Court Opinion

ID: 9476299
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:52:28.855477+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:14.246186
License: Public Domain

*1208NIES, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I concur because I see the issue somewhat differently. Appellant sought a stay of board proceedings on the ground that at the time its response was due to the board’s Order on Accounting, it was impossible to respond because the persons who could provide the explanation for its claim were potential defendants in a criminal case and allegedly refused, on advice of counsel, to cooperate. The board accepted that explanation stating, “The immediate effect of their refusal to cooperate is the inability of appellant to satisfactorily comply with the Board’s Order on Accounting.” 86-1 BCA (CCH) If 18,716 at 94,130 (1986). Under such circumstances, appellant is guilty of no willful disobedience or even gross negligence in failing to respond to the board’s order. A dismissal of its claim with prejudice would have been an abuse of discretion in my view. Notably, however, the board did not dismiss the claim as a matter of discretion. The board held, as a matter of law, “that in a civil suit a party placing facts in issue may not rely upon the fifth amendment to avoid disclosure of such facts and still maintain his suit.” Id. at 94,132. From that legal premise, the board concluded that appellant was not entitled to a stay.
The board’s premise, i.e., that a party may not maintain its claim and at the same time assert the fifth amendment, even if correct, does not apply here. Appellant sought a stay of the order because of an impossibility in complying, not because of its assertion of a fifth amendment privilege. Indeed, as far as the record here is concerned, no one has asserted fifth amendment rights in this proceeding. Such rights have merely been alluded to by appellant's counsel as the explanation for the appellant’s failure to respond. The board, nevertheless, treated counsel’s statements as sufficient to establish that it was impossible for appellant to comply with its order. At this moment in these proceedings, that is its ruling.
Thus, I agree that the board’s order must be vacated and the matter remanded. Having found impossibility of compliance with its order, the board should not have dismissed but, rather, should have granted a stay for a reasonable period. See United States v. Kordel, 397 U.S. 1, 8-9, 90 S.Ct. 763, 767-68, 25 L.Ed.2d 1 (1970) (dicta). The government would be, of course, free at any time to seek to have the stay lifted if the impossibility is removed in the interim. At the end of the stay appellant would be required to proceed or to put forth satisfactory grounds for a continuance, at which time the matter would be re-evaluated in light of subsequent developments and the prejudice to the government caused by further delay.