Rule 54(b) Finality Extends to Related, Quantified Attorney-Fee Awards Despite Pending Claims

A. Rule 54(b), premature appeals, and collateral fee finality

Certification of the jurisdictional dismissal

An order dismissing only some defendants ordinarily does not end a multiparty action. Rule 54(b), however, permits immediate entry of judgment as to fewer than all parties or claims when the district court expressly determines both that the disposition is final and that there is no just reason to delay review.

Okla. Tpk. Auth. v. Bruner, 259 F.3d 1236 (10th Cir. 2001), supplied this two-part framework and required the appellate court to examine certification independently. The first determination—whether the order is final—is reviewed de novo; the decision that there is no just reason for delay is reviewed for abuse of discretion.

Both requirements were satisfied. The dismissal ended the claims against the Rong Defendants in the Colorado action, and the jurisdictional questions were sufficiently distinct from the merits to justify immediate review. The court used Butler v. Daimler Trucks N.A., LLC, 2021 WL 492427 (D. Kan. Feb. 10, 2021), as persuasive support: early appellate resolution of independent jurisdictional questions can promote efficient litigation and avoid a potential second trial.

Although plaintiffs appealed before certification, Lewis v. B.F. Goodrich Co., 850 F.2d 641 (10th Cir. 1988), expressly permits a premature notice to ripen upon later Rule 54(b) certification. B. Willis, C.P.A., Inc. v. BNSF Ry. Corp., 531 F.3d 1282 (10th Cir. 2008), reinforced that a subsequent final disposition can cure premature appellate filing. Accordingly, the court had jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291.

The opinion’s new appellate-finality holding

The more novel question was whether the related fee award was appealable despite the continuing claims against other defendants. The Tenth Circuit stated that it had not previously decided this precise issue.

It adopted the reasoning of Johnson v. Orr, 897 F.2d 128 (3d Cir. 1990). That decision treats Rule 54(b) certification as a determination that a judgment should become immediately final, supporting corresponding finality for its collateral consequences, including attorney fees.

Yost v. Stout, 607 F.3d 1239 (10th Cir. 2010), supplied the complementary principle that attorney-fee issues are generally collateral to the underlying judgment. The court reasoned that it would be anomalous to permit immediate review of the certified dismissal while withholding review of an associated fee award solely because unrelated proceedings continued.

There remained an independent condition: the fee order itself had to be final. Under Phelps v. Washburn Univ. of Topeka, 807 F.2d 153 (10th Cir. 1986), an attorney-fee award becomes final only when the court determines a specific amount. Because the district court awarded $114,663.11, that requirement was met.

Scope: The holding concerns a quantified fee award connected to a properly certified judgment and unrelated to the remaining claims. It does not make every fee ruling in an unfinished multiparty case immediately appealable.

B. Personal jurisdiction: purposeful contacts and claim-relatedness remain distinct

The applicable jurisdictional framework

Plaintiffs’ federal trade-secret claim did not itself supply nationwide personal jurisdiction. Under Trujillo v. Williams, 465 F.3d 1210 (10th Cir. 2006), a federal court examines both statutory authorization for service and constitutional due process. The court cited Mission Measurement Corp. v. Blackbaud, Inc., 287 F. Supp. 3d 691 (N.D. Ill. 2017), in concluding that the Defend Trade Secrets Act does not provide the nationwide service mechanism necessary here.

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 4(k)(1)(A) therefore directed the court to Colorado law. Archangel Diamond Corp. v. Lukoil, 123 P.3d 1187 (Colo. 2005), establishes that Colorado’s long-arm statute extends as far as constitutional due process permits. The statutory and constitutional inquiries thus merged.

The governing constitutional foundation was Int'l Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U.S. 310 (1945): defendants must have minimum contacts with the forum such that litigation there accords with traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice. Applying Trujillo v. Williams, the court required both purposeful direction toward Colorado and a relationship between those contacts and the claims.

General jurisdiction was not asserted on appeal. The opinion cited Helicopteros Nacionales v. Hall, 466 U.S. 408 (1984), only as background concerning continuous and systematic contacts, not as an alternative ground for jurisdiction in this case.

A light preliminary burden is still a burden

The district court decided jurisdiction from written submissions rather than an evidentiary hearing. OMI Holdings v. Royal Ins. Co. of Can., 149 F.3d 1086 (10th Cir. 1998), placed the burden on plaintiffs, while Wenz v. Memery Crystal, 55 F.3d 1503 (10th Cir. 1995), established that only a prima facie showing was necessary at that stage.

Rambo v. Am. S. Ins. Co., 839 F.2d 1415 (10th Cir. 1988), and FDIC v. Oaklawn Apartments, 959 F.2d 170 (10th Cir. 1992), governed the treatment of the record. Uncontroverted allegations receive credit, and conflicts in the parties’ evidentiary submissions are resolved in plaintiffs’ favor. But when defendants controvert bare allegations, plaintiffs cannot rely on those allegations alone.

Dudnikov v. Chalk & Vermilion Fine Arts, Inc., 514 F.3d 1063 (10th Cir. 2008), incorporating the pleading principles of Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544 (2007), limited the allegations entitled to acceptance to plausible, nonconclusory, nonspeculative facts. This was central: favorable treatment of evidence did not require acceptance of unsupported assertions that every communication or payment advanced a theft.

The court also acknowledged, through Newsome v. Gallacher, 722 F.3d 1257 (10th Cir. 2013), and its citation to Smith v. Sperling, 354 U.S. 91 (1957), that a jurisdictional inquiry under Rule 12(b)(2) is distinct from a merits inquiry under Rule 12(b)(6). Requiring concrete jurisdictional facts did not amount to adjudicating the underlying trade-secret claims.

Why purposeful direction was adequately shown

The court accepted that plaintiffs crossed the initial purposeful-direction threshold. Rong repeatedly emailed Sparks knowing he lived in Colorado; Sparks testified that Rong was someone to whom he would supposedly report; and the Rong Defendants transferred $23,000 to Sparks’s Colorado bank account.

The qualifying words in Sparks’s testimony did not make it legally worthless. Citing Hafen v. Howell, 121 F.4th 1191 (10th Cir. 2024), the court explained that equivocation can concern evidentiary weight rather than the absence of personal knowledge. Sparks had firsthand knowledge of his own dealings with PRD and the anticipated reporting relationship.

Nor did the contacts need to establish a continuous relationship. Burger King Corp. v. Rudzewicz, 471 U.S. 462 (1985), drawing on McGee v. Int'l Life Ins. Co., 355 U.S. 220 (1957), recognizes that one act can suffice if it creates a substantial forum connection. Rambo v. Am. S. Ins. Co. likewise recognizes that even a single letter or telephone call may satisfy due process in appropriate circumstances.

This conclusion was fact-specific. The opinion does not establish that any email to a resident or deposit into a local bank account necessarily creates jurisdiction.

Why the claims lacked the necessary connection

The decisive failure concerned relatedness. Plaintiffs did not explain how Rong’s transmission of the Master Services Agreement, his asserted supervisory role, or the bridge loan enabled the alleged misappropriation.

Newsome v. Gallacher focused the analysis on whether the claimed injury resulted from forum-related activities. The Master Services Agreement provided for design and development work between Sparks and PRD; it did not mention plaintiffs, their technology, or Rong. Plaintiffs identified no provision showing how the agreement facilitated theft.

Even accepting that Rong was a knowledgeable technical representative or supervisor did not fill that gap. Walden v. Fiore, 571 U.S. 277 (2014), requires a connection created by the defendant with the forum itself; relationships with persons connected to the state cannot alone establish jurisdiction. Anzures v. Flagship Rest. Grp., 819 F.3d 1277 (10th Cir. 2016), applied that principle to reject random, fortuitous, or attenuated forum connections.

The bridge-loan theory had the same weakness. Plaintiffs asserted on appeal that the money financed a workstation and software used to steal their secrets, but identified no supporting record evidence. They also failed to show that the Rong Defendants knew of or controlled that alleged use. The pleaded assertion that financing aided concealed unlawful activity supplied a conclusion, not the missing factual connection.

Dental Dynamics, LLC v. Jolly Dental Grp., LLC, 946 F.3d 1223 (10th Cir. 2020), and XMission, L.C. v. Fluent LLC, 955 F.3d 833 (10th Cir. 2020), reinforced the need for an adequate connection between the forum and the controversy. Extrinsic evidence could support the pleaded claims’ jurisdictional basis, but evidence about Rong’s status and relationships could not substitute for evidence connecting the contacts to the alleged harm.

Finally, Shrader v. Biddinger, 633 F.3d 1235 (10th Cir. 2011), reinforced the conjunctive nature of the test: purposeful forum conduct and claim-relatedness are both required. Satisfying the former did not compensate for failing the latter.

Because plaintiffs failed to establish minimum contacts sufficient for these claims, the court did not reach the separate reasonableness inquiry. Under OMI Holdings v. Royal Ins. Co. of Can. and Burger King Corp. v. Rudzewicz, that inquiry would otherwise allow defendants to make a compelling showing that jurisdiction was unreasonable despite adequate contacts.

Important limit: Although the opinion repeatedly discussed causation, it also expressly retained the “arise out of or relate to” formulation. Its conclusion should not be enlarged into a universal requirement of strict causation for every exercise of specific jurisdiction.

C. No entitlement to an evidentiary hearing merely because facts are disputed

Plaintiffs argued that the district court should have held an evidentiary hearing. The court principally rejected this challenge because the opening brief did not develop it adequately.

Richison v. Ernest Grp., Inc., 634 F.3d 1123 (10th Cir. 2011), citing United States v. Olano, 507 U.S. 725 (1993), supplied the ordinary rule that issues not raised below are forfeited. But Tesone v. Empire Mktg. Strategies, 942 F.3d 979 (10th Cir. 2019), allowed consideration because the district court had expressly addressed whether a hearing would help resolve the motion.

That did not cure inadequate appellate briefing. Under United States v. Clay, 148 F.4th 1181 (10th Cir. 2025), United States v. Woodmore, 135 F.4th 861 (10th Cir. 2025), and Bronson v. Swensen, 500 F.3d 1099 (10th Cir. 2007), cursory assertions unsupported by developed legal and record analysis do not preserve an appellate challenge.

The argument also failed alternatively because plaintiffs identified no additional fact that a hearing could establish to cure the relatedness defect. Dutcher v. Matheson, 840 F.3d 1183 (10th Cir. 2016), supported the analogous requirement that a party challenging denial of jurisdictional discovery demonstrate prejudice, not merely the possibility of obtaining more information.

Plaintiffs’ reply cited both Dutcher v. Matheson and Breakthrough Mgmt. Grp., Inc. v. Chukchansi Gold Casino & Resort, 629 F.3d 1173 (10th Cir. 2010), but those decisions concerned jurisdictional discovery rather than a mandatory evidentiary hearing. The new reply argument was also too late under Star Fuel Marts, LLC v. Sam's E., Inc., 362 F.3d 639 (10th Cir. 2004).

The alternative analysis underscores a practical point: a hearing would have increased plaintiffs’ burden. Under FDIC v. Oaklawn Apartments, jurisdictional facts resolved through a pretrial evidentiary hearing must be proved by a preponderance of the evidence, rather than merely supported by a prima facie showing.

Plaintiffs’ request for leave to amend was expressly contingent on the absence of a final, appealable dismissal. Once certification resolved that issue, the court denied the conditional request as moot, invoking Phelps v. Hamilton, 122 F.3d 885 (10th Cir. 1997). This was not a general ruling that Rule 54(b) certification categorically eliminates every possible avenue for amendment.

D. Statutory trade-secret claims can make an action predominantly tort-based

Colorado Revised Statutes § 13-17-201 generally requires reasonable defense fees when a qualifying tort action is dismissed before trial on a defendant’s Rule 12(b) motion. The Rong Defendants’ jurisdictional dismissal triggered the statute because the action predominantly sounded in tort.

Why Colorado’s statute applied in federal court

Jones v. Denv. Post Corp., 203 F.3d 748 (10th Cir. 2000), established that state attorney-fee statutes are substantive for this purpose and apply to pendent state-law claims in federal court. It also supported applying § 13-17-201 following a federal Rule 12(b) dismissal, notwithstanding the statute’s reference to Colorado procedural rules.

Weidner v. Doe, 2026 WL 972841 (10th Cir. Apr. 10, 2026), provided additional persuasive support for equivalent federal application. The court expressly treated unpublished cases as persuasive rather than binding, consistent with United States v. Ellis, 23 F.4th 1228 (10th Cir. 2022).

Xlear, Inc. v. Focus Nutrition, LLC, 893 F.3d 1227 (10th Cir. 2018), supplied the appellate standards: statutory interpretation and the legal basis for fees receive de novo review, while the award and its amount ordinarily receive abuse-of-discretion review. Federal law controls that procedural standard even when state law supplies fee entitlement.

“Statutory” and “tort” are not mutually exclusive

Plaintiffs emphasized that the Colorado Uniform Trade Secrets Act and Defend Trade Secrets Act claims were the complaint’s central claims. Their argument assumed that a statutory action necessarily differs from a tort action.

Castro v. Lintz, 338 P.3d 1063 (Colo. App. 2014), instead directs courts to examine the action’s essence when tort and non-tort claims coexist. US Fax L. Ctr., Inc. v. Henry Schein, Inc., 205 P.3d 512 (Colo. App. 2009), establishes both that predominantly tort actions remain covered despite accompanying non-tort claims and that the statute does not distinguish common-law torts from federal statutory torts.

Several precedents supported characterizing trade-secret misappropriation as tortious:

• DeGette v. Mine Co. Rest., Inc., 751 F.2d 1143 (10th Cir. 1985), recognized theft of a trade secret under state statute as a tort.
• Sticky.io, Inc. v. Martingale Software, LLC, 2022 WL 1061911 (D. Colo. Apr. 8, 2022), treated misappropriation and related business wrongs as torts despite reliance on federal statutes.
• Multimedia Games, Inc. v. WLGC Acquisition Corp., 214 F. Supp. 2d 1131 (N.D. Okla. 2001), described trade-secret and confidential-information misappropriation as essentially sounding in tort.

These authorities defeated the preserved argument: a statute may define the duty and remedy while the underlying wrong remains tortious.

Questions not decided: Plaintiffs also advanced theories concerning purely economic loss, displacement by CUTSA’s fee provision, and DTSA preemption. Those theories were not preserved below, and plaintiffs did not seek plain-error review. The opinion therefore does not resolve their substantive merits.

E. Lodestar review and the limits of AI-based fee objections

The ordinary fee-calculation framework

Under Robinson v. City of Edmond, 160 F.3d 1275 (10th Cir. 1998), the starting point is the lodestar: reasonably expended hours multiplied by a reasonable hourly rate. The resulting amount is presumptively reasonable.

Case v. Unified Sch. Dist. No. 233, 157 F.3d 1243 (10th Cir. 1998), required the applicants to document appropriate hours and rates and required judicial scrutiny of billing judgment. Unnecessary, duplicative, irrelevant, or inadequately documented hours may be excluded. Courts may account for case complexity, reasonable strategies, and work necessitated by the opposing party.

The magistrate judge found that defense counsel recorded time in tenth-hour increments, avoided block billing, reduced time where appropriate, and incurred additional work because plaintiffs amended their pleading. The rates were supported by the Colorado market for comparably experienced lawyers. The district court adopted those findings.

Plaintiffs’ generalized claims of repeated billing and improper partner-level work did not identify specific problematic entries. Anchondo v. Anderson, Crenshaw & Assocs., LLC, 616 F.3d 1098 (10th Cir. 2010), supported rejection of unsupported excessive-hours objections and rejected the premise that experienced counsel must work without compensation whenever a task does not require the full extent of their expertise.

This is not a categorical endorsement of partner billing for every task. The point was that plaintiffs failed to identify and substantiate an abuse of discretion in the records actually reviewed.

AI does not produce an automatic lodestar discount

Plaintiffs argued that AI and online research tools should have reduced counsel’s compensable hours. The court acknowledged the possibility of genuine efficiency gains. Arbor Hill Concerned Citizens Neighborhood Ass'n v. Cnty. of Albany, 369 F.3d 91 (2d Cir. 2004), recognized that electronic research can reduce the hours needed for research and thus lower the lodestar.

But a possibility of savings did not establish that the hours actually billed were unreasonable. Counsel still had to verify authorities and ensure legally supportable submissions. Three cited decisions illustrated those continuing duties:

• Amarsingh v. Frontier Airlines, Inc., 2026 WL 352016 (10th Cir. 2026), imposed sanctions on an attorney appearing pro se who used generative AI without verifying that cited cases existed.
• Wadsworth v. Walmart Inc., 348 F.R.D. 489 (D. Wyo. 2025), found Rule 11 violations in filings containing AI hallucinations.
• Coomer v. Lindell, 2025 WL 1865282 (D. Colo. July 7, 2025), recognized that Rule 11 applies to AI-assisted submissions.

These authorities did not establish misconduct by defense counsel here. They explained why AI assistance does not eliminate professional review or make remaining attorney time inherently excessive.

The resulting principle is evidence-based: demonstrated technological savings can matter to reasonable hours, but the mere invocation of AI does not prove overbilling. The opinion neither creates an AI surcharge nor immunizes AI-assisted billing from scrutiny.

F. Supplemental fees: jurisdiction, timeliness, and prior adjudication

A fixed initial award does not exhaust fee jurisdiction

Plaintiffs argued that a final award of a specified amount prevented later supplementation unless the district court had expressly reserved jurisdiction. The court rejected that proposition.

Glass v. Pfeffer, 849 F.2d 1261 (10th Cir. 1988), had affirmed supplemental fees for collateral fee litigation after an initial award. Stroup v. United Airlines, Inc., 2019 WL 8359214 (D. Colo. Sep. 5, 2019), illustrated the same practice under Rule 54(d). Hutchinson v. Beckworth, 474 F. App'x 736 (10th Cir. 2012), supplied persuasive support that a pending appeal from an earlier award does not itself eliminate district-court authority over supplemental fees.

These cases supported continuing authority over a proper supplemental application—not an unrestricted ability to enlarge judgments without procedural constraints.

The holiday-extension calculation

Rule 54(d)(2)(B)(i) ordinarily requires a fee motion within fourteen days after judgment. Newmont U.S.A. Ltd. v. Ins. Co. of N. Am., 615 F.3d 1268 (10th Cir. 2010), supported using the December 11, 2025 separate judgment rather than the December 10 order for the relevant entry date.

The fourteenth day was December 25. Rule 6 extended the holiday deadline to December 26, when the Rong Defendants filed their supplemental motion. The application was therefore timely.

Silence about additional fees was not an adjudication denying them

The Rong Defendants had mentioned an additional $48,658.29 in their reply supporting the original fee motion. Plaintiffs contended that the initial award implicitly rejected that request.

The court examined what had actually been decided. The recommendation addressed only the original $114,663.11 request. The district court also explained that its local rules required a separate motion and did not permit a new motion within a reply.

Baker ex rel. Thomas v. Gen. Motors Corp., 522 U.S. 222 (1998), supplied the controlling preclusion principle: issue preclusion concerns issues actually litigated and resolved by a valid final judgment. Because the additional fees had not been adjudicated, their later consideration was not barred.

G. Fee-litigation expenses and the harmless review-standard error

Fees incurred securing or defending fees

Plaintiffs argued that § 13-17-201 did not authorize expenses from collateral fee proceedings or nonfrivolous appeals. The court held those theories waived because they were not presented below and no plain-error argument was made.

Its alternative discussion nevertheless rejected the proposed exclusion. Dubray v. Intertribal Bison Coop., 192 P.3d 604 (Colo. App. 2008), upheld appellate fees under § 13-17-201 for successfully defending an initial fee award. The cited authority thus supported recovery beyond the work obtaining the initial dismissal.

The preservation ruling matters to the decision’s reach: the court did not undertake an unrestricted examination of every category of appellate or collateral expense potentially recoverable under the statute.

Proper objections required de novo review

The district court applied a “clearly erroneous or contrary to law” standard to objections concerning the supplemental fee recommendation. The Tenth Circuit held that this was error.

Under Rules 54(d)(2)(D) and 72(b), properly objected-to portions of the referred fee recommendation required de novo determination. Treating the matter as an ordinary nondispositive referral under Rule 72(a) afforded too much deference.

The error did not require reversal. First, the district court independently invoked law of the case concerning the previously decided applicability of § 13-17-201. Bishop v. Smith, 760 F.3d 1070 (10th Cir. 2014), explains that an earlier legal ruling ordinarily governs later stages of the same case, subject to recognized exceptions, including clear error producing manifest injustice. Plaintiffs did not adequately challenge that independent ground.

Second, the district court expressly stated that its result would be the same under de novo review. The appellate court’s own examination found the remaining challenges unsuccessful. Applying Quint v. Vail Resorts, Inc., 89 F.4th 803 (10th Cir. 2023), it treated the error as harmless.

The decision therefore preserves the de novo-review requirement while recognizing that an incorrect standard does not compel remand when it did not affect the result.

H. Preservation doctrine shaped the appeal’s substantive reach

Numerous arguments failed because they were raised at the wrong stage or were inadequately developed. The opinion distinguishes several procedural rules rather than treating every omission identically.

• Objections to a magistrate judge: Morales-Fernandez v. INS, 418 F.3d 1116 (10th Cir. 2005), states the firm waiver rule for failure to object. United States v. B.N.M., 107 F.4th 1152 (10th Cir. 2024), requires objections specific enough to focus the district judge on the actual dispute.
• Failure to invoke that waiver: Under Hicks v. Franklin, 546 F.3d 1279 (10th Cir. 2008), a party can itself waive or forfeit reliance on the firm waiver rule. Because the Rong Defendants did not invoke it for certain issues, the court addressed those issues on other grounds.
• Entirely new theories on appeal: United States v. McBride, 94 F.4th 1036 (10th Cir. 2024), together with Richison v. Ernest Grp., Inc., supported declining review when a theory was unpreserved and the appellant did not argue plain error.
• New arguments in objections: Marshall v. Chater, 75 F.3d 1421 (10th Cir. 1996), treats arguments first presented in objections to a magistrate judge’s recommendation as waived. This affected challenges to the supplemental award, including the argument about partner rates for the nature of postjudgment work.
• Insufficient appellate development: The briefing principles in United States v. Clay, United States v. Woodmore, and Bronson v. Swensen prevented passing assertions from becoming fully reviewable appellate claims.

These distinctions explain why the court considered some imperfectly preserved issues but declined others. They also prevent reading an affirmance as substantive approval of every legal proposition plaintiffs attempted to contest.