Opinion ID: 184064
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Law of the Case; Waiver and Forfeiture

Text: Under the doctrine of law of the case, a court may decline to reconsider the merits of its own prior rulings when the same point of law arises for the second time in the same case. The panel rightly notes that law of the case was not the basis of the district court's decision. Maj. Op. at 1091; see also 2010 Fee Award Decision, 677 F.Supp.2d at 180. More importantly, application of law of the case by a lower court, no matter how correct, cannot, as a logical matter, preclude review on the merits by a higher court. In Christianson v. Colt Industries Operating Corp., 486 U.S. 800, 108 S.Ct. 2166, 100 L.Ed.2d 811 (1988), the Court initially determined that the Federal Circuit lacked jurisdiction for the decision under review (compelling vacatur). It then examined and emphatically rejected the respondent's claim that it was entitled to preserve its victory in the Federal Circuit on a law of the case theory. The Court explained that respondent was wrong on a number of grounds, including the inconvenient fact that the first of multiple decisions on jurisdiction had rejected Federal Circuit jurisdiction. But the Court went on to give the clincher: Most importantly, law of the case cannot bind this Court in reviewing decisions below. A petition for writ of certiorari can expose the entire case to review. Panama R. Co. v. Napier Shipping Co., 166 U.S. 280, 283-284, 17 S.Ct. 572, 41 L.Ed. 1004 (1897). Just as a district court's adherence to law of the case cannot insulate an issue from appellate review, a court of appeals' adherence to the law of the case cannot insulate an issue from this Court's review. See Messenger [ v. Anderson, 225 U.S. 436], at 444, [32 S.Ct. 739, 56 L.Ed. 1152 (1912)]; Hamilton-Brown Shoe Co. v. Wolf Brothers & Co., 240 U.S. 251, 257-259 (1916). 486 U.S. at 817-18, 108 S.Ct. 2166. To see why the appellate court cannot treat an issue as resolved simply because the district court has correctly applied law of the case, consider the following two scenarios. In both the district court addresses the same issue twice, and in both there had been neither an intervening trip to the court of appeals nor a final appealable judgment that would allow a party access to the court of appeals. In the first scenario, the district court looks at the issue and decides; then, when it comes up again, the court carefully reconsiders the matter, adds new reasoning, introduces new subtleties, and comes out the same way. The court of appeals might find the new reasoning persuasive, or it might not. In any event, it would not skip the issue simply because the district court considered it twice. In the second scenario, the district court resolves the question once, and then, on the issue's recurrence, invokes law of the case. Determining, correctly, that none of the reasons not to apply law of the case is present, it sticks with its first resolution. It would surely be nonsense to say, in this scenario, that the court of appeals cannot, or should not, face the issue (assuming it's otherwise properly presented, necessary to the outcome, etc.). Appellees here rely on a number of decisions in which we have spoken of law of the case as the reason to affirm a district court decision that had applied that doctrine. Kimberlin v. Quinlan, 199 F.3d 496 (D.C.Cir.1999); Williamsburg Wax Museum, Inc. v. Historic Figures, Inc., 810 F.2d 243 (D.C.Cir.1987) (using terms waiver and law of the case); see also Laffey v. Northwest Airlines, Inc., 740 F.2d 1071, 1089-90 (1984) (similarly using terms waiver and law of the case); United States v. Alaw, 327 F.3d 1217, 1219 (D.C.Cir.2003) (using term law of the case). But in fact, as we have recognized, these cases all involved situations where a party had participated in a prior appeal that afforded an opportunity to obtain appellate reversal. See Crocker v. Piedmont Aviation, Inc., 49 F.3d 735, 738-41 (D.C.Cir.1995). ( Kimberlin and Alaw, though following Crocker, are no different in this.) In such cases the appellate court is not abdicating substantive review on the ground that the district court properly decided not to replow what was for it old ground, but rather is justifiably treating a party as having abandoned an opportunity for appellate review. As we observed in Crocker, the correct name for such a doctrine is waiver. Crocker, 49 F.3d at 739; see also 18B Charles Alan Wright, Arthur R. Miller, & Edward H. Cooper, Federal Practice and Procedure § 4478.6 (4th ed.2008); U.S. v. Henry, 472 F.3d 910, 913 (D.C.Cir.2007) (applying the concept under the waiver label); Northwestern Indiana Telephone Co., Inc. v. FCC, 872 F.2d 465, 470 (D.C.Cir.1989) (same, but also applying law of the case to another issue, previously decided by our court, i.e., in the standard domain of law of the case). But the term waiver is sensibly confined to the situation where there actually has been a prior appeal, as opposed to the present case, where an issue was decided in an earlier ruling that was final and appealable at the time but which the losing party never appealed on any grounds. Wright, Miller and Cooper classify such a case, that of a mere prior opportunity for an appeal, as one of forfeiture. Id. [1] Three other circuits have each, on at least one occasion, invoked the forfeiture principle to justify refusal to consider the merits of issues on appeal. See Little Earth of United Tribes, Inc. v. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development, 807 F.2d 1433, 1438 (8th Cir.1986); ABC, Inc. v. Nameloc, Inc., 403 F.3d 607, 610-11 (8th Cir.2005); Griffin v. Michigan Dept. of Corrections, 5 F.3d 186, 190 (6th Cir.1993); Martinez v. Roscoe, 100 F.3d 121, 123 (10th Cir.1996). No case from our court has appliedor, indeed, rejecteda claim of forfeiture based on failure to exercise a right to appeal a final order. Even in the waiver context, where the case for barring an unasserted claim is stronger because the case itself has already occasioned appellate court consideration, we have noted that the doctrine is even one notch weaker than law of the case. Crocker, 49 F.3d at 740. In this instance, I see no reason to treat the fee cap argument as forfeit. The 2008 Fee Award Decision was arguably a final and appealable judgment. See Gates v. Rowland, 39 F.3d 1439, 1450 (9th Cir. 1994). But if this is so, it was less than plainly obvious under the law of this circuit, and appellees, whose award under the 2008 Fee Award Decision is not at issue in this appeal, were not significantly disadvantaged by appellants' failure to appeal the fee cap issue until 2010. (The bulk of the fees at issue here were incurred before the 2008 ruling and thus, obviously, well before the District had any opportunity to appeal that decision.)