Opinion ID: 463698
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Exclusivity of the Act

Text: 101 Appellee argues that appellants' Takings Clause claims must fail because the American-Japanese Evacuation Claims Act constituted an exclusive remedy for all claims arising out of the evacuation and internment program. Brief of appellee at 43. Under Brown v. GSA, 425 U.S. 820, 96 S.Ct. 1961, 48 L.Ed.2d 402 (1976), a statute is deemed to provide an exclusive remedy where three conditions are met: (1) the statute provides a detailed and complete scheme for adjudicating claims arising out of a particular subject matter; (2) Congress, rightly or wrongly, did not believe that the affected individuals had alternative remedies at the time it enacted the statute; and (3) the statute addresses a specific injury or issue while alternative remedies address a broader grievance. The Claims Act is obviously specifically tailored to the conditions of the evacuation program. The Act thereby fulfills the third of the Brown conditions. But the Claims Act fails to fulfill the first two of the conditions articulated in Brown. 102 First, the Act fails to provide a complete remedy for the losses sustained. As the District Court found, the Act tended to exclude claims for compensation that would have been compensable under the Takings Clause at the time the Act became law. See 586 F.Supp. at 785-786. For example, claimants were not paid for the interest that accrued between the time of the evacuation and the time their claims were paid. Compare Claim of George M. Kawaguchi, 1 Adjudications of the Attorney General 14, 19-20 (1956), with Seaboard Air Line R. Co. v. United States, 261 U.S. 299, 306, 43 S.Ct. 354, 356, 67 L.Ed. 664 (1923). 103 Second, it is true that at the time the Claims Act was passed Congress did not think that the evacuees had any alternative remedies. See H.R.Rep. No. 732, 80th Cong., 2d Sess. 3 (1948). But this fact does not have the same legal meaning in our case that it had in Brown. Brown turned on the premise that Congress had assumed that the remedies provided by Section 717 of the Civil Rights Act and the government's waiver of sovereign immunity were coterminous. 425 U.S. at 827-28, 96 S.Ct. at 1965-66. Put otherwise, Brown presumed that the passage of Section 717 not only created new rights but also affirmed specific limits on the government's waiver of sovereign immunity. 104 In this case, however, Congress could hardly assume that sovereign immunity barred appellants' Takings Clause claims. The Constitution itself provides for the requisite waiver of sovereign immunity. Indeed, any congressional attempt to quash such claims might itself be unconstitutional. Here congressional statements as to the absence of alternative remedies merely constituted a recognition of the power of the military necessity defense, not a specific limit to a waiver of sovereign immunity. 105 In sum, where Congress speaks of a lack of alternative remedies in circumstances where it could not constitutionally limit a waiver of sovereign immunity, such congressional observations do not imply that any newly created rights must be exclusive of all other remedies. We therefore do not believe that in passing the Claims Act Congress sought to preclude appellants' Takings Clause claims.