Opinion ID: 466307
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Etheridge Decision

Text: 31 The district court also relied upon a decision by Judge O'Kelley in the Northern District of Georgia as enunciating an unequivocable command. 10 Etheridge v. Beasley, 532 F.Supp. 266 (N.D.Ga.1981). In that case, the court granted a summary judgment to mortgagors who sought a ruling that HUD could not use the two-month rule. Id. at 271. The court concluded that 32 without deciding whether the plaintiffs will ultimately be entitled to require HUD to accept assignment of their mortgage, ... the federal defendants used an improper legal standard in denying the plaintiffs' request for assignment. The court concludes that the regulations and guidelines do not mandate the application of a two month rule or a one month rule [i.e., the plaintiffs' advancement rule]; they rather require HUD officials to exercise their independent judgment in determining whether, in light of all the surrounding circumstances, the mortgagor's default was beyond his or her control. 33 Id. 34 The plaintiffs point to language in the opinion where the court said applying accepted rules of statutory construction would lead one to reach the conclusion espoused by the plaintiffs, i.e., that the relevant date of default is thirty days after a payment is due and unpaid. Id. at 270. Given the equivocal nature of that statement, however, and the Etheridge court's later references (in particular the one set out above in the court's conclusion) to the necessity of HUD applying its judgment to each case, id. at 270-71 & n. 9, we can only conclude that the Etheridge court rejected both HUD's two-month rule and the advancement rule favored by the plaintiffs in favor of a less rigid rule that required HUD to exercise greater judgment. At the very least, HUD's interpretation of Etheridge to prohibit only the rigid application of the two-month rule, as opposed to combining use of the rule with judgment, falls short of the violation of an unequivocal command necessary to support a contempt citation. 11 Indeed, the fact that the Etheridge court's construction of the decree is arguably at odds with the district court's construction in this case merely points out how ambiguous the provisions of the decree actually are. 35 Even if we were to conclude that Etheridge laid down an unequivocal command, we have some reservations as to whether that decision would support this finding of contempt. The Etheridge case was not brought by the plaintiffs in this case, and the Supreme Court decision in United States v. Mendoza, 464 U.S. 154, 104 S.Ct. 568, 78 L.Ed.2d 379 (1984), which dealt with the use of offensive collateral estoppel against the government, pointed out the problems involved in allowing a party not involved in a prior suit to use that decision in a subsequent suit against the government. The Etheridge opinion bound HUD only in the Northern District of Georgia and did not obligate HUD to seek an opinion from the district court below in this case. Even if HUD did engage in some sort of coverup to circumvent the Etheridge decision in the Northern District of Georgia, which plaintiffs allege and HUD vehemently denies, HUD would be in contempt of the Etheridge court, not the district court in the current case.