Court Opinion

ID: 9475494
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:28:59.036799+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:44:44.939702
License: Public Domain

EDITH HOLLAN JONES, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
While I concur in much of the majority’s opinion, I feel compelled to dissent on two points. The most important point is the excessive nature of the judgment. The opinion of the majority neglects to report the amount of the judgment here awarded against the defendants. That judgment was in excess of $466,000 at the date of entry in April, 1985, making it by far the largest judgment ever awarded against farm labor contractors for violations of FLORA.1 The standards used by this court to test FLCRA awards, a comparison of awards in other cases for FLCRA violations, and the context of defendants’ violations all overwhelmingly indicate that the district court exceeded the bounds of reason in its award of damages.
In Beliz v. W.H. McLeod & Sons Packing Co., 765 F.2d 1317 (5th Cir.1985), this court noted several factors that should be considered in awarding FLCRA liquidated damages:
Whether an award accomplishes this [deterrent] purpose, in addition to affording compensation, is determined by considering not only the amount allowed to each plaintiff for each violation but also the total amount of the award, the nature and persistence of the violations, the extent of the defendant’s culpability, damage awards in similar cases, the defendant’s ability to prevent future violations of the act, the substantive or technical nature of the violations, and the circumstances of each case____
765 F.2d at 1332. See also Salazar-Calderon v. PVFA, 765 F.2d 1334, 1347 (5th *1356Cir.1985) (refusing to upset FLCRA damage award where “the district court supported its decision with factors that could properly be considered by it”). According to these cases, the district court is required to articulate the factors that lead to its statutory damage award.
A variety of factors must be considered, because FLCRA contains both “technical” and “substantive” regulatory features whose impact upon the plaintiff farmworkers may vary widely. The deterrent potential of the award must be tempered with consideration of its realistic effect upon the farmer or contractor. As this court suggested in Salazar-Calderon, the success of farmers and farmworkers along the Rio Grande is intertwined and mutually dependent. Overly punitive assessment of FLCRA awards could endanger the already precarious state of domestic agriculture and thus indirectly harm the very people FLCRA was designed to protect. 765 F.2d at 1347.
The district court in this case awarded each plaintiff the maximum statutory penalty ($500.00) on each of four FLCRA violations, three of which were technical in nature. Contrary to the statement in the majority opinion that, “the record indicates that the court carefully considered these factors and determined that $500 was appropriate,” I find no written or oral statement by the district judge concerning the egregious size of the damage award. This fact alone should require remand for a reassessment of damages.
The only substantive FLCRA violation in this case is defendants’ failure to comply with the promised terms of employment of the farm workers. 7 U.S.C. § 2044(b)(4). Although withdrawal of the offers of employment to the crewleaders is regrettable, it can hardly be denied that the facts underlying this violation were unique and not likely to be repeated. The Presidio Valley farmers were left hanging by the Federal Immigration and Naturalization Service while that federal agency dithered over whether to grant visas for seasonal non-immigrant laborers, who had always harvested the canteloupes in the past. Naturally, the farmers had to try to hire workers from any source in the event INS should deny clearance for workers from Ojinaga, Presidio’s sister-city across the Rio Grande. This situation, which persisted within two or three weeks of harvest time, was desperate, requiring desperate measures on the part of Glen Martin and whoever else was recruiting for the farmers. Desperation does not justify failure to comply with the terms of employment, but it explains the need to hire domestic workers from the Valley and represents a unique set of conditions for the violation. Because of the INS-created turmoil, the “nature and persistence of the violations,” a factor mentioned in Beliz, does not, in my view, weigh heavily against the defendants. Even if the substantive FLCRA violation warranted the maximum penalty, however, the district court failed to distinguish between it and two technical violations (failure to provide written copies of the terms of employment and the representation of free housing), and penalized the defendants the maximum amount for those as well. By appellees’ own admission, the actual damages suffered by each class member could not have exceeded $500. Record at 736. Moreover, the record establishes that many if not most class members mitigated damages by working for Defendant Griffin & Brand when the Presidio employment prospect vanished. Yet, the district court made no attempt to explain why a huge dividend to the class was required to fulfill FLCRA’s policy.
The award in this case dwarfs other FLCRA judgments. An award of $500 per plaintiff per violation has been made in only one other germane case2, Wash*1357ington v. Miller, 721 F.2d 797 (11th Cir.1983), but that case involved only seven plaintiffs and flagrant, uncontested, substantive FLORA violations (housing in violation of health codes, failure to keep required records, failure to disclose terms and conditions of employment, and failure to provide itemized earning statements). Moreover, the total award is also unparalleled. See Beliz, supra ($200 per worker against the grower and $500 per worker against the FLORA contractor; 21 plaintiffs [approximately $14,700]); Salazar-Calderon, supra ($15 per violation per class member, 5 violations, “over 150 persons”); Washington, supra (total FLORA award approximately $17,000); Alvarez v. Longboy, 697 F.2d 1333 (9th Cir.1983) ($150 per plaintiff, 92 plaintiffs, total award: $13,800); Alvarez v. Joan of Arc, Inc., 658 F.2d 1217 (7th Cir.1981) (total award approximately $30,000); De la Fuente, supra ($100 per worker per season [approximately $115,000]).
The unaccountable disparity between the award in the instant case and those in other FLORA cases is even more poignant because several factors suggest that the defendants should have received some leniency from the district court. As noted, the circumstances leading to the violation are not likely to recur. Unlike many FLORA cases where the existence of substantive FLORA violations was uncontested, see, e.g., Washington, Rivera, Alverez, liability was hotly contested in this case. Additionally, the record reveals that many of the plaintiffs suffered no actual damages from the defendants’ conduct, as they were given other work by these defendants themselves.3 The credibility of many of the plaintiffs’ claims was also severely undermined by documentary evidence,4 a fact that was noted by the district court.5 No distinction was made between technical and substantive violations — both were penalized at the highest possible rate.6 Nor was *1358there any finding (or, for that matter, any evidence) that any of the defendants were likely to violate FLORA in the future unless some massive deterrent award was levied.
Unlike the district court in Salazar-Calderon, which “was careful to outline the considerations that guided it in determining [damages],” 765 F.2d at 1347, the district court’s award here has no articulated basis. Perhaps that is because, tested by awards in other cases, it defies justification. Discretion can be abused, particularly if no attempt is made explicate one’s exercise of discretion. It is no palliative, given Beliz and Salazar-Calderon, to conclude that the district court was within its discretion when, for all that we know from the record, the court may have made his award because he disliked the defendants or their counsel. The district court’s failure to discriminate and failure even to articulate the standards for its award cry out for revision.
My second disagreement with the majority lies in the scope of remand to reconsider PVFA’s liability. The majority, correctly, finds no support in the record for vicarious liability of PVFA “without some wrongful conduct of its own.” Remand to obtain findings whether PVFA contributed to or had reason to know of Martin’s violations of FLORA is therefore appropriate. The majority goes further than this, however, in opening for remand the question whether PVFA independently violated the provisions of FLORA. Quite simply, the district court found no such FLORA violation by PVFA, and no party has raised that issue on appeal. The district court’s opinion and the parties’ briefs discuss PVFA’s liability only in terms of its vicarious responsibility for the acts of Glen Martin and/or Griffin and Brand. PVFA’s independent culpability is thus being raised sua sponte, and without justification, by this court.
Because I firmly believe that the district court’s .damage award was irresponsibly punitive, I would Vacate and Remand. I would also decline to assist in making the plaintiffs’ case on issues of PVFA liability which were not appealed. On these matters, I respectfully dissent.

. Because this court reverses a portion of the judgment, the amount affirmed is actually $238,500 in statutory liquidated damages of $1,500 for each of 159 plaintiffs plus a possible award of attorney’s fees. Even as modified, the judgment is several times larger than any comparable award I could find.

. Both Espinoza v. Stokely-Van Camp, Inc., 641 F.2d 535, 539 (7th Cir.1981), and Rivera v. Adams Packing Co., 707 F.2d 1278 (11th Cir.1983) also involved an award of $500 per plaintiff per violation, but these cases did so on the belief that FLCRA mandated this approach. This circuit has rejected this interpretation of FLCRA. See Salazar-Calderon v. PVFA, supra. However, like Washington, both of these cases involved flagrant, glaring FLCRA violations, the fact of *1357which does not appear to have been seriously questioned. As such, they are distinguishable from a case such as this where factual culpability was hotly contested and where the majority of the violations were technical in nature.

. For example, the Martinez crew worked for G & B in Mission, Texas from June 1 until June 19, a period that they would have been working in Presidio. The Sanchez crew also worked for G & B from June 2 until June 16.

. Juanita Martinez testified that Glen Martin had offered her crew work in Presidio beginning June 9, 1977, that she and her crew had no work from the end of May until the beginning of July, and that she had actually assembled a crew and was ready to leave for Presidio on June 9. On cross-examination, however, she was confronted with payroll records, signed by Mrs. Martinez, that showed that her crew worked in Mission for G & B from June 1 until June 19. [Tr. 539 et seq.] Faced with this evidence, Mrs. Martinez claimed that she had made a mistake and that she and her crew were to go to Presidio on July 9, a date when the Presidio harvest would have been long over. Crispin Sanchez testified that Martin recruited him and his crew during that last days of May for the Presidio harvest, that he spent the first two weeks of June without work, during which time he was getting his crew ready to go to Presidio, and that he was ready to go to Presidio on June 13. However, payroll records (BX 7-11) clearly show that he and his crew were working for G & B from June 2 until at least June 16, seriously undermining Sanchez’s claims that he was planning to go to Presidio and that he was getting a crew together at that time.
The Flores crew does not appear to have existed at all until the hearing on damages. There was no evidence that Flores even met with Martin, and thus there was no basis for the district court to hold that the Flores "crew” had any agreement with Martin. Plaintiff-appellees case on Flores is instead based on the testimony at the damages hearing that Camacho told Flores to get 20-25 workers together. As Camacho testified at trial that Martin asked him to get together 50-60 hands [Tr. 307], that he, Camacho, was planning to take 53 or 54 hands to Presidio [Tr. 313], and that the plaintiffs’ original petition alleged that the Camacho crew was 55 workers, of which Flores was only a member, Camacho’s later claim that he was going to take 75 workers, 50 of which were Camacho’s and 25 of which were to be Flores', is so utterly contradicted by his own earlier testimony and pleadings as to render it unbelievable.

. "I don’t know that he [plaintiffs’ attorney] wants to impeach her [Martinez] any more than she is already impeached.” Tr. 547.

. E.g. PVF was held liable to each plaintiff for $500 for using PVFA, an unregistered farm labor contractor. How plaintiffs were harmed by this violation is not known, and indeed, we have *1358found no legal basis to sustain this award. It is interesting to note than in Salazar-Calderon, supra, PVFA’s failure to register as a FLCRA contractor was termed a technical violation that gave rise to liquidated damages of $15 per plaintiff. Yet, a nearly-identical violation was penalized at a rate 33 times higher by the district court in this case.