Eleventh Circuit Closes Off Resort to Fed. R. Civ. P. 41(a) to Dismiss Remaining Claims as an Expedient to Appeal Contested Claims Dismissed Under Fed. R. Civ. P. 54(b)

The Eleventh Circuit, in CMYK Enterprises, Inc. v. Advanced Print Technologies, LLC, No. 24-13766 (11th Cir. Sept. 12, 2025), rejects a common tactic used by parties to speed-up the appeal of a partial dispositive order, i.e., voluntarily dismissing the remaining claims under Fed. R. Civ. P. 41(a). The panel holds that, by its plain terms, Rule 41(a) only allows dismissal of an entire action, not individual claims.

Fed. R. Civ. P. 54(b) states:

“When an action presents more than one claim for relief—whether as a claim, counterclaim, crossclaim, or third-party claim—or when multiple parties are involved, the court may direct entry of a final judgment as to one or more, but fewer than all, claims or parties only if the court expressly determines that there is no just reason for delay. Otherwise, any order or other decision, however designated, that adjudicates fewer than all the claims or the rights and liabilities of fewer than all the parties does not end the action as to any of the claims or parties and may be revised at any time before the entry of a judgment adjudicating all the claims and all the parties’ rights and liabilities.”

In this case, “[t]he District Court granted summary judgment on two claims but did not enter a Rule 54(b) certification. The parties then sought to dismiss only the remaining claims between them under Rule 41(a)(2), apparently assuming that the summary judgment order had fully resolved the others.”

The case involved a panoply of claims and counterclaims alleging breach-of-contract and fraud arising of the collapse of a commercial agreement. The district court granted summary judgment on two counts and a counterclaim concerning breach-of-contract but did not certify them as final under Rule 54(b). The parties then filed a “Consent Motion for Voluntary Dismissal of Fewer Than All Claims” under Rule 42(a)(2) to dismiss the balance of the case, which the district court granted.

The Eleventh Circuit dismisses the appeal. “Whether the summary judgment order here qualifies as a final decision [under 28 U.S.C. § 1291] depends on how the case was procedurally resolved. Specifically, it turns on the interaction between two provisions of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure: Rule 54(b), which governs partial judgments, and Rule 41(a), which governs voluntary dismissals.”

Here, because the district court “did not determine that the summary judgment order was final, find that there was no just reason for delay, or otherwise enter judgment” under Rule 54(b) those orders remained interlocutory and thus unappealable.

Thus, the only way that appeal might be taken here is if the rest of the claims and counterclaims were effectively dismissed. But the panel finds that the “voluntary dismissal” was a nullity because it dismissed fewer than all of the claims. “Even with a court order, however, the scope of Rule 41 is limited. As the text makes clear, it authorizes dismissal of ‘an action’—not individual claims within it. Fed. R. Civ. P. 41(a).”

Because the Consent Motion “did not seek to dismiss the parties’ respective breach-of-contract claims,” therefore, they were neither dismissed under Rule 41(a) nor certified as final under Rule 54(b) and thus remained – if only in limbo – on the district court’s docket. This was fatal to appellate jurisdiction. “Because the Rule 41(a) motion was ‘invalid upon filing,’ the claims it purported to dismiss remain pending in the District Court . . . . And because those claims were never resolved by a final judgment, there is no appealable decision under 28 U.S.C. § 1291.”

The panel finally notes that there were other ways the parties could have achieved the same result, including amending the pleadings under Fed. R. Civ. P. 15 to eliminate the undecided claims, severing the claims under Fed. R. Civ. P. 21, or having the summary judgment order certified as final under Fed. R. Civ. P. 54(b).

P.S. A valued colleague correctly commented that “the Federal Rules Advisory Committee has a proposal pending to permit parties to dismiss claims under Rule 41(a).”