Court Opinion

ID: 9474804
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:09:15.674328+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:44:20.678766
License: Public Domain

EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
An agency that lacks the power to require something unconditionally may be able to elicit action by imposing conditions on the exercise of an admitted power. Trans Alaska Pipeline Rate Cases, 436 U.S. 631, 654-56, 98 S.Ct. 2053, 2066, 56 L.Ed.2d 591 (1978); United States v. Chesapeake & Ohio R.R., 426 U.S. 500, 96 S.Ct. 2318, 49 L.Ed.2d 14 (1976); cf. ICC v. American Trucking Associations, Inc., 467 U.S. 354, 364-71, 104 S.Ct. 2458, 2465, 81 L.Ed.2d 282 (1984). The court holds that the Comptroller may not directly require a director of a bank to make good any losses resulting from loans that exceed the bank’s lending limit. The Comptroller has other powers, including the power to disapprove a person’s membership on a bank’s board of directors and the power to shut the bank. If a member of a board should approve an excessive loan, and if the bank’s inability to collect should imperil the safety of the bank, the Comptroller *1257might seek to condition the exercise or withholding of some other power on the directors’ willingness to make the bank whole. The Comptroller did not do this here. The order runs against Orville Bott-rell, who is no longer a director of the Bank and therefore is not subject to conditions imposed on his continuing participation. More, at oral argument counsel for the Comptroller disclaimed any contention that repayment is necessary to maintain the Bank’s soundness, or that the order to pay is a condition on the grant of some other permission or the withholding of another of the Comptroller’s powers. Because we need not decide whether the Comptroller possesses any “conditioning power,” I join the court’s opinion.