Court Opinion

ID: 9463341
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 23:03:34.169406+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:38:02.382085
License: Public Domain

GARTH, Circuit Judge
(concurring):
While I agree with the majority holding that Buffalo Forge Co. v. United Steelworkers, - U.S. -, 96 S.Ct. 3141, 49 L.Ed.2d 1022 (1976), controls the disposition of the injunction entered by the district court and that we must therefore reverse that court’s order, I am severely troubled by the doctrine enunciated by the majority that every coercive civil contempt order must fall if the underlying order upon which it is predicated is subsequently determined to be invalid.
*1349Under normal circumstances my views would accordingly be expressed in an opinion which would concur in part with, and dissent in part from, the majority opinion. However, just prior to the filing of this opinion by the panel majority, another panel of this Court filed United States v. Spectro Foods, 544 F.2d 1175 (3d Cir. 1976). I was not a member of that panel and hence could not express my opinion as to the survival of a coercive civil contempt order after the underlying injunctive decree had been reversed.
I concede regretfully that upon the filing of Spectro Foods the result in this case was foreordained and that I am bound by Spectro Foods as the law of this Circuit. However, I feel it necessary to explain why I believe the result reached in Spectro Foods and therefore reached here as concerns coercive civil contempt is a bad one.
I know of no direct authority which supports the holding of Spectro Foods with respect to coercive civil contempt. To the extent that that holding was based upon United States v. United Mine Workers, 330 U.S. 258, 294-95, 67 S.Ct. 677, 91 L.Ed. 884 (1947), and the cases upon which UMW relied, I believe that those precedents have been misread and do not support that proposition. The reasoning in UMW upon which Spectro Foods relied did not draw a simple distinction between “criminal” contempt, which survives invalidation of the underlying order, and “civil” contempt, which does not survive. Rather, UMW distinguished between, on the one hand, contempt orders which are designed to safeguard the public interest and which survive an invalid underlying order and, on the other hand, contempt orders which are entered to assist or recompense a private litigant and which do not so survive.1
The relevant passage in UMW stated:
It does not follow, of course, that simply because a defendant may be punished for criminal contempt for disobedience of an order later set aside on appeal, that the plaintiff in the action may profit by way of a fine imposed in a simultaneous proceeding for civil contempt based upon a violation of the same order. The right to remedial relief falls with an injunction which events prove was erroneously issued, Worden v. Searls, [121 U.S. 14, 7 S.Ct. 814, 30 L.Ed. 853 (1886)]; Salvage Process Corp. v. Acme Tank Cleaning Process Corp., 86 F.2d 727 (1936); S. Anargyros v. Anargyros & Go., 9 Cir., 191 F. 208 (1911) . . . . (Emphasis added.)
Id. at 294-95, 67 S.Ct. at 696. Spectro Foods and therefore Latrobe, read the key words “remedial relief” to include all varieties of civil contempt orders. But the text of UMW suggests that what the Court truly meant by “remedial relief” was relief afforded by orders under which “the plaintiff in the action may profit by way of a fine.” The three cases cited by the Court make this plain.
In the first case cited by UMW on this point, Worden v. Searls, 121 U.S. 14, 7 S.Ct. 814, 30 L.Ed. 853 (1886), a contempt order was held not to survive invalidation of the underlying order because “though the proceedings were nominally those of contempt, they were really proceedings to award damages to the plaintiff, and to reimburse to him his expenses . . . .” Id. at 26, 7 S.Ct. at 820.
In the second case cited by UMW, S. Anargyros v. Anargyros & Co., 191 F. 208 (C.C.N.D.Cal.1911), the court stated:
If . the proceeding is to be regarded as one instituted for the relief and benefit of the complainant, and so purely civil and remedial in character, the rever*1350sal of the order granting the injunction which the contemnors are charged with having violated leaves no basis upon which to rest a judgment for a compensatory fine. (Emphasis added.)
Id. at 209. The contempt in that case was vacated because the fine was compensatory.
Finally, the third case cited by UMW, Salvage Process Corp. v. Acme Tank Cleaning Process Corp., 86 F.2d 727 (2d Cir. 1936), also involved a compensatory fine payable to the plaintiff. This fine fell with the underlying order because “[t]o let the liability stand for past contumacy would be to give the plaintiff a remedy not for a right but for a wrong, which the law should not do.” (Emphasis added.) Id.
The Court’s opinion in Universal Athletic Sales Co. v. Salkeld, 511 F.2d 904 (3d Cir. 1975), which Spectro Foods cited along with UMW, also involved a compensatory fine.
In summary, UMW, the cases cited in UMW and Universal Athletic Sales all concerned compensatory civil contempt. Coercive civil contempt orders — which impose prospective, conditional fines payable to the government and which are designed to safeguard the public interest — apparently were not even contemplated in UMW and the earlier cases on which UMW relied.
The District of Columbia Circuit considered the effect of UMW on coercive civil contempt orders in Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Engineers v. Bangor & Aroostook Railway, 127 U.S.App.D.C. 23, 380 F.2d 570, 583 (1967), and I find that court’s reasoning, which follows, much more persuasive than the analysis in Spectro Foods and in the majority opinion in this case:
It would appear to be fallacious to hold that the efficacy of coercive civil fines is to be governed by the compensatory fine rationale of Mine Workers, which allows alleged contemnors to challenge the propriety of the underlying order in defense of their otherwise contemptuous disobedience of that order. Certainly, a prospective, coercive fine, short of an absolutely imposed punitive sanction but beyond the remedial function of a compensatory fine, will serve to preserve the court’s “power to order maintenance of a status quo," only to the degree that litigants are prevented from pre-judging the validity of that court’s orders. Rather, as is true of punitive fines under Mine Workers, it would seem that prospective, coercive fines should be enforceable despite a subsequent determination by the District Court, or on appeal, that the disregarded order was in fact beyond the ordering court’s jurisdiction. (Footnote omitted.)
See also Inland Steel Co. v. Local Union No. 1545, UMW, 505 F.2d 203, 296-97 (7th Cir. 1974).
In my view, Spectro Foods not only misreads the relevant precedents, but it also seriously undermines the authority of the district courts to coerce compliance with their orders. It dilutes the sanction of coercive civil contempt by permitting a contemnor to gamble that the underlying order will subsequently be invalidated. In many instances in which the public interest is paramount and immediate cessation of proscribed activity is essential, the holding of Spectro Foods and now Latrobe may result in a completely inadequate remedy.
I see no reason why, if a criminal contempt can survive an invalid underlying order, the same effect should not be given to a coercive civil contempt order. I would opt for the following principle: In those cases in which a district court judge has made an express finding that the action compelled was required in the public interest, a coercive civil contempt fine should survive the subsequent invalidation of the underlying order. Indeed, as I read the majority opinion, it leaves open the possibility that this principle may some day become the law in this Circuit. Thus, the majority’s holding does not reach cases in which the district court predicated the civil contempt on the presence of “an overarching public interest.” Majority Opinion at 1348 n. 55. In my view, the appropriate disposition of this case would require a remand to *1351the district court with instructions to determine the presence of an “overarching public interest.” Such an inquiry might require the record to be supplemented by additional testimony and evidence, inasmuch as the district court having understandably regarded the primary issue as being governed by NAPA Pittsburgh, Inc. v. Automotive Chauffeurs, Local Union No. 926, 502 F.2d 321 (3d Cir. 1974) (en banc), cert. denied, 419 U.S. 1049, 95 S.Ct. 625, 42 L.Ed.2d 644 (1974), had no reason to consider the concepts discussed here.
No reason has been given in either Speetro Foods or Latrobe as to why we should deprive the district courts of the complete and effective utilization of a perfectly valid and necessary sanction.2 Criminal con-tempts, which are limited in the case of a natural person to a fine of $1,000 and imprisonment for six months (18 U.S.C. § 402), can not compel compliance and, in certain circumstances where the public interest is predominant, just cannot supply the required remedy. While I am obliged to bow to this Court’s expression of the law as found in Spectro Foods and now Latrobe, I do so with the fear that the cutback in civil contempt effectiveness as now reflected in the holdings in these cases will cause untold difficulties in situations in which vital public interests require immediate protection.

. Note 53 of the majority opinion may be misleading in that it would appear from that footnote that I was quoting from United Mineworkers in distinguishing between the public interest and private interests. The textual support for the distinction found in United Mineworkers is the paragraph reproduced in the above text. I agree that to the extent that the subject of United Mineworkers involved only criminal contempts it does not decide the issue on which the majority and I divide. It is precisely because there is no Supreme Court authority resolving this issue that I have found it necessary to comment on Spectro’s holding, which is followed by the majority here.

. See Matter of Grand Jury Impaneled Jan. 21, 1975, 529 F.2d 543, 550-51 (3d Cir. 1976).