Farmers Mutual Hail Ins. Co. v. Edgar Miller

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
• Decided: March 18, 2024
• Docket: 23-1744
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR PUBLICATION File Name: 24a0131n.06

Case No. 23-1744

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT

FILED Mar 18, 2024 FARMERS MUTUAL HAIL INSURANCE ) KELLY L. STEPHENS, Clerk COMPANY OF IOWA, ) ) Petitioner-Appellee, ) ON APPEAL FROM THE UNITED ) STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR v. ) THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF ) MICHIGAN EDGAR MILLER, ) Respondent-Appellant. ) OPINION )

Before: SUTTON, Chief Judge; SUHRHEINRICH and NALBANDIAN, Circuit Judges.

SUTTON, Chief Judge. An arbitrator ordered Edgar Miller to pay over $200,000 to his

insurance company, Farmers Mutual. That ruling has withstood two separate appeals. See

Farmers Mut. Hail Ins. Co. of Iowa v. Miller, No. 20-1978, 2021 WL 3044275 (6th Cir. July 20,

2021); Miller v. U.S. Dep’t of Agric., No. 22-1209, 2023 WL 21146 (6th Cir. Jan. 3, 2023). Today,

Miller asks the federal courts to set aside the confirmation of that award, arguing that the district

court lacked jurisdiction over it. The district court rejected Miller’s argument, and so do we.

I.

The case arises from a dispute between Edgar Miller, a farmer, and his crop insurer,

Farmers Mutual Hail Insurance Company of Iowa. After Farmers Mutual refused to pay Miller’s

coverage claim and sought reimbursement for prior overpayments, the parties submitted their No. 23-1744, Farmers Mutual Hail Ins. Co. of Iowa v. Miller

dispute to arbitration. 7 C.F.R. § 457.8(20)(a)(1); Miller, 2023 WL 21146, at *3. The arbitrator

ruled for Farmers Mutual on both issues.

Eleven months later, Farmers Mutual applied to the Western District of Michigan to

confirm the arbitration award. Miller filed a counterclaim, arguing that the parties’ Common Crop

Insurance Policy said that only the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation, not the arbitrator, could

decide whether to allow reimbursements for overpayment. The district court agreed that the

question “involve[d] a policy or procedure interpretation” that required the Insurance

Corporation’s input. Farmers Mut. Hail Ins. Co. of Iowa v. Miller, 366 F. Supp. 3d 974, 977 (W.D.

Mich. 2018) (quoting R.17-1 at § 20(a)). But it rejected Miller’s argument that it should vacate

the award and restart the arbitration process. Id. at 979; see 9 U.S.C. § 10. The court instead

conditionally nullified the award pending the Insurance Corporation’s response to whether

Farmers Mutual could demand reimbursements for overpayment. Miller, 366 F. Supp. 3d at 979.

After this conditional nullification, both parties requested a final agency determination

from the Insurance Corporation. About a year later, the Insurance Corporation issued FAD-287,

which said that insurance companies may recover past overpayments.

With this decision in hand, Farmers Mutual renewed its application to confirm the award

in the district court. The district court confirmed the award, noting that both “the arbitrator” and

“FAD-287 construed the policy” to allow reimbursement for overpayment. R.24 at 2. Miller

appealed that decision, and we affirmed. Miller, 2021 WL 3044275, at *1. At the same time that

the district court “conditionally nullified the arbitration award,” we reasoned, it “reserve[d] the

ability to affirm the arbitration award after the Insurance Corporation had spoken.” Id. at *4.

Soon after, Miller filed another claim in the district court, this time arguing that the

Insurance Corporation’s decision to allow reimbursement for overpayments conflicted with a

2 No. 23-1744, Farmers Mutual Hail Ins. Co. of Iowa v. Miller

federal regulation. The district court ruled against Miller, holding that the Insurance Corporation’s

decisions complied with the regulation. We affirmed again. Miller, 2023 WL 21146, at *5.

In this most recent action, Miller moved to set aside the district court’s judgment, arguing

that Farmers Mutual’s confirmation application came too late and thus deprived the court of

jurisdiction over the case. See 9 U.S.C. § 9. The district court rejected the argument.

II.

Civil Rule 60(b) allows a court to “relieve a party” from judgment in a few rare cases. Fed.

R. Civ. P. 60(b); see Antoine v. Atlas Turner, Inc., 66 F.3d 105, 108 (6th Cir. 1995). One

“exceptional case” exists when “the court that rendered judgment lacked even an arguable basis

for jurisdiction.” United Student Aid Funds, Inc. v. Espinosa, 559 U.S. 260, 271 (2010) (quotation

omitted); Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(b)(4). Under this narrow exception, we may vacate a judgment if the

court ignored a “glaring” jurisdictional defect. In re G.A.D., Inc., 340 F.3d 331, 336 (6th Cir.

2003) (quotation omitted).

Miller claims that he found such a defect. He says that Farmers Mutual’s application to

confirm the arbitration award came too late under § 9 of the Federal Arbitration Act. This

contention prompts two questions. Did Farmers Mutual miss § 9’s deadline? If so, did the delay

deprive the district court of any arguable basis for jurisdiction? We answer no to both questions.

A.

“[A]ny party to [an] arbitration,” the Federal Arbitration Act says, “may apply to” confirm

an arbitration award “at any time within one year after the award is made.” 9 U.S.C. § 9. If a party

files an application within that deadline, a “court must grant [] an order” confirming an arbitration

award “unless the award is vacated, modified, or corrected as prescribed in sections 10 and 11.”

Id. The Common Crop Insurance Policy, the policy in effect between the two parties here, requires

3 No. 23-1744, Farmers Mutual Hail Ins. Co. of Iowa v. Miller

“nullification” when a “dispute in any way involves a policy or procedure interpretation” rather

than a straightforward application. R.17-1 at § 20(a)(1).

Farmers Mutual complied with this deadline. Eleven months after the arbitrator granted

the award, Farmers Mutual applied to have the district court confirm it. By filing its application

within one year, Farmers Mutual did all that the statute requires.

The district court’s nullification order, and the delay that it caused, did not undo Farmers

Mutual’s compliance with § 9. True, after the Insurance Corporation weighed in, Farmers Mutual

filed a renewed application that came more than a year after the award. But the nullification order

allowed the Insurance Corporation to weigh in without having to restart the arbitration process.

See 9 U.S.C. § 10; Bachman Sunny Hill Fruit Farms, Inc. v. Producers Agric. Ins. Co., 57 F.4th

536, 542 (6th Cir. 2023). The district court, recall, said that it nullified the award “pending a policy

interpretation by the [Insurance Corporation].” Miller, 366 F. Supp. 3d at 979. We agreed, noting

that the district court’s “conditional” order pending Insurance Corporation input allowed it to

“reserve[e] the ability to affirm the arbitration award after the [Insurance Corporation]” provided

an answer. Miller, 2021 WL 3044275, at *4, *7. Because Farmers Mutual applied for

confirmation within a year and the court did not “vacate[], modif[y], or correct[]” it, Farmers

Mutual complied with the deadline. 9 U.S.C. § 9.

Our decision in Bachman is not to the contrary. 57 F.4th 536. It dealt with whether “parties

can agree to alter” the deadlines of the Federal Arbitration Act. Id. at 544. No, we said, when an

insured failed to comply with a 3-month deadline to seek vacatur of an arbitration award. Id.; 9

U.S.C. § 12. But both Miller and Farmers Mutual agree that § 9’s one-year deadline applies. The

only question is whether Farmers Mutual complied with that deadline. It did. Bachman has

nothing to say on that point.

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B.

But even if Farmers Mutual had missed the one-year deadline, that would not change

things. We doubt that the one-year deadline in 9 U.S.C. § 9 goes to the subject matter jurisdiction

of the federal courts; it instead looks like a run-of-the-mine claim-processing rule. See Espinosa,

559 U.S. at 271. This Court, to be sure, has avoided staking out a “position on whether the FAA’s

time limits are jurisdictional.” Bachman, 57 F.4th at 544 n.3; NAU Country Ins. Co. v. Alt’s Dairy

Farm, LLC, No. 21-2792, 2023 WL 152475, at *4 n.2 (6th Cir. Jan. 11, 2023), cert. denied, 143

S. Ct. 2566 (2023). But the Supreme Court has been on a two-decade mission to make clear “that

most time bars are nonjurisdictional” and that the courts ought to “treat a procedural requirement

as jurisdictional only if Congress clearly states that it is.” Wilkins v. United States, 598 U.S. 152,

157–58 (2023) (quotation omitted). It is unlikely that this law clearly creates such a jurisdictional

timeline. It says only this: “[A]t any time within one year after the award is made any party to the

arbitration may apply to the court so specified for an order confirming the award, and thereupon

the court must grant such an order unless the award is vacated, modified, or corrected[.]” 9 U.S.C.

§ 9.

But we need not resolve the point. Either way, this law surely does not create a “glaring”

jurisdictional defect, the kind of “rare instance[] of a clear usurpation of power [that] will render a

judgment void.” Espinosa, 559 U.S. at 271 (quotation omitted). The court had an arguable basis

for treating § 9 as a non-jurisdictional deadline. See id. We thus have no basis for vacating the

confirmation of the arbitration award.

To a farmer, we appreciate, “stewardship is hopeless and meaningless unless it involves

long-term courage, perseverance, [and] devotion.” Wendell Berry, The Gift of Good Land:

Further Essays, Cultural and Agricultural 275 (1981). We thus cannot fault Mr. Miller for

5 No. 23-1744, Farmers Mutual Hail Ins. Co. of Iowa v. Miller

pursuing this litigation with such perseverance and devotion. But because his legal arguments

come up short, we must affirm.