Opinion ID: 2446
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Whether the Motion was Properly Granted

Text: The second question is whether the Rule 60 motion raised issues sufficiently extraordinary to justify relief. Before the district court, the INS argued for relief on three grounds: (1) the district court's initial decision had been incorrect; (2) the district court's initial decision prevented the INS from fining airlines; and (3) the conflict between Air India and United Airlines created confusion in the law, thereby making border enforcement more difficult. The INS claimed that the interest in finality did not outweigh these considerations, as the Air India and United Airlines cases were part of an interconnected trilogy of cases that had all once been part of the same case. Rule 60(b)(6) confers broad discretion on the trial court to grant relief when appropriate to accomplish justice. Matarese v. LeFevre, 801 F.2d 98, 106 (2d Cir. 1986) (internal quotation marks omitted). Relief is warranted where there are extraordinary circumstances, or where the judgment may work an extreme and undue hardship, and should be liberally construed when substantial justice will thus be served. Id. (internal citations and quotation marks omitted). We have warned, however, that a Rule 60 motion may not be used as a substitute for appeal and that a claim based on legal error alone is inadequate. Id. at 107; see also Marrero Pichardo v. Ashcroft, 374 F.3d 46, 56 (2d Cir. 2004) ([A] mere change in decisional law does not constitute an `extraordinary circumstance' for the purposes of Rule 60(b)(6).). In the Rule 60(b)(1) context, we have also noted that Rule 60 does not allow district courts to indulge a party's discontent over the effects of its bargain, such as where the party has made a deliberate, strategic choice to settle. Andrulonis v. United States, 26 F.3d 1224, 1235 (2d Cir. 1994) (internal quotation marks omitted). We reverse the district court's grant of the INS's Rule 60(b)(6) motion on procedural grounds. The conflict between Air India and United Airlines was not, by itself, sufficiently extraordinary to justify reopening the judgment in Air India, especially given that such conflict resulting from a subsequent Circuit Court or Supreme Court decision would very likely not suffice to grant Rule 60(b)(6) relief. See Batts, 66 F.3d at 749 (A circuit court's announcement of a new rule of federal law, like a Supreme Court pronouncement, is similarly insufficient without more to justify Rule 60(b)(6) relief.). Thus, if this Court had issued an opinion in United Airlines on appeal, that opinion would likely not, by itself, provide a basis for revisiting the Air India decision. The INS's argument, which is based on mandatory authority from the Circuit but only on persuasive authority from the district court, therefore fails. With respect to the INS's claim that the district court's initial decision prevents it from collecting fees and that the airlines accordingly are unjustly enriched, the proper remedy for that problem was direct appeal. The INS knowingly stipulated to dismissal of its appeal, and it thereby gave up any claim it had to the fees it lost as a result of the district court's decision. We should not allow it to use the Rule 60 motion as a substitute for appeal, Matarese, 801 F.2d at 107, particularly given its deliberate, strategic choice to dismiss that appeal, Andrulonis, 26 F.3d at 1235 (internal quotation marks omitted). The INS focuses most on the extreme hardship it claims would result from the district court's divergent decisions and the ensuing legal confusion. Whereas the United Airlines holding gave the INS virtually unfettered discretion to fine airlines regardless of whether the non-immigrant alien was granted a post-arrival waiver, Air India held that (1) the INS could not impose fines where the alien was granted a waiver pursuant to the 1966 LPR regulation, and (2) the 1998 regulation was void because the agency had not complied with the APA. For decades prior to the United Airlines decision, the INS enforced the Penalty Statute differently depending on whether the relevant visa waiver regulation nullified the visa requirement. In other words, the legal landscape facing the district court when it ruled on the Rule 60 motionwhere the INS was able to impose fines in some circumstances but not others, depending on the regulation being enforcedwas no different from the legal landscape that had existed for decades. The INS has shown itself quite capable of amending its regulations when it found this patchwork approach unworkable, see 8 C.F.R. § 212.1 (listing amendments of the section in the Federal Register, currently numbering over 30), and it offers no explanation for why it cannot do so now. If the INS needs the 1998 regulation that was invalidated by the district court so that it can impose fines on airlines even when the alien receives a waiver, it may readopt the regulation after notice and comment. There is nothing extreme about the fact that the agency must respond to judicial decisions invalidating its regulations either by appealing these decisions or changing its regulations. The agency's grounds for the Rule 60(b)(6) motionwhich essentially boil down to a claim that the decision was wrongare not sufficiently extraordinary to justify reopening a closed case in which the agency voluntarily stipulated to dismiss its appeal. This is especially so here where the two cases were related and any appeal of Air India could have been stayed and later consolidated with an appeal in United Airlines. We hold that the district court abused its discretion in granting the Rule 60(b)(6) motion. Accordingly, we reverse the Rule 60(b) motion on procedural grounds and decline to reach the merits of the district court's March 2003 Air India decision.