Court Opinion

ID: 9476529
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:58:18.528866+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:22.294051
License: Public Domain

BORK, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
The majority holds that the Foreign Service Joint Travel Regulations required the government to pay for appellant Paddack’s and his family’s riverboat cruise up the Mississippi. I believe that Paddack’s cruise was at his own expense.
I begin by setting out a few details about the Paddack family’s sojourn on the Mississippi Queen. At the time of the Paddacks’ travel, the Mississippi Queen was advertised as providing its passengers a luxurious floating resort hotel. See Appellant’s Appendix at 257-58. With elaborate on-board accommodations and entertainment, the Queen plied its route at a maximum speed of about llk miles per hour, made frequent stops for day trips to historic sites and other on-shore attractions, and often did not travel at all overnight. On the Paddacks’ trip from New Orleans to St. Louis, which is about 600 miles by air, the Queen meandered almost 1,100 miles upriver for twelve days. The trip cost over $12,000. It need hardly be said that this amount was grossly disproportionate to the cost of travel from New Orleans to St. Louis by other means. Though Paddack possessed an “advertising brochure” describing the Mississippi Queen’s excursions and accommodations, and their cost, id. at 158-59, and though his questions to government travel personnel suggest his awareness of the high cost of the cruise, see id. at 156, Paddack apparently made no effort to determine the expected cost of his family’s trip on the Queen. Paddack stated that he and his wife decided to take the cruise in order to renew, and expose their children to, the experience of “seeing riverboats as a normal mode of transportation on the river.” Id. at 159-60.
My reasons for believing Paddack’s cruise impermissible under the Travel Regulations are straightforward.1 The Regulations require government employees to make a “conscientious effort to minimize costs of official travel,” to accept liability for expenses “of a personal nature” or “for personal convenience,” to select travel routes “consistent with economy and reasonable comfort and safety,” and to “exercise good judgment ... as if they were personally liable for [their travel costs].” 6 Foreign Affairs Manual §§ 114, 115 (emphasis added). Accordingly, the traveler is liable for any charges “incurred through failure to comply with the governing regulations.” Id. § 115 (emphasis added). Nothing in the provisions of the Regulations that set out permissible modes of travel for various official purposes, id. § 131.1, provides a safe harbor from the Regulations’ imposition of personal liability for excessive travel costs needlessly incurred. The general requirement that each traveler conscientiously exercise good judgment in his travel costs therefore necessarily suffuses the Regulations’ detailed specifications and is not pre-empted by them. See International Union, UAW v. General Dynamics Land Sys. Div., 815 F.2d 1570, 1575-76 (D.C.Cir.1987); L.R. Willson & Sons, Inc. v. OSHRC, 698 F.2d 507, 511-12 (D.C.Cir.1983); Aeron Marine Shipping Co. v. United States, 695 F.2d 567, 576 (D.C.Cir.1982). If it did not, the requirement would be virtually meaningless — a conclusion to be avoided in construing any regulation or statute. See National Ass’n of Recycling Indus. v. ICC, 660 F.2d 795, 799 (D.C.Cir.1981).
Simply put, Paddack’s riverboat trip fails to satisfy any measure of a traveler’s good judgment in arranging his travel back home. Whatever the outer bounds of a traveler’s duties to make a “conscientious effort to minimize costs” and to incur travel costs “as if [he] were personally liable for” the costs, the Paddack family’s cruise up the Mississippi on a riverboat was completely outside those bounds. A slow and leisurely voyage upriver on the Mississippi Queen at tremendous cost, with frequent *516stops and excursions as well as many elaborate and luxurious diversions on board, could not reasonably be chosen by a conscientious government employee for travel at government expense.2 Moreover, as the district court found, Paddack’s indifference to the cost to the government of his family’s luxury cruise is the antithesis of any conscientious exercise by a traveler of good judgment. Paddack’s reason for taking his family on the cruise — to experience “riverboats as a normal mode of transportation on the river” — shows, if it were not already obvious, that this cruise was undertaken solely for the personal pleasure of the Pad-dack family.
The Grievance Board, and the majority of this panel, in effect have treated the specific rules regarding modes of travel as the only “governing regulations” with which a traveler must comply under section 115. See Appellant’s Appendix at 40-41; maj. op. at 510. But the regulations establishing the general requirement of prudence in travel cost are also “governing regulations,” with which Paddack was obliged to, but did not, comply. Since the plain terms of those regulations apply to the Paddacks’ travel, there is no need to reach the issue of deference to the Grievance Board. See International Union, UAW, 815 F.2d at 1575 (finding a governing “general duty ... distinct and separate from” specific duty in statutory scheme and deeming its “plain language” dispositive under step one of Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837, 104 S.Ct. 2778, 81 L.Ed.2d 694 (1984)).
Riverboats may be a “normal mode of transportation on the river,” but riverboats that are luxury hotels and provide tours of historic sites at stopping places are not. Motor vehicles may be a normal mode of transportation, but surely no Foreign Service officer could think that meant he was free to move himself and his family from New Orleans to St. Louis by renting a limousine with chauffeur and tour guide for $12,000. Nor could the officer consider their limousine journey permissible simply because the Travel Regulations state generally that surface travel is “authorized.” Even if the limousine were for some reason the only surface transportation available, an officer using good judgment still could not select it if travel by air at routine prices was possible.
I therefore conclude that Paddack’s decision to travel on the Mississippi Queen, and the Grievance Board’s upholding of that decision, were not in accord with the traveler’s exercise of good judgment required by the Travel Regulations.

. The statements made to Paddack by government employees whom he consulted about his itinerary are irrelevant. The Travel Regulations state that the traveler is responsible for compli-anee with the Regulations "regardless of who may have assisted [him] in making travel arrangements." 6 Foreign Affairs Manual § 115.

. As for the unchallenged prior travel of other government employees on oceanliners like the Queen Elizabeth II, I believe it sufficient to say that Paddack's awareness of such travel, whether permitted by the Travel Regulations or not, doubtless affected his judgment but cannot transform Paddack’s cruise into an exercise of good judgment.