Contempt Order Was Final, Appealable When Attorneys’ Fees Set

A district court erroneously ruled that an attorney’s appeal of a bankruptcy court’s contempt order imposing attorneys’ fees as a sanction against him was untimely and, therefore, the court didn’t have jurisdiction over the appeal, the Eleventh Circuit said.

The contempt order against attorney Robert Sweetapple didn’t become “a final and appealable order until the bankruptcy court issued the Fee Order,” Judge Robin S. Rosenbaum said Tuesday in an opinion for the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Because Sweetapple filed his appeal within 14 days of the bankruptcy court’s issuance of the fee order, his appeal of ...