Court Opinion

ID: 9444300
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 20:55:44.176772+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:48.255934
License: Public Domain

JOHNSEN, Circuit Judge
(concurring separately).
I am in accord with the conclusions of the majority, except that I have some reservation on the possible implications of the holding as to the matter of interest.
Granting that Bass is not in a position to complain in any way of the propriety or fairness of the interest prescription of RFC’s invalidation order, because of his failure to have made timely attack thereon in the Emergency Court of Appeals, and that interest therefore is entitled to be assessed against him here in accordance with the provisions of that order, I should not want this holding to be read to imply that a District Court would be without power in any such case to grant an allowance of interest beyond the amount fixed by RFC’s invalidation order, where this seemed to the Court to be called for, as a matter of public justice, in some particular situation.
Thus, in the present situation, if RFC’s invalidation order had contained a repayment prescription of “No interest”, and Bass, for over 5 years, as here, had failed to make an administrative return to RFC of the subsidy payments on that basis, I think that the District Court, in a suit brought by the Government to compel a repayment of the public funds involved, could properly, under its general powers, assess such interest against him in damages, as justice to the public would seem under these circumstances to command. So, too, if the rate of interest fixed by RFC had been one percent, or *17any other rate that was equitably inadequate as damages in a situation of delay and refusal to make an administrative return, I think that the Court would not be precluded from exercising its general powers to assess interest at a rate or in an amount beyond that fixed by RFC’s invalidation order.
I make this reservation on any possible implication of the majority opinion against the existence of that right on the basis of such situations of recovery being treated as constituting wholly an Emergency Price Control Act matter.