Court Opinion

ID: 9478174
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:42:19.378122+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:17.133600
License: Public Domain

WILLIAMS, Circuit Judge,
dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc:
While I hesitate to increase the judicial burdens arising from fee litigation under the Equal Access to Justice Act, 28 U.S.C. § 2412 (1982 & Supp. III 1985), some things go too far. The underlying decision is troubling enough. It holds, in effect, that the Interstate Commerce Commission may not refuse to expand a trucking licensee’s operating authority on the grounds that its principal is a convicted murderer and drug dealer. See Wilkett v. ICC, 710 F.2d 861, 862 & n. 1 (D.C.Cir.1983) (conviction for conspiracy to distribute controlled substance); id. at 863 (conviction for murder). I should have thought the Commis*796sion could infer from such conduct (without being arbitrary or capricious) that the firm fell short of the statutorily required fitness —specifically, that it lacked the necessary “willingness and ability to comport in the future with the applicable rules and regulations of [the] Commission.” See id. at 864 (citations omitted); cf. United States v. Tarantino, 846 F.2d 1384, 1405-06 (D.C.Cir.1988) (readiness to kill others is probative of lack of credibility).
But the original merits are not directly before us in this case. What is too much— and is remediable by the court in the requested en banc — is a rule that the Commission was not “substantially justified,” i.e., did not have a “reasonable basis both in law and fact,” see Pierce v. Underwood, — U.S. -, -, 108 S.Ct. 2541, 2546-49, 101 L.Ed.2d 490 (1988), in claiming that its original position was lawful.
Of course the court cannot use the en banc procedure to correct every opinion that a majority regards as erroneous, especially for the application of an accepted standard to specific facts. Cf. Pierce v. Underwood, — U.S. at -, 108 S.Ct. at 2546-49 (reasons for highly deferential circuit court review of district court EAJA decisions). But the facts of this case are so simple that the en banc cure will cost little judicial time. If the court is unwilling to make that modest investment, litigants may fairly conclude that fees under EAJA are up to the panel’s whim.
Under my proposed disposition the court would not reach the interest issue; otherwise I would agree with Judge Starr’s reasons for accepting the suggestion for rehearing en banc on that point.