Opinion ID: 3069728
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Civil Contempt Finding

Text: “A party commits contempt when he violates a definite and specific order of the court requiring him to perform or refrain from performing a particular act or acts with knowledge of the court’s order.” Travelhost, Inc. v. Blandford, 68 F.3d 958, 961 (5th Cir. 1995). For civil contempt, this must be established by clear and convincing evidence. Id. Clear and convincing evidence is that weight of proof which produces in the mind of the trier of fact a firm belief or conviction . . . so clear, direct and weighty and convincing as to enable the fact finder to come to a clear conviction, without hesitancy, of the truth of precise facts of the case. Shafer v. Army & Air Force Exch. Serv., 376 F.3d 386, 396 (5th Cir. 2004) (quotation marks and citations omitted). The district court identified the proper burden of proof and legal standards, then laid out the reasons for its contempt finding. The court identified three categories of action that it held, when viewed “in tandem” with the national importance of the case and the reimposition of the moratorium, supported a civil contempt finding. Specifically, it found “defiance” and “determined disregard” in (1) Interior’s failure to seek a remand from the district court to the agency before taking new administrative action; (2) its continuously stated public resolve to restore the moratorium; and (3) its communications to industry that a new moratorium was in the offing. Hornbeck and Interior dispute whether our law requires a remand in this type of situation. Each side has marshaled authorities.1 This case does not 1 Compare Broussard v. U.S. Postal Serv., 674 F.2d 1103, 1108 n.4 (5th Cir. 1982) (stating that “prevailing jurisprudence” holds “that once a judicial suit is filed an agency should not unilaterally reopen administrative proceedings – the agency should first ask the court to remand the case to it”); with Am. Farm Lines v. Black Ball Freight Serv., 397 U.S. 532, 542 (1970) (noting that “since the stay order did not forbid it from acting . . . , it was not 8 Case: 11-30936 Document: 00512064896 Page: 9 Date Filed: 11/27/2012 No. 11-30936 hinge on whose view is correct. Although a district court need not “spell out in detail the means in which its order must be effectuated,” the injunction’s provisions must be “clear in what conduct they [have] mandated and prohibited.” Am. Airlines, Inc. v. Allied Pilots Ass’n, 228 F.3d 574, 578-79 (5th Cir. 2000). The injunction did not state that Interior had to seek permission for a remand before developing additional rules on offshore drilling in the Gulf. The only mandate about returning to the court was that Interior provide a report describing “the manner and form” of its compliance with the injunction within 21 days. There has been no allegation that it failed in that duty. For Interior to have been in contempt, the injunction would have had to include an obligation to petition for a remand. Cf. Armstrong v. Exec. Office of the President, 1 F.3d 1274, 1289 (D.C. Cir. 1993) (vacating civil contempt against federal agencies because district court’s “order did not expressly direct” cited conduct). There were several communications to the industry manifesting Interior’s “public resolve” to overcome the injunction. Six days after the injunction was entered, Interior convened a meeting in Washington, D.C., attended by Secretary Salazar and other high-ranking Interior officials. According to an affidavit from an attendee,2 the question was posed to the government representatives “whether deepwater drilling in the Gulf could resume at that time, given the existence of an injunction against the previously issued deepwater drilling moratorium.” The response by an Interior Assistant Secretary was that it was his Department’s intention “to issue a second moratorium,” a statement the affiant understood as “a signal that the cost and expense of resuming drilling necessary for the [agency] to seek permission of the court” before ruling). 2 Interior has not disputed the accuracy of this account, provided by James W. Noe. Noe was Senior Vice President, General Counsel, and Chief Compliance Officer of Hercules Offshore, Inc. as well as the Executive Director of the Shallow Water Drilling Coalition. 9 Case: 11-30936 Document: 00512064896 Page: 10 Date Filed: 11/27/2012 No. 11-30936 should not be undertaken by industry because the second moratorium would prevent that activity from continuing once it was issued.” The relevant public communications, acknowledged by Interior, are the Secretary’s press release responding to the injunction and his testimony to Congress the next day. The press release does, as the district court recognized, evince a resolve to reissue the moratorium. That intent was made explicit before the Senate Subcommittee, just as it would be in Interior’s motion for a stay in this court. Q. Mr Secretary, do you plan to issue a new moratorium on all exploration of oil in the Gulf of Mexico at depths of more than 500 feet? A. The answer to that is yes, Senator Alexander. Hornbeck also directs us to an answer the Secretary provided Senator Murkowski, in which he stated: [W]ith respect to the moratorium, I believe it was the correct decision. I believe it’s a correct decision today. And with all due respect to the honorable court, we disagree with the court. And so we are taking that decision on appeal. At the same time, it is important that this . . . moratorium stay in place until we can assure that deepwater drilling can be done in a safe way. We’re not there today. And so we move forward with the executive authority which I have to make sure that the moratori[um] does, in fact, stay in place. Here, as well as in responding later to Senator Feinstein, the Secretary referred to the moratorium as “in place.” Hornbeck argues that terminology is a sign of defiance since an injunction prohibiting enforcement of the moratorium had issued. Interior regards the choice of words as a simple misstatement and also claims that because the May Directive had not been rescinded, the notion that the moratorium was “in place” was in some sense accurate. Taken together, the comments to industry, to the Senate, and to the public support the district court’s factual conclusion that Interior was intent on 10 Case: 11-30936 Document: 00512064896 Page: 11 Date Filed: 11/27/2012 No. 11-30936 reinstating a moratorium that imposed the same limitations as the May Directive from the moment the court enjoined it. Neither harboring that intent nor imposing a new moratorium, though, was a violation of the court order. The district court did not conclude otherwise. Hornbeck’s motion for contempt focused “on the government’s imposition of a second blanket moratorium hurried on the heels of the first.” According to the district court, using the issuance of the July Directive as a reason for contempt would require reading its “preliminary injunction Order too broadly.” The district court explained that the injunction had been based on a finding that “the plaintiffs were substantially likely to prove that the process leading to the first moratorium was arbitrary and capricious” in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act. See, e.g., Jupiter Energy Corp. v. FERC, 407 F.3d 346, 349 (5th Cir. 2005) (explaining that the Act requires “reasoned analysis” and a cogent explanation for agency action). In “answer to the plaintiffs’ quarrel with the second moratorium,” the court explained that Interior took the position that it had “met the Court’s concerns and resolved each of the procedural deficiencies in the first.” Although the court expressed skepticism about whether that would be borne out, it then ruled that under “these facts alone,” it “could not, at least not clearly and convincingly, find the government in contempt of the preliminary injunction Order.” We agree. See Test Masters Educ. Servs., Inc. v. Singh, 428 F.3d 559, 582 (5th Cir. 2005). Hornbeck’s complaint also asserted that a six-month moratorium on all drilling exceeded the authority delegated to Interior under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act. The court never reached that issue. Had the May Directive been enjoined on that basis, this would be a very different case. Instead, the sole justification for the preliminary injunction that did issue was a procedural failure to explain. The court order did not explicitly prohibit a new, or even an identical, moratorium. It is true that the district court identified 11 Case: 11-30936 Document: 00512064896 Page: 12 Date Filed: 11/27/2012 No. 11-30936 additional potential APA deficiencies in the process surrounding the July Directive,3 but those potential defects are presented here as a basis supporting the contempt. Hornbeck’s “victory” was fleeting and frustrating to its goal of actually allowing drilling to proceed. In essence, the company argues that by continuing in its pursuit of an effective moratorium, the Interior Department ignored the purpose of the district court’s injunction. If the purpose were to assure the resumption of operations until further court order, it was not clearly set out in the injunction. A more broadly worded injunction that explicitly prohibited the end-run taken by Interior would have set up issues more clearly supportive of contempt. Interior was carrying out a policy decision made by the President. On display throughout was the “decision, activity . . . and dispatch” that the Framers envisioned for the Executive Department of government. THE FEDERALIST NO. 70, at 423 (Alexander Hamilton) (Clinton Rossiter ed., 1961). Litigation was not able to keep pace with these developments. See id. (discussing the Executive’s unique role “in the most critical emergencies of the state”). The national importance of this case weakens, not strengthens, the propriety of the court’s contempt finding. The controversial policy decisions that the May and July Directives reflected were made at the highest level of government. In implementing those decisions, we do not discern a violation of a clear provision of the district court’s order by the words expressed or actions taken by the Secretary. 3 In its September 1, 2010, order refusing to dismiss the Hornbeck suit as moot, the district court raised questions regarding whether the “618 new documents and over 6000 pages” that Interior pointed to as evidence of the deliberative process that went into the second moratorium truly evidenced such deliberations. It noted that nearly every statement in the July Directive had been “anticipated by documents in the May 28 record, or by documents that were otherwise available to the Secretary before May 28.” It also recognized, though, that since the Hornbeck complaint did not concern the July Directive, the issue of whether the second moratorium complied with the APA was not part of this suit. 12 Case: 11-30936 Document: 00512064896 Page: 13 Date Filed: 11/27/2012 No. 11-30936 The district court dealt expeditiously and forcefully with extremely significant litigation. The potential APA violations that led to the initial injunction are not at issue today, but such violations, if significant, would justify a district court’s consideration of an injunction. Our decision is a narrow one. We conclude that there is no clear and convincing evidence that Interior’s actions after the injunction violated the clear terms of the injunction as drafted. Therefore, there was no civil contempt.