Court Opinion

ID: 9473315
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:26:13.144557+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:27.099255
License: Public Domain

*1245FLAUM, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I concur fully in the court’s affirmance of the assessment of costs against the appellant, and in the threshold decision not to find appellant’s objections to the magistrate’s “order” to be waived. Although I therefore would also reach the merits of the costs issue in this case, I do not accept the majority’s premise that section 636(b)(2) of the Federal Magistrates Act, 28 U.S.C. §§ 631-39 (1982) (“Magistrates Act”), bars us from ever finding that a party has waived its objections to the report of a magistrate acting as a special master by failing to bring these objections before the district court. Rather, I conclude that the Magistrates Act does not restrict our authority to adopt an appellate waiver rule, and would decline to formulate such a rule in this case because the motion for costs was not properly handled as a referral to a special master under section 636(b)(2). Because I believe that the majority’s analysis of the waiver question unduly restricts our authority in an important area of judicial administration, I write separately on this question.
The majority’s conclusion that subsection (b)(2) of section 636 precludes an appellate finding of waiver, while subsection (b)(1) allows it, in my opinion proceeds from a misreading of section 636(b) in general. Because of the substantial complexity and ambiguity of that section, I begin with a discussion of its history and structure. Section 636(b) as it stands today is largely the product of 1976 amendments to the Magistrates Act that significantly expanded the scope of district judges’ authority to refer various matters to magistrates. In particular, section 636(b)(1) provides that “[njotwithstanding any law to the contrary,” judges may refer both nondispositive pretrial matters (such as discovery requests) and dispositive pretrial matters (such as summary judgment motions) to a magistrate, with separate subparagraphs setting forth the procedure for reference of nondispositive versus dispositive matters. Subparagraph (A) deals with nondispositive matters, empowering a judge to “designate a magistrate to hear and determine any pretrial matter pending before the court,” (emphasis added) excepting certain specifically enumerated dispositive motions covered by subparagraph (B). Subparagraph (A) further states that “[a] judge of the court may reconsider any pretrial matter ... where it has been shown that the magistrate’s order is clearly erroneous or contrary to law.”
Despite some ambiguity in the statute as printed in the United States Code,1 the legislative history clarifies that “subparagraph (A) does not specify a procedure to be followed by a party in obtaining reconsideration of a magistrate’s order by the judge,” and that “a fixed time [is not] specified with which to obtain review of a magistrate’s order in ‘any pretrial matter,’ since what is a timely request to a judge of the court will depend upon the nature of the pretrial matter.” H.R.Rep. No. 1609, 94th Cong., 2d Sess. 10, reprinted in 1976 U.S.Code Cong. & Ad.News 6162, 6170 (“House Report”). See also S.Rep. No. 625, 94th Cong., 2d Sess. 8-9 (1976) (“Senate Report”). This gap in subparagraph (A), however, has since been filled by Rule 72(a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which states that a district judge shall consider objections to a magistrate’s proposed disposition of a nondispositive pretrial matter “provided they are served and filed within 10 days after the entry of the order.” Fed.R.Civ.P. 72(a); advisory committee note on subdivision (a). In contrast, the reference of dispositive matters under the authority of subparagraph (B) is controlled by more specific procedures outlined in subparagraph (C) of the statute, which require the court to mail a copy of *1246the magistrate’s report to the parties, and in turn require parties to file their objections to the report with the district court within ten days. See 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1)(B) & (C); House Report at 11, reprinted in 1976 U.S.Code Cong. & Ad. News at 6171.2 See also Fed.R.Civ.P. 72(b) (setting forth additional procedures applicable to references under § 636(b)(1)(B)).
Unlike subsection (b)(1), which outlines in varying degrees of detail the types of pretrial motions to be referred and the procedures to be followed after referring them, subsection (b)(2) merely states generally that “[a] judge may designate a magistrate to serve as a special master pursuant to the applicable provisions of this title and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.” See ante at 1239 (text of subsection (b) (2)). Therefore, the operation of subsection (b)(2) is governed by and depends almost entirely upon Rule 53 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. See House Report at 12, reprinted in 1976 U.S.Code Cong. & Ad.News at 6172; Senate Report at 10; Fed.R.Civ.P. 53 advisory committee note on 1983 Amendment, subdivision (f). The broad discretion granted to judges to refer pretrial matters under section 636(b)(1) does not exist for reference of various matters to a special master under Rule 53, which states that “save in matters of account and of difficult computation of damages, a reference shall be made only upon a showing that some exceptional condition requires it.” Fed.R.Civ.P. 53(b).3 Rule 53 also requires a master to prepare and file a report on the matters referred to him, and — most importantly for present purposes — states that a party may serve on the other parties written objections to the report within ten days of its filing. Fed.R. Civ.P. 53(e)(1) & (2); advisory committee note on 1983 Amendment, subdivision (f) (comparing reporting requirements of Rule 53 with more liberal procedures under section 636(b)(1)).
Finally, the 1976 amendments added subsection (b)(3), which states simply that “[a] magistrate may be assigned such additional duties as are not inconsistent with the Constitution and laws of the United States.” This broadly-phrased provision perhaps most dramatically illustrates Congress’s intent to give the district judges substantial discretion to experiment with the use of magistrates for initial evaluation of a vast variety of matters. See House Report at 12, reprinted in 1976 U.S.Code Cong. & Ad.News at 6172; Senate Report at 10-11. Moreover, the subsection fills the gap left by subsection (b)(1), which applies exclusively to “pretrial matters.” Id. Since subsection (b)(3) provides no guidance whatsoever concerning the procedures governing such a reference, this task is apparently left to district courts under subsection (b)(4). See 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(4) (“Each district court shall establish rules pursuant to which the magistrates shall discharge their duties.”).
This discussion of section 636(b) and the pertinent federal rules that implement it reveals several errors in the majority’s analysis of the waiver question. First, contrary to the majority’s assumption that subsection (b)(2) differs from (b)(1) because the former has no ten-day provision for filing objections to a special master’s report, subsection (b)(2) actually incorporates such a provision by reference' to Rule 53(e)(2). The fact that the source of this provision is a federal rule of civil procedure rather than the statute itself should not alter the waiver analysis: either source provides parties with fair warning of their duty to present their objections to the district court, and the structure and history of the 1976 amendments to the Magistrates Act reflect a conscious congressional choice to leave the development of particular pro*1247cedures to the courts. Hence, even accepting the majority’s assumption that a ten-day provision is a necessary condition to an appellate finding of waiver, Rule 53 should satisfy that condition for references under subsection (b)(2).
Second, the discussion demonstrates that the majority errs in assuming that the ten-day rule embodied in subparagraph (C) statutorily applies to all pretrial matters referred under subsection (b)(1). The legislative history shows that Congress did not prescribe the procedure for objecting to a magistrate’s recommendations on nondispositive matters referred under subparagraph (A) of subsection (b)(1), and instead that— as with subsection (b)(2) — this void was filled by a federal rule of civil procedure (Rule 72(a)). Thus, to the extent that its analysis turns on the absence of an applicable ten-day rule in the statute itself as a basis for inferring that Congress did not intend to allow an appellate finding of waiver, the majority would also deny our authority to find that a party waived its objections to a magistrate’s disposition of routine, nondispositive pretrial matters under section 636(b)(1)(A).
Finally, I fundamentally disagree with the majority’s premise that Congress’s inclusion of a specific provision for objecting to a magistrate’s findings or recommendations under section 636 — and not the “broad efficiency goals of the Magistrates Act” — is the sole source of our power as an appellate court to recognize as waived any such objections that were never presented to the district court. Although the ten-day provision implies that any objections must be filed with the district court within that period or else be waived before that court, neither the provision itself nor the pertinent legislative history specifically suggests whether failure to follow it constitutes a waiver of objections on appeal. See, e.g., United States v. Schronce, 727 F.2d 91, 93 (4th Cir.) (“Neither the legislative history of the Act nor § 636(b)(1) itself ... specifically addresses the potential consequences a party will suffer if he fails to file the written objections authorized by the last paragraph of that subsection.”), cert. denied, — U.S.-, 104 S.Ct. 2395, 81 L.Ed.2d 352 (1984); Nettles v. Wainwright, 677 F.2d 404, 407 (5th Cir.1982) (en banc) (“Absent from the statute is any statement as to the effect on appeal of a party’s failure to object to the magistrate’s findings where those findings are subsequently adopted by the district court.”). Cf. United States v. Walters, 638 F.2d 947, 949 (6th Cir.1981) (adopting waiver rule based on policy of Magistrates Act, but stating that “[t]he permissive language of 28 U.S.C. § 636 suggests that a party’s failure to file objections is not a waiver of appellate review”). I therefore believe that we have the power — and even the obligation — as an appellate court to decide in an appropriate case whether to adopt a waiver rule by reference to the general purposes of the Magistrates Act and to the interests of fairness and efficiency in judicial administration.
Because I do not deem this case as an appropriate one for formulating such a rule, however, I join in the decision not to find the appellant’s objections waived. In fact, as the foregoing discussion of section 636(b)(2) and Rule 53 reveals, the proper procedures were not followed below in referring appellee’s motion for assessment of costs to a magistrate serving as a special master. Cf. Liras v. Teledyne Movible Offshore, Inc., 607 F.2d 118, 119 (5th Cir. 1979) (appellant’s failure to object to magistrate’s report under Rule 53(e)(2) does not bar him from raising district court’s independent duty to determine that master’s findings not clearly erroneous). At the outset, this motion involved no difficult computations, and hardly satisfied the “exceptional condition” requirement for reference to a special master under Rule 53(b). See 5A J. Moore & J. Lucas, Moore’s Federal Practice 1153.05[2] (2d ed. 1984) (issues of costs generally inappropriate for referral to a special master); Prudence-Bonds Cory. v. Prudence Realization Cory., 174 F.2d 288, 289 (2d Cir.1949) (same). Even if the reference to the magistrate in this case was made with the consent of both parties (on which the record is silent) and the “exceptional condition” requirement was thus *1248inapplicable, the procedures for submission and review of a special master’s report were not satisfied in this case by the magistrate’s summary “order” assessing costs, and the district court’s summary adoption of that order. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 53(e); 9 C. Wright & A. Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure §§ 2611-12 (1971 & Supp.1984) (discussing procedures).
These criticisms are not meant to suggest that it is improper to refer motions for costs or similar motions to a magistrate under section 636, but rather that the special master provision is generally not the best method for doing so. In the future, the better practice would be to refer these kinds of relatively routine matters, similar to those embraced in section 636(b)(1)(A) but for the fact that they are not pretrial matters, under the authority of subsection (b)(3). Indeed, Congress enacted subsection (b)(3) for the express purpose of encouraging district courts to experiment with referring such matters to magistrates. See House Report at 12, reprinted in 1976 U.S.Code Cong. & Ad.News at 6172 (subsection would permit “magistrate to review default judgments, order the exoneration or forfeiture of bonds in criminal cases, and accept returns of jury verdicts where the trial judge is unavailable,” and would “enable the court to refer some of the more administrative functions to a magistrate”).
Unfortunately, the standard form that the district court used to refer the motion for costs to a magistrate in the present case appears to make no provision for reference under section 636(b)(3).4 It is perhaps for this reason that the district judge checked the box on the form providing for reference to a magistrate to “[sjerve as a Special Master subject to the provisions of 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(2) and Rule 53, F.R.C. P.” While it is not the province of this court to rewrite the forms used by the district court or otherwise to reformulate the procedures for reference of various matters to a magistrate, I would call to the district court’s attention the seeming lack of any provision implementing section 636(b)(3), and note the potential for future development in this area. Subsection (b)(3) provides the opportunity for district judges, with appropriate guidance to the parties concerning the specific procedures they should follow, to begin the kind of innovation in the use of magistrates that Congress intended.
In any event, once a district court elects to invoke the special master procedure of section 636(b)(2), it must insure that the detailed requirements of Rule 53 are satisfied. In a cáse where the record does not show that these requirements were satisfied, I would not penalize the appellant by finding his objections to the magistrate’s disposition of the motion to be waived.

. For some reason, the textual portion of sub-paragraph (C) that includes the ten-day provision for objecting to a magistrate’s proposed findings and recommendations — unlike the rest of subparagraph (C) and subparagraphs (A) and (B) of subsection (b)(1) — is not indented but is printed flush with the margin. This lack of indentation gives the impression at first glance that this portion of subparagraph (C) applies to all of subsection (b)(1) rather than subparagraph (B) only. See ante at 1241 (quoting text of subsection (b)(1)).

. The House Report notes that this provision for objection "is substantially the procedure and the time limit specified in Rule 53 where there has been a reference to a master.” House Report at 11, reprinted in 1976 U.S.Code Cong. & Ad.News at 6171. Accord Senate Report at 10.

. Although the other provisions of Rule 53 apply to all designations under section 636(b)(2), the "exceptional condition" requirement need not be met if the judge designates a magistrate as a special master with the consent of the parties. 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(2) (1982); Fed.R.Civ.P. 53(b).

. The form, which indicates that it was revised in July 1982, apparently implements the pertinent Rules of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, in particular Rules 1.70 ("Duties and Powers of Magistrates") and 2.41 (“Referrals and Reassignments to Magistrates”). Neither the Rules nor the form specifies any category that would literally encompass the reference of a post-trial motion like that involved in the present case, nor do they otherwise provide for references under section 636(b)(3). Strangely, however, Rule 1.70 C.l. (1983), which deals with the reference of "dispositive pretrial matters,” provides that a magistrate may review motions to set aside default judgments, and motions to set aside involuntary judgments of dismissal.