were important enough for Cohen treatment, collateral order appeal would be a matter of right whenever the Government lost a motion to dismiss under the Tort

The judgment bar at issue in this case has no claim to greater importance than the typical defense of claim preclusion; and we hold true to form in deciding what Digital Equipment implied, that an order rejecting the defense of judgment bar under 28 U. S. C. § 2676 cries for no immediate appeal of right as a collateral order.

We vacate the judgment of the Court of Appeals and remand the case with instructions to dismiss the appeal for lack of jurisdiction.

It is so ordered.