Court Opinion

ID: 9477544
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:25:52.341144+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:55.777908
License: Public Domain

HALL, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
I concur in that part of the majority’s opinion finding that four of the five claims against Boeing are barred by the applicable three-year statute of limitations, 28 U.S.C. § 2415(b). I also agree that a six-year limitation period applies to the breach of the duty of loyalty claims against the individual defendants. I cannot join that part of the majority’s decision, however, finding that the five payments here were made with compensatory intent. In my view, the district court’s judgment should be affirmed in all respects.
Section 209(a) provides, in relevant part, that “[wjhoever receives any salary, or any contribution to or supplementation of salary, as compensation for his services ...” shall be guilty of a misdemeanor. This language clearly contemplates that, for a payment to violate § 209(a), it must both supplement the employee’s salary and also be intended as compensation for the employee's services as an officer or employee of the government. It is evident, there*483fore, that Congress did not intend that payments were to be proscribed by 209(a) if they were made without culpable intent.
In this case, the district court found that these severance payments were not intended, either by Boeing or the employees, as compensation for their government service. Intent is a factual determination purely within the province of the district court. Here, after hearing substantial testimony and weighing the credibility of numerous witnesses,1 the district court found as a matter of fact that “[t]he severance payments made to the individual defendants were not intended by Boeing as a supplementation of their government salaries or as compensation for their government services.” I simply cannot agree with the majority’s conclusion that the district court’s findings were clearly erroneous.
In reaching its decision, the majority attaches great weight to the fact that Boeing relied in part upon the disparity between what the employees were earning at Boeing and what their anticipated government salaries would be, in calculating the amount of the severance payments. The majority quite correctly found that the severance payments tended to lessen the financial pain experienced by these employees in accepting government service. The majority inexplicably concludes, however, that since these severance payments were supplements, they must have been made with compensatory intent. Thus, the majority fails to articulate a distinction between payments intended as compensation and those which are not. Although the distinction is a fine one, it is clearly a distinction which Congress intended to make in enactingj} 209(a).
The severance payments made here were in accordance with a policy followed by Boeing for over twenty years as a matter of good corporate citizenship. As the Secretary of the Navy articulated at trial, the purpose of the payments was to release the employees from their “golden handcuffs,” or unvested benefits, as well as sever all financial ties between the employees and the company. Although there is evidence that these severance payments were calculated with the employees’ prospective salaries in mind, the district court found that “[tjhose responsible for the ultimate decision were not aware of the specific calculation method,” but approved the payments based upon what was determined to be “reasonable and fair to the departing employee^].”
The majority minimizes the fact that the government, not Boeing, initiated the efforts to recruit these employees for government service. It is also undisputed that, after accepting government employment, these employees neither were in a position to provide, nor did they in fact provide, preferential treatment to Boeing. In sum, in enacting § 209(a), Congress recognized that a balance must be struck in order to encourage private industry’s best minds to enter the public sector. By its holding today, this Court has tipped that balance and advanced a much more restrictive policy than Congress ever intended. For the foregoing reasons, I respectfully dissent.

. The district court heard testimony from John F. Lehman, Secretary of the Navy, Melvyn Paisley, T.K. Jones and Harold Kitson, Jr.; and had before it the depositions of Charles P. Hogberg, H.K. Hebeler, T.A. Wilson, S.M. Little, Jr., Mark K. Miller, T.K. Jones, Melvyn Paisley, Harold Kitson, Jr., Lawrence H. Crandon; as well as the deposition of the United States.