Opinion ID: 474490
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The 1982 Statutory Changes

Text: 19 With this statutory backdrop in place, we turn now to the changes enacted by the Federal Courts Improvement Act of 1982. That Act established the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit by combining the appellate functions of the Court of Claims with the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals, and created a new United States Claims Court to handle the trial jurisdiction of the former Court of Claims. The Act also adopted certain transfer procedures to cure want of jurisdiction and provided for a nationally applicable rate of interest for calculating post-judgment interest awards. 20 In this appeal we are concerned only with section 302 of the Federal Courts Improvement Act. That provision accomplished three things. First, it substantially amended 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1961, which had previously applied only to awards of post-judgment interest against private litigants. Section 1961 as amended presently provides: 21 (a) Interest shall be allowed on any money judgment in a civil case recovered in a district court. Execution therefor may be levied by the marshal, in any case where, by the law of the State in which such court is held, execution may be levied for interest on judgments recovered in the courts of the State. Such interest shall be calculated from the date of the entry of the judgment, at a rate equal to the coupon issue yield equivalent (as determined by the Secretary of the Treasury) of the average accepted auction price for the last auction of fifty-two week United States Treasury bills settled immediately prior to the date of the judgment. The Director of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts shall distribute notice of that rate and any changes in it to all Federal judges. 22 (b) Interest shall be computed daily to the date of payment except as provided in section 2516(b) of this title and section 1304(b) of title 31, and shall be compounded annually. 23 (c)(1) This section shall not apply in any judgment of any court with respect to any internal revenue tax case. Interest shall be allowed in such cases at a rate established under section 6621 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 [26 U.S.C. Sec. 6621]. 24 (2) Except as otherwise provided in paragraph (1) of this subsection, interest shall be allowed on all final judgments against the United States in the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal circuit [sic], at the rate provided in subsection (a) and as provided in subsection (b). 25 (3) Interest shall be allowed, computed, and paid on judgments of the United States Claims Court only as provided in paragraph (1) of this subsection or in any other provision of law. 26 (4) This section shall not be construed to affect the interest on any judgment of any court not specified in this section. 27 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1961. The 1982 amendments to 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1961 incorporated the previously existing statute as subsection (a) and then added subsections (b) and (c). The amendments also substituted a nationally uniform rate for post-judgment interest in subsection (a) for the rate previously set only by reference to state law. 28 Section 302 of the Federal Courts Improvement Act also amended 28 U.S.C. Sec. 2516(b) to modify the interest rate applicable to those Claims Court judgments against the United States affirmed by the Supreme Court. The 1982 amendments replaced the former 4% interest rate with the same nationally uniform rate newly set forth in 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1961(a). Finally, section 302 of the 1982 Federal Courts Improvement Act also repealed subsection (b) of 28 U.S.C. Sec. 2411, which had previously authorized awards of post-judgment interest against the United States in FTCA and Little Tucker Act cases, and deleted the reference to 28 U.S.C. Sec. 2411(b) from 31 U.S.C. Sec. 724a, the permanent judgment appropriation statute.