Page:Dupree v. Younger.pdf/2

Syllabus

trial “supersedes the record existing at the time of the summary-judgment motion,” ibid., it follows that a party must raise a sufficiency claim in a post-trial motion in order to preserve it for appeal, id., at 191–192. That motion allows the district court to take first crack at the question that the appellate court will ultimately face: Was there sufficient evidence in the trial record to support the jury’s verdict?

The same is not true for pure questions of law resolved in an order denying summary judgment. These conclusions are not “supersede[d]” by later developments in the litigation, id., at 184, and so such rulings merge into the final judgment, at which point they are reviewable on appeal, Quackenbush v. Allstate Ins. Co., 517 U. S. 706, 712. The reviewing court does not benefit from having a district court reexamine a purely legal pretrial ruling after trial, because nothing at trial will have given the district court any reason to question its prior analysis.

Younger’s counterarguments are unpersuasive. Ortiz does not hold, as Younger contends, that any order denying summary judgment—whether decided on legal or factual grounds—is unreviewable under 28 U. S. C. §1291. While an interlocutory order denying summary judgment is typically not immediately appealable, §1291 does not insulate interlocutory orders from appellate scrutiny, but rather delays their review until final judgment. And while Younger insists there should be no two-track system of summary judgment, in which factual and legal claims follow different routes, nothing in Rule 56 supports his argument for uniformity. On the contrary, fitting the preservation rule to the rationale (factual or legal) underlying the summary-judgment order is consistent with the text of Rule 56. It also makes sense: Factual development at trial will not change the district court’s pretrial answer to a purely legal question, so a post-trial motion requirement would amount to an empty exercise. Finally, while Younger predicts that a separate preservation rule for legal issues will prove unworkable because the line between factual and legal questions can be “vexing” for courts and litigants, Pullman-Standard v. Swint, 456 U. S. 273, 288, experience demonstrates that Younger overstates the need for a bright-line rule. “Courts of appeals have long found it possible to separate factual from legal matters.” Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Inc. v. Sandoz, Inc., 574 U. S. 318, 328. Here, the Court does not decide whether the issue Dupree raised on appeal is purely legal, and remands for the Fourth Circuit to evaluate that question in the first instance. Pp. 4–9.

Vacated and remanded.

Barrett, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.