Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-98-05082/USCOURTS-caDC-98-05082-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 380
Nature of Suit: Other Personal Property Damage
Cause of Action: 

---

<<The pagination in this PDF may not match the actual pagination in the printed slip opinion>>

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued October 12, 1999 Decided January 18, 2000

No. 98-5082

Ramon Lopez,

Appellant

v.

United States of America, et al.,

Appellees

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 96cv01972)

Charles B. Klein, appointed by the court, argued the cause

as amicus curiae for appellant. With him on the briefs was

Eric W. Bloom.

David L. Smith, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued the cause

for appellees. With him on the brief were Wilma A. Lewis,

U.S. Attorney, and R. Craig Lawrence, Assistant U.S. Attorney.

USCA Case #98-5082 Document #491076 Filed: 01/18/2000 Page 1 of 8
<<The pagination in this PDF may not match the actual pagination in the printed slip opinion>>

Before: Ginsburg, Rogers, and Tatel, Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge Ginsburg.

Ginsburg, Circuit Judge: Ramon Lopez, an inmate in a

federal prison, brought suit against the Drug Enforcement

Administration, alleging that the agency failed to make an

adequate effort to notify him of a forfeiture proceeding it had

initiated against property he claims to own. The DEA sent

two notices to Mr. Lopez--one to his home and one to a

prison address--both of which were returned to the agency.

One year later Mr. Lopez learned of the forfeiture proceeding

through his wife, who had been separately notified by the

DEA.

After the DEA denied as untimely his petition for remission or mitigation of the forfeiture, Mr. Lopez filed a complaint in the district court alleging the DEA denied him due

process of law by failing to notify him of the forfeiture

proceeding. The district court granted summary judgment in

favor of the DEA, concluding that the agency had met its

statutory and constitutional duty to notify Mr. Lopez of the

forfeiture by sending notices to him and to his wife. Because

the DEA, when the notices sent to Mr. Lopez were returned,

made no further effort to notify him although it knew he was

in prison, and because notice to his wife is not, on the facts of

this case, notice to him, we reverse the judgment of the

district court and remand this matter for further proceedings.

I. Background

While Ramon Lopez was in the Martin County, Florida jail

on a narcotics trafficking charge, he and his wife Alix Coba*

__________

* Amicus curiae appointed by this Court to represent Mr. Lopez

on appeal points out that the couple actually were not married, nor

could they have been considered married at common law because

Florida does not recognize a common law marriage entered into

after January 1, 1968. See Fla. Stat. ch. 741.211. Mr. Lopez,

however, refers to Ms. Coba as his wife, and both the district court

and the Government considered the couple to be married. For the

purposes of this appeal, therefore, we too treat Mr. Lopez and Ms.

Coba as husband and wife.

agreed to pay $50,000 to an official who would let Mr. Lopez

post bond on a lesser charge. According to the Government,

the payee was an "undercover law enforcement agent posing

as a Deputy U.S. Marshal." The couple were convicted under

federal law of attempted escape, and the DEA seized the

$50,000, claiming it had reason to believe that Mr. Lopez had

obtained the money through the sale of illegal narcotics.

In March, 1993 the DEA sent notices of seizure to Mr.

Lopez both at his last known home address and at the Dade

County Jail in Miami, Florida. Mr. Lopez states that he was

never incarcerated in the Dade County Jail and the Government offers no explanation for having sent the notice there.

In any event, both notices were returned to the DEA marked

"RETURN TO SENDER." The DEA also sent to Ms. Coba,

as a potential claimant in her own right, a notice of seizure,

USCA Case #98-5082 Document #491076 Filed: 01/18/2000 Page 2 of 8
<<The pagination in this PDF may not match the actual pagination in the printed slip opinion>>

which she accepted, and it published a notice of the seizure in

USA Today once a week for three consecutive weeks. The

DEA did not receive any response to its notices and in May,

1993 it declared the $50,000 forfeited to the United States.

Mr. Lopez claims that he did not learn of the forfeiture

until March or April, 1994, when Ms. Coba showed him the

notice she had received, and that immediately thereafter he

petitioned the DEA for relief from the forfeiture. The DEA

dismissed Mr. Lopez's claim as untimely.

Mr. Lopez sought review in the district court, which granted summary judgment in favor of the DEA. The court held

that the agency had satisfied its statutory and constitutional

obligations by sending notices of seizure to "interested parties" via certified mail. The district court also imputed to Mr.

Lopez the notice of seizure received by Ms. Coba, who

"allegedly had dominion and control over the money in question" at the time of the crime.

Mr. Lopez appeals. We review the district court's grant of

summary judgment de novo. See National Treasury Employees Union v. United States Customs Service, 27 F.3d 623,

626 (D.C. Cir. 1994).

USCA Case #98-5082 Document #491076 Filed: 01/18/2000 Page 3 of 8
<<The pagination in this PDF may not match the actual pagination in the printed slip opinion>>

II. Analysis

The DEA seized Mr. Lopez's money pursuant to 21 U.S.C.

s 881(a)(6), which authorizes the administrative forfeiture of

property furnished or obtained in exchange for a controlled

substance. A forfeiture proceeding is initiated under 19

U.S.C. s 1607(a), which requires the Government to send a

written notice of forfeiture to each party who may have an

interest in the seized property and to publish notice of its

intent to seize the property in a newspaper of general circulation once a week for three consecutive weeks. A potential

claimant then has 20 days in which to file a claim and to post

a bond. See 19 U.S.C. s 1608.

The Due Process Clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth

Amendments to the Constitution of the United States require

notice that is "reasonably calculated, under all the circumstances, to apprise interested parties of the pendency of the

action and afford them an opportunity to present their objections." Mullane v. Central Hanover Trust Co., 339 U.S. 306,

314 (1949). Taken together, the steps required by 19 U.S.C.

s 1607(a) generally provide all the notice required for due

process. See id. at 317-18.

In this case, the DEA complied with the statute by sending

notices to Mr. Lopez at his home address and at prison and

by publishing a notice of the proposed seizure in USA Today

for three consecutive weeks. When both of the notices were

returned to the DEA, however, the agency took no additional

steps to determine Mr. Lopez's whereabouts despite its

knowledge that Mr. Lopez was in the custody either of the

State of Florida or of the Attorney General of the United

States; that is, he was in one prison system or the other, as

the DEA very well knew.

In these circumstances, the DEA's efforts to notify Mr.

Lopez directly were inadequate to afford him due process of

law. After learning that the two notices sent to Mr. Lopez

were not delivered, the agency should have attempted to

locate him within the prison system. We made this clear in

Small v. United States, 136 F.3d 1334, 1337-38 (D.C. Cir.

1998)--a decision issued after the forfeiture at issue in this

case--where we held that the Government should have resent

USCA Case #98-5082 Document #491076 Filed: 01/18/2000 Page 4 of 8
<<The pagination in this PDF may not match the actual pagination in the printed slip opinion>>

notice of a forfeiture proceeding to a claimant when the initial

notices it sent to the claimant's home and to a prison--the

wrong prison, as it happened--were returned:

[W]hen the government knows (or can easily ascertain)

where a person may be found, it must direct its notice

there....

....

... [I]f ... the government knows that a claimant is in

prison, it ... can easily ... find out whether the prisoner has been moved or released (and if so, to what

address), or whether some problem at the prison prevented delivery.

Recognizing the inadequacy of the DEA's efforts to notify

Mr. Lopez directly, the Government argues that the notice

the DEA sent to Ms. Coba was also "reasonably calculated"

to reach Mr. Lopez because they were, or "appeared to all the

world" including the DEA, to be married. To Mr. Lopez's

observation that a marital relationship is not enough by itself

to make one spouse the agent of the other for the purpose of

receiving notice, the Government responds that an agency

relationship is not required and that in any event, Ms. Coba

had apparent authority to accept the notice on behalf of Mr.

Lopez in view of her participation in the attempted escape

and the "the alignment of her interest with his."

The Government's argument fails for two reasons. First,

the notice sent to Ms. Coba concerned only her own interest

in the money; it neither mentioned Mr. Lopez nor gave any

indication that Ms. Coba should notify him or any other

person who may have had an interest in the money. The

absence of any suggestion that the notice was sent for a

purpose other than informing Ms. Coba of her own interest in

the proposed forfeiture renders the notice facially deficient as

to Mr. Lopez, regardless whether Ms. Coba was his agent for

the service of process. Cf. United States v. Marolf, 173 F.3d

1213, 1215, 1217 (9th Cir. 1999) (noting that Government

acknowledged notice was insufficient where Government notiUSCA Case #98-5082 Document #491076 Filed: 01/18/2000 Page 5 of 8
<<The pagination in this PDF may not match the actual pagination in the printed slip opinion>>

fied co-defendant but failed to notify claimant after discovering his interest in same property).

Second, Ms. Coba's control over the money during the

attempted escape did not cloak her with apparent authority to

act for Mr. Lopez in all, or perhaps any, subsequent matters

involving the money. Apparent authority is "the power to

affect the legal relations of another person by transactions

with third persons, professedly as agent for the other, arising

from and in accordance with the other's manifestations to

such third persons." Restatement (Second) of Agency s 8

(1958). Apparent authority arises "only to the extent that it

is reasonable for the third person dealing with the agent to

believe that the agent is authorized." Id. cmt. c.

The Government has not alleged any facts that made it

reasonable for the DEA to believe that Ms. Coba was Mr.

Lopez's agent for the purpose of receiving the notice of

forfeiture. Even if Mr. Lopez had vested Ms. Coba with

apparent authority to transfer his $50,000 to the marshal

during the attempted escape, something more would be required before one reasonably could say that Mr. Lopez manifested his intention that Ms. Coba act as his agent for any

other purpose. Cf. United States v. $184,505.01 in U.S.

Currency, 72 F.3d 1160, 1164 (3d Cir. 1995) (notice of forfeiture given to attorney who represented prisoner only in

unrelated suit cannot be imputed to prisoner). The argument

for apparent authority is further weakened by the nearly four

month interval between Ms. Coba's delivery of the money and

the DEA's initiation of a forfeiture proceeding. Assisting

another in a failed attempt to escape is hardly the type of

ongoing activity from which one might reasonably infer continued authority to act on behalf of the would-be escapee. Cf.

Bye v. United States, 105 F.3d 856, 857 (2d Cir. 1997) (notice

of forfeiture sent to attorney constitutionally sufficient when

attorney represented prisoner in ongoing and related proceedings).

The Government attempts to bolster its argument for

apparent authority by invoking general principles of agency

between husband and wife. Thus, the Government notes that

USCA Case #98-5082 Document #491076 Filed: 01/18/2000 Page 6 of 8
<<The pagination in this PDF may not match the actual pagination in the printed slip opinion>>

although, according to the Restatement (Second) of Agency,

"[n]either husband nor wife by virtue of the relation has

power to act as agent for the other," the same authority

states that "[t]he relation is of such a nature ... that

circumstances which in the case of strangers would not

indicate the creation of authority or apparent authority may

indicate it in the case of husband or wife." Id. s 22 cmt. b.

According to the Government, because Ms. Coba was Mr.

Lopez's wife and because "she had already acted on his

behalf, at her own peril, with regard to the very same $50,000

at issue, DEA had good reason to expect that notice to her

would find its way back to [Mr. Lopez]."

The Government's argument misses the mark. A wife does

not become the agent of her husband by once taking a risk on

his behalf. Rather, it is a course of conduct that may give

rise to the apparent authority of one spouse to act on behalf

of the other. As the Restatement explains:

[A] husband habitually permitted by his wife to attend to

some of her business matters may be found to have

authority to transact all her business affairs. Likewise,

if a wife is customarily permitted by her husband to

order household supplies, authority or apparent authority

on her part to purchase things needed in the household

can be readily inferred.

Id. Although the examples might benefit from some modernization, they make the point clearly enough: An act routinely

performed by one spouse for the other may give rise to

apparent authority for that spouse to perform the same or a

closely related act. The Restatement does not support the

Government's contention that Ms. Coba's single act of transferring Mr. Lopez's money vested her with apparent authority to receive for her husband notice that the money is subject

to forfeiture. We therefore hold that Ms. Coba did not have

apparent authority to receive the notice of forfeiture for Mr.

Lopez.

III. Conclusion

For the foregoing reasons, we reverse the order of the

district court granting summary judgment for the GovernUSCA Case #98-5082 Document #491076 Filed: 01/18/2000 Page 7 of 8
<<The pagination in this PDF may not match the actual pagination in the printed slip opinion>>

ment. This matter is remanded to the district court for

further proceedings on the merits of Mr. Lopez's challenge to

the forfeiture of his property.

So ordered.

USCA Case #98-5082 Document #491076 Filed: 01/18/2000 Page 8 of 8