Court Opinion

ID: 9445121
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:20:02.912447+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:07.819751
License: Public Domain

HEALY, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I am entirely satisfied that Yanish’s bondsmen, by the terms of his existing bond, were obliged to surrender him if and when he was finally determined to be unlawfully within the United States, and this regardless of whether or not there was any statutory requirement that he then be taken into custody. In short, I agree that as a matter of law he was not entitled to be indemnified on account of his imprisonment following March 16, 1953 (when his deportability was finally determined), or on account of expenses incident to that imprisonment.
But Barber’s demand for a new bond, or in lieu thereof Yanish’s surrendering himself, was made on March 6, 1953, prior to the final determination of deportability. Our opinion on the former appeal, Yanish v. Barber, 9 Cir., 211 F.2d 467, stands for the proposition that that demand or requirement constituted a contempt of Judge Lemmon’s injunction. We did not characterize Barber’s disregard of that injunction as a “technical contempt,” whatever that phrase means. We held, 211 F.2d 470, that altogether apart from the effect of the savings clause “the appropriate procedure for appellee to pursue as a public officer would have been to move for a modification or vacation of the injunction. * * * It was not for him, any more than it would be for a private individual in like circumstances, to decide that an injunctive order running against him had been rendered nugatory by subsequent legislation. His course should be to obey it unless and until set aside in proceedings brought for that purpose.” In the face of this language, Judge Hamlin was not warranted in finding on remand that Barber’s conduct was mere “technical contempt.” Nor was the judge warranted in giving as a further reason for not imposing sanctions the circumstance that “respondent was acting in good faith under what he thought was the applicable provisions of the MeCarran Act.” This court had flatly rejected that view, also.
In sum, the district judge made but two factual findings in support of his order decreeing that “no sanctions be imposed upon respondent, nor reparations be awarded to the petitioner.” These findings, as above indicated, were (1) that respondent was in mere “technical contempt of the order of Judge Lemmon” and (2) “that respondent was acting in good faith under what he thought was the applicable provisions of the McCarran Act.” He did not find or intimate that evidence was lacking in support of a reparations award. It has remained for my associates to attempt laboriously the making of such a finding for him, in effect converting this appellate tribunal into a trial court.
I would reverse the order and remand the cause to the district court with direction to make appropriate findings of the facts bearing upon the problem of an award, independently of the “good faith” of the respondent, or of the supposed “technical” nature of the contempt which he committed.