Court Opinion

ID: 9458780
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:01:19.526847+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:53.426321
License: Public Domain

WISDOM, Circuit Judge
(dissenting) :
I respectfully dissent.
I would hold that the Fair Labor Standards Act created a federal right in minors to be free from working in hazardous employment tasks. The existence of this statutorily created right implies a remedy in damages for the individual who is injured by his employer’s violation of the right.
The majority find “a serious flaw” in the plaintiff’s theory of recovery in that “the FLSA does establish a remedy for contravention of its child labor provision”. (Original emphasis). This case differs, therefore, the Court contends, from cases involving federal regulatory statutes which provide no remedy. The remedy here, according to the majority, is “a comprehensive enforcement scheme, 29 U.S.C.A. §§ 215-217, including substantial criminal penalties for violations of child labor law”.
I have conceptual difficulties in thinking of criminal sanctions as remedial. Assuming, however, that they are remedial in terms of inhibiting future violations of the child labor provisions of the law, the enforcement scheme is society’s remedy; it is not the victim’s. A fine and prison sentence imposed on the offender put no money in the bank to compensate the minor for his injury or his family for his death. The individual minor’s right to work under safe conditions has been violated by the employer’s breach of a statutory duty owed to the minor as well as to society. If the majority’s view were sound, in the absence *1395of specific statutory language authorizing a suit for damages there could never be a private right of action for conduct newly defined by federal law as a public wrong.
We know, however, that in numerous situations courts have inferred civil liability from violation of a statute or regulation that is silent as to civil liability. See Gomez v. Florida State Employment Service, 5 Cir. 1969, 417 F.2d 569, 576; Note, Implying Civil Remedies from Federal Regulatory Statutes, 77 Harv.L. Rev. 285 (1963). The most conspicuous examples are private actions for violation of the federal securities law. Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5 only prohibit certain conduct; they do not provide compensation for the parties injured by the violations or recognize a standing to sue for recovery of damages. Yet the courts are clogged with private actions based on § 10(b); the courts’ problem now is how to devise reasonable limits on the implied right to hold offenders civilly liable. See Birnbaum v. Newport Steel Corp., 2 Cir. 1952, 193 F.2d 461. See also Herpich v. Wallace, 5 Cir. 1970, 430 F.2d 792, 794.
As Chief Judge Brown pointed out in Gomez v. Florida State Employment Service, 5 Cir. 1969, 417 F.2d 569, 576, the “implication of a private civil remedy was first recognized by the Supreme Court in 1916 in Texas & Pacific Ry. Co. v. Rigsby, 241 U.S. 33, 36 S.Ct. 482, 60 L.Ed. 874, where the Court held that an employee could recover damages under the Federal Safety Appliance Act.” 1 In Rigsby the Supreme Court declared: “[Disregard of the command of the statute is a wrongful act, and where it results in damage to one of the class for whose especial benefit the statute was enacted, the right to recover the damages from the party in default is implied . ” This doctrine has been applied to many regulatory statutes “and is invoked with increasing frequency, in the federal courts”. Note, Implying Civil Remedies from Federal Regulatory Statutes, 77 Harv.L.Rev. 285 (1963).
A considerable portion of the majority opinion is devoted to attempting to distinguish three leading cases which support the plaintiff’s theory of recovery. These cases are J. I. Case Company v. Borak, 1964, 377 U.S. 426, 84 S.Ct. 1555, 12 L.Ed.2d 423; Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 1971, 403 U.S. 388, 91 S.Ct. 1999, 29 L.Ed.2d 619; and Gomez v. Florida State Employment Service, 5 Cir. 1969, 417 F.2d 569. The majority’s effort to distinguish these cases falls short of its goal.
(1) J. I. Case. First, the Court declares that “FLSA simply cannot be construed to create a private cause of action”. This statement suggests that the Securities Exchange Act can be construed to create a private cause of action. But although private remedies are expressly provided for in certain sections of the Act (e. g. §§ 9(e), 16(b), and 18(a)), there is no language that can be said to provide a private remedy under §§ 10(b) and 14. Second, the Court argues that the Securities Exchange Act is based on a strong congressional policy against stock frauds. This, however, is matched by the equally strong congressional policy against the improper use of child labor. On any scale of social values the interests of working minors rank at least as high as the interests of stockholders defrauded by misleading proxies. Cf. Bivens, 403 U.S. at 410, 91 S.Ct. 1999, 29 L.Ed.2d 619. Third, as for the “remedy”, Congress provided as comprehensive a *1396scheme of sanctions for violations of the Securities Exchange Act, including substantial criminal penalties, as it did under FLSA. 15 U.S.C. § 78ff.
(2) Bivens. The majority attempts to distinguish Bivens by reasserting the theory that, unlike the FLSA, which has a remedy (a comprehensive scheme of enforcement), the Fourth Amendment has no specific remedy for its violation. The Court overlooks the fact, however, that there are criminal penalties for violation of the Fourth Amendment, 18 U. S.C. § 2236 (1970), and that the exclusionary rule, barring the use of evidence unconstitutionally seized, is an effective remedy to a defendant in any criminal prosecution.2
(3) Gomez. Gomez is troublesome to the majority. In that case, this Court concluded that cutting off federal grants to the states for programs under the Wagner-Peyser National Employment System Act was an inadequate remedy for those who suffered from the loss— the workers. That is similar to the situation we have here. Criminal sanctions against an employer for violation committed in the past or injunctions against violations in the future offer no remedy to the minor who has suffered the injury from the employer’s misconduct.
Initially the Court took the broad view that there is no implied civil remedy under the FLSA because the Act provides a comprehensive enforcement scheme including criminal sanctions, In attempting to distinguish J. I. Case, Bivens and Gomez the Court apparently retreated to the more tenable position that in these cases the enforcement measures were inadequate. Undoubtedly they were. I ask, inadequate to whom? It seems to me that, absent the civil liability of the offender, the SEC Act, the Fourth Amendment, the Wagner-Peyser National Employment System Act, and the FLSA are all inadequate for the individual whose rights under any of those laws are violated by the offender’s breach of duty.
In Herpich v. Wallace this Court said, citing J. I. Case v. Borak: “The SEC deems itself unequipped to make persons whole who have been injured by violations of Rule 10b-5; it seeks only to deter violators of the rule by making violations unprofitable .... Moreover, the Commission has neither the manpower nor the time that completely effective enforcement of the securities laws by it alone would require. Consequently, private actions brought for violations of the rule serve as a ‘necessary supplement to Commission action.’ J. I. Case Co. v. Borak, 377 U.S. 426, 432, 84 S.Ct. 1555, 1560, 12 L.Ed.2d 423 (1964).” Similarly, in Gomez this Court recognized that to achieve “the purpose of the regulations — the protection of migratory farm workers” — it was necessary or appropriate to allow a “private civil remedy ... to individuals, acting as a private Attorney General”. 417 F.2d at 576.
This is an acceptable rationale for implication of a civil remedy from a federal regulatory statute. But the same arguments for allowing private actions under the SEC Act or the Warner-Peyser Act would allow private actions under the FLSA in the interest of working minors. The Secretary of Labor has no way of making whole a minor who is injured as a result of being assigned to a hazardous task beyond his competency to perform. Nor does the Labor Department have the manpower or the time that complete enforcement of the law by it alone would require. Consequently civil *1397suits for violations of the FLSA serve as a necessary or appropriate supplement in the nature of an action by a private attorney general to effectuate congressional policy in favor of protecting child labor from an employer’s abuses.
I would take a simple approach to this case, one that need not rely on the fiction that the plaintiff is a private attorney general. The effect of the Act is to impose on employers the duty of assigning minors only to non-hazardous tasks. Correlatively, working minors have a right to be free from assignment to hazardous tasks. An employer’s violation of his statutory duty imposes civil liability in this as in any other ease where the violation of a duty causes injury to an individual to whom the duty is owed. For every right there is a remedy. If the right is created by a federal statute, the federal courts have the power to fashion an appropriate remedy. As Mr. Justice Black said in Bell v. Hood, 327 U.S. at 684, 66 S.Ct. at 777, a statement Mr. Justice Brennan quoted for the majority in Bivens: “where federally protected rights have been invaded, it has been the rule from the beginning that courts will be alert to adjust their remedies so as to grant the necessary relief”.

. The FSAA is no longer held to provide a basis for an implied cause of action. See Jacobson v. New York, N. H. & H. R. R., Co., 1 Cir. 1953, 206 F.2d 153, aff’d per curiam 347 U.S. 909, 74 S.Ct. 474, 98 L.Ed. 1067 (1954); Moore v. Chesapeake & O. Ry. Co., 1934, 291 U.S. 205, 54 S.Ct. 402, 78 L.Ed. 755. But the safety requirements of the FSLA set the standard of care owed to interstate railway employees under the FELA.

. For a discussion of Bivens in the context of the power to infer remedies directly from the constitution without benefit of express congressional authority to bring a civil action see Dellinger, Of Rights and Remedies: The Constitution as a Sword, 85 Harv.L.Rev. 1533 (1972).