Court Opinion

ID: 9474448
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:57:25.749257+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:44:05.343794
License: Public Domain

GINSBURG, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
The allocation of judicial business in our complex federal court system can be problematic. For example, Congress sometimes allocates subject matter competence (jurisdiction) with less than ideal clarity; occasionally, legislation is opaque in instructing which federal tribunal is the proper — or a proper — forum for the first court airing of, or an appeal in, a particular kind of federal case. Compare Hohri v. United States, 782 F.2d 227, 239-41 (D.C.Cir.1985), with id. at 944-946 (dissenting opinion) (divided views on “plain meaning” of 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(2) (1982)). When administrative action is in question, as in the instant case, the governing statute may fail to say with precision whether judicial review should initially occur in a district court, or directly in a court of appeals. The matter at hand pointedly illustrates these difficulties, as did our previous encounter with these appellants, Lorion v. NRC, 712 F.2d 1472 (D.C.Cir.1983) (holding that judicial review of Nuclear Regulatory Commission decision at issue must first occur in district court), rev’d sub nom. Florida Power & Light Co. v. Lorion, — U.S. —, 105 S.Ct. 1598, 84 L.Ed.2d 643 (1985) (finding that court of appeals, not district court, is proper forum for judicial review).
Appellants’ confusion arose in large measure from the timing of the instant suit in relation to this court’s opinion in the Lo-rion case. Contesting nuclear plant license amendments, appellants filed this action in the district court at the end of 1983, after we held that Lorion belonged in that forum, but before the Supreme Court reversed our decision. The district court dismissed this action some months later, holding that the plea for judicial review should have been filed in the first instance in this court. As the majority acknowledges, “[ajppellants admittedly have had a difficult time finding a forum in which to raise their various concerns_” See maj. op. at 937.
In the Federal Courts Improvement Act of 1982, Pub.L. No. 97-164, § 301(a), 96 Stat. 25, 55 (1982), Congress provided a transfer remedy for plaintiffs who experience this kind of confusion. Congress created 28 U.S.C. § 1631 (1982), which controls the action of a federal court when it finds that it lacks jurisdiction but that another federal court has authority to hear the case. In such an instance, the first federal court must transfer the case to the proper court, if transfer is in the interest of justice.
Section 1631 reads:
Whenever a civil action is filed in a [federal] court ... or an appeal, including a petition for review of administrative action, is noticed for or filed with such a court and that court finds that *944there is a want of jurisdiction, the court shall, if it is in the interest of justice, transfer such action or appeal to any other [federal] court in which the action or appeal could have been brought at the time it was filed or noticed, and the action or appeal shall proceed as if it had been filed in or noticed for the court to which it is transferred on the date upon which it was actually filed in or noticed for the court from which it is transferred.
The section is entitled “Transfer to cure want of jurisdiction”; its prescription suits this case to a T. Section 1631 serves to “aid litigants who were confused about the proper forum for review.” American Beef Packers, Inc. v. ICC, 711 F.2d 388, 390 (D.C.Cir.1983) (transferring to the district court a review proceeding filed in this court). The appellants here surely fit the American Beef Packers description. Encountering our decision in Lorion, supra, they were understandably confused about the proper forum for their challenge to the Commission’s action.
Section 1631, however, was still new at the time this case was dismissed and the section apparently was not brought to the attention of the district court.1 Had the district court been aware of section 1631 and followed its directions, the case would have arrived here by transfer rather than on appeal from the district court’s dismissal, and there would have been no timeliness question. We would simply have applied section 1631’s instruction to proceed “as if [the case] had been filed [in this court] on the date [in 1983] upon which it was actually filed in [the district court].” 28 U.S.C. § 1631 (1982).
This court and others have transferred cases under section 1631 without reference to any cue in the form of a party’s motion. See American Beef Packers, supra; Lorion, 712 F.2d at 1479; United States v. John C. Grimberg Co., 702 F.2d 1362 (Fed.Cir.1983). A motion is unnecessary because of the mandatory cast of section 1631’s instructions. In this regard, section 1631 has a very different office than does 28 U.S.C. § 1406(a), (b) (1982) (cure or waiver of venue defects). It is the parties’ responsibility to raise and argue over venue if they will; the court may disregard that highly waivable matter if the parties do not choose to contest it. See id. § 1406(b); 15 C. Wright & A. Miller, Federal PRACTICE AND PROCEDURE § 3826 (1976). On the other hand, it is the court’s responsibility to consider subject matter competence even if the parties fail to raise the issue. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(h)(3); 5 C. Wright & A. Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure § 1393 (1969 & Supp.1985). Part of the court’s responsibility, with section 1631 on the books, is to determine whether “[tjransfer to cure [its] want of [subject matter] jurisdiction” would best promote “the interest of justice.” 2
We have recently reminded the district courts of this responsibility in Ingersoll-Rand Co. v. United States, 780 F.2d 74, 80, (D.C.Cir.1985). In that case, we agreed with the district court that an action brought there belonged in the Claims Court. The district court had dismissed the action. We remanded for the limited purpose of allowing the district court to consider transferring the case to the Court of Claims. Judge McGowan, writing for the panel, explained:
Under 28 U.S.C. § 1631 (1982), where a court finds that it lacks jurisdiction, it must transfer such action to the proper court, if such transfer is in the interest of justice. Transfer may be appropriate *945in this case. The parties, however, have not addressed this issue on appeal, and apparently did not do so before the district court. We therefore remand this case for the limited purpose of allowing the district court to consider whether the case should be transferred to the Claims Court.
Id. (footnote omitted).
Ingersoll-Rand dealt with the prospect of a lateral transfer outside the circuit, from district court to Claims Court. In the instant matter, this very court is the proper forum for the proceeding erroneously filed in our district court. That fact should make the case for transfer all the more compelling. This court’s qualification as the proper forum also suggests the appropriateness of our rendering the transfer decision here and now. It would be a curious procedure indeed to remand this aging matter to the district court so that a district judge could decide whether or not to ticket as a “transfer” the parties’ return trip here. Nor is such a convoluted procedure necessary to a fair decision: all the considerations relevant to “the interest of justice” appear from the record t« be within our plain view. See Brock v. L.R. Willson & Sons, Inc., 773 F.2d 3377, 1388 (D.C.Cir.1985) (holding that remand is unnecessary when only one conclusion is supportable on the record). To assure that we have given that interest its full due, we could invite the Commission to show cause, if any there be, why we should not deem the case transferred and therefore proceed to a decision on the merits.
In sum, I cannot join my colleagues’ decision to affirm for want of jurisdiction and thereby cut off judicial review.3 I find that judgment strange, for we are the court, indeed the only lower court, that has subject matter competence in this case.4 We should not turn away litigants who were understandably “confused about the proper forum for review,” American Beef Packers, supra at 390, simply because the paper that brought them here lacked the appropriate label.
*946The mechanical analysis offered by the court does not persuade me that we lack power to hear this case. On the contrary, the case belongs in this forum, we should treat it as having been transferred here as section 1631 requires, and we should accord these litigants their long-sought day in court. I dissent.

. This court too, when the Federal Courts Improvement Act was new, sometimes did not advert immediately to its teachings. See Wilson v. Turnage, 755 F.2d 967 (D.C.Cir.1985) (vacating court's prior opinion and belatedly transferring case to Federal Circuit in accordance with 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(2) (1982)); Professional Managers' Ass'n v. United States, 761 F.2d 740, 745 (D.C.Cir.1985) (noting that "section 1295(a)(2) ... has recently been the source of much confusion in our court").

. The fact that the provision, in contrast to 28 U.S.C. § 1406(a) (1982), does not even mention dismissal as an alternative to transfer suggests that Congress expected transfer to be the rule in cases to which § 1631 applies.

. Even if I could agree that we should blind ourselves to § 1631,1 would question the majority’s decision. The complainants came to the district court, at least in part because they believed our decision in Lorion, supra, required them to go there. Then the district court disassociated itself from the case in pieces, first issuing its dismissal judgment on April 26, 1984, next — eight days later — filing a memorandum explaining the dismissal, thereafter entertaining the Commission’s motion to clarify ten days after that, and finally issuing a decision on the motion more than six weeks after its initial judgment. The district court’s continuing association with the case understandably left the plaintiffs uncertain as to the precise point at which the decision became final. In similar circumstances, the Ninth Circuit sensibly explained why it refused to dismiss an appeal as untimely. See Pierre v. Jordan, 333 F.2d 951, 955 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 379 U.S. 974, 85 S.Ct. 664, 13 L.Ed.2d 565 (1964) (holding that the plaintiff "was entitled to conclude that the district court regarded the motion as timely.... This being the case, unique circumstances exist requiring that her motion be regarded as ... effectively terminating the running of the time for appeal.’’).

. It is ironic that the only court with jurisdiction (subject matter competence) nonetheless dismisses for want of jurisdiction. The explanation, though ironical, is apparent. Time limits for filing an appeal have been characterized as "mandatory and jurisdictional.” See Browder v. Director, Department of Corrections of Illinois, 434 U.S. 257, 264, 98 S.Ct. 556, 561, 54 L.Ed.2d 521 (1978).
As this court has had occasion to comment:
The word jurisdiction is popular in the lexicon of lawyers and judges, so popular that its chameleon quality sometimes slips from our grasp. But cases like the one before us force attention to the manifold settings in which we employ the term, and remind us that its meaning frequently can be determined only from context.
United States v. Kember, 648 F.2d 1354, 1357-58 (D.C.Cir.1980). This is not the place for an essay on our profligate use of the term "jurisdiction.” But when we employ the word to mean many things — from the absence of a constitutional grant of judicial power to a statutory limit on time to appeal — we ought to bear firmly in mind that
the tendency to assume that a word which appears in two or more legal rules, and so in connection with more than one purpose, has and should have precisely the same scope in all of them, runs all through legal discussions. It has all the tenacity of original sin and must constantly be guarded against.
Cook, “Substance" and “Procedure” in the Conflict of Laws, 42 Yale L.J. 333, 337 (1933).