Don't recall seeing this before. The Third Circuit just issued a precedential opinion authored by Judge McKee. A footnote to the last sentence of the opinion states simply, "Judge Porter concurs in the judgment," but no separate opinion.
www2.ca3.uscourts.gov/opinarch/18310…
I don't doubt it's happened before in CA3, but it's definitely rare.
In plain english, what happened here is that one judge agreed with the other 2 about which side wins the appeal, but did not agree about why, but did not explain his own view. It's that last part that's unusual.
Is this a big deal? No. Does it mean anything? Probably not ... but perhaps.
I suspect it's quite common for judges to disagree with something or other in an opinion drafted by another judge on their panel. I also suspect that most judges follow the view that ...
... unless they feel strongly enough about it to write separately, then they just join the opinion for collegiality's sake.
But it's also possible to view no-opinion CIJ in the opposite light, as a collegiality-promoting mechanism, since ...
... a no-opinion CIJ may be less likely to trigger tension among judges than an opinion setting out the disagreement would be.
Anyway, interesting tea leaves for the appellate nerds to puzzle over.
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