Court Opinion

ID: 9474233
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:51:32.423424+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:58.463747
License: Public Domain

*825OAKES, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
In light of Kosak v. United States, 465 U.S. 848, 104 S.Ct. 1519, 79 L.Ed.2d 860 (1984), I am required to concur, although Justice Stevens’s dissenting opinion on the statutory meaning of the phrase “arising in respect of ... the detention of goods” seems to me persuasive. Once damage (or its logical extreme, destruction) sustained during detention is subsumed in the “detention” exception, the only question remaining is whether a relationship to customs or excise functions is required. I think the plain language of the statute as well as its legislative history strongly support the view taken by Judge Tang, concurring in A-Mark, Inc. v. United States Secret Service, 593 F.2d 849, 850-51 (9th Cir.1978), that “[t]he ‘any other law-enforcement officer’ phrase should be viewed as Congress’ recognition of the fact that federal officers, other than customs and excise officers, sometimes become involved in the activity of detaining goods for tax or customs purposes.” Id. at 851. Thus, like Judge Tang, I believe those cases applying the exception to law enforcement officers acting out of the excise/customs context, e.g., United States v. Lockheed L-188 Aircraft, 656 F.2d 390, 397 (9th Cir.1979), to be wrongly decided. The House Judiciary Committee described the proposed exception as covering “the assessment or collection of taxes or assessments; [and] the detention of goods by customs officers____” H.R.Rep. No. 1287, 79th Cong., 1st Sess. 6 (1945), quoted in Kosak, 104 S.Ct. at 1525; see also S.Rep. No. 1400, 79th Cong., 2d Sess. 33 (1946); H.R.Rep. No. 2245, 77th Cong., 2d Sess. 10 (1942) (same); Tort Claims Against the United States: Hearings on S. 2690 Before a Subcomm. of the Senate Comm, on the Judiciary, 76th Cong., 3d Sess. 38 (1940) (testimony of Alexander Holtzoff, Special Assistant to the Attorney General):
The ... exception relates to claims arising in respect of the assessment or collection of any tax or customs duty, or the detention of any goods or merchandise by any officer of customs or excise or any other law enforcement officer. There are various tax laws providing the machinery for recovering back any tax that has been paid but was not properly owing. There was no purpose in interfering with that machinery.
Nevertheless, I am required to concur with Judge Newman’s view that DEA agents acting in a border or customs search seeking to uncover contraband are the “other” law enforcement officers Congress envisaged. However, where no nexus exists between customs activity and the act complained of, I would hold that § 2680(c) does not bar recovery. Otherwise, the detention exception, as expansively read in Kosak, precludes a broader spectrum of suits to redress injury to property inflicted by federal law enforcement officers, whenever and wherever they are acting, than I believe Congress ever intended.