Opinion ID: 149112
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Precluding BIE from Contesting Liability

Text: The district court held that BIE was estopped from contesting liability under the FCA as to Contracts 20A and 29 because of its guilty plea in a separate criminal proceeding. United States ex rel. Miller v. Bill Harbert Int'l Constr., Inc., 2007 WL 851857, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 17667 (D.D.C. Mar.14, 2007). In February 2002, BIE pleaded guilty to an indictment charging violations of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1, by its involvement in the bid-rigging conspiracy from 1988 to 1996. BIE contends that it was error to preclude it, based on the doctrine of collateral estoppel, from contesting liability under the FCA because a Sherman Act conspiracy does not require an overt act, while an FCA conspiracy does. Therefore, BIE argues, it might have been able to show that although it was guilty of a Sherman Act violation, it was not liable under the FCA. As BIE sees it, because collateral estoppel affects only issues that were actually litigated and necessarily decided in the first action, Jack Faucett Assocs. v. Am. Tel. & Tel. Co., 744 F.2d 118, 125 (D.C.Cir.1984), issues relating to the overt acts necessary for the FCA conspiracy were not precluded by the guilty plea in the Sherman Act prosecution, which did not require the proof of such acts. The district court disagreed, reasoning that the overt acts BIE admitted in its guilty plea and accompanying memorandum were essential to its Sherman Act plea because they supplied the factual basis for the plea. Miller v. Holzmann, 563 F.Supp.2d 54, 80-81 (D.D.C.2008). The district court reasoned that the preclusive effects of a guilty plea in a prior criminal proceeding extend not only to the essential elements of the crime charged, but also to the facts admitted in the accompanying Rule 11 proceeding. As the court explained, Rule 11 mandates that before entering judgment on a guilty plea, a court must `mak[e] such inquiry as shall satisfy it that there is a factual basis for the plea.' Id. at 79 (quoting Fed. R.Crim.P. 11(f) (brackets in the district court opinion)). Thus, because the facts admitted in the Rule 11 proceeding are essential to the entry of judgment, it is consistent with the underpinnings of the collateral estoppel doctrine that a defendant should be precluded from relitigating those facts as well as those related to the essential elements of the crime. Therefore, the court concluded that having admitted liability with respect to Contracts 20A and 29 in the previous proceeding, BIE was properly precluded from contesting its liability for conspiracy with respect to those contracts. Id. at 81. We need not ultimately decide this issue. The district court relied not only on collateral estoppel, but also on the equitable doctrine of judicial estoppel, which states that if a party successfully assumes a certain legal position in one proceeding, he may not thereafter, simply because his interests have changed, assume a contrary position. Id. at 81 n. 14 (quoting Davis v. Wakelee, 156 U.S. 680, 689, 15 S.Ct. 555, 39 L.Ed. 578 (1895)). As applied to BIE's circumstances, the court found that BIE was advancing a position contrary to the one the criminal court relied on when it accepted BIE's guilty plea, and that judicial estoppel was therefore appropriate. Id. Before this court, BIE has not asserted any error in this alternative reason for estopping BIE. Because BIE has forfeited the argument that the judicial estoppel was erroneous, we need go no further in our analysis. Even if we were to reject the district court's reasoning on the collateral estoppel theory, we would nonetheless affirm its ruling precluding BIE from contesting liability. See Kauthar SDN BHD v. Sternberg, 149 F.3d 659 (7th Cir.1998) (in situations in which there is one or more alternative holdings on an issue, ... failure to address one of the holdings results in a waiver of any claim of error with respect to the court's decision on that issue).