Court Opinion

ID: 9478832
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:59:43.391644+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:38.700234
License: Public Domain

ENGEL, Chief Judge,
dissenting.
With respect, I dissent. Succinctly put, I do not believe it was an abuse of discretion for the district court to have denied intervention in this already attenuated case so as to introduce at this late stage in the proceedings an essentially new and largely independent question concerning the overcrowding of the other penal institutions or municipal units not already directly involved in this litigation. As Chief Justice Burger commented in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 U.S. 1, 22, 91 S.Ct. 1267, 1279, 28 L.Ed.2d 564 (1971), “One vehicle can carry only a limited amount of baggage.” In its opinion the majority indicates that the standard of review for denial of a motion to intervene pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 24(a)(2) should be bifurcated: (1) For the timeliness factor, the appellate court should consider only whether the district court abused its discretion; (2) For the other three traditional 24(a)(2) factors, (substantial interest in the subject matter of the litigation; whether ability to protect that interest is impaired by the litigation; and whether or not that interest is adequately represented by the original parties, Triax Co. v. TRW Inc., 724 F.2d 1224, 1227 (6th Cir.1984)), the standard should be “de novo.” In support of its choice of a bifurcated standard of review, the majority cites Ninth Circuit law and a somewhat abstruse comment made by Justice Brennan in a concurrence in Stringfellow v. Concerned Neighbors, 480 U.S. 370, 107 S.Ct. 1177, 1185, 94 L.Ed.2d 389 (1987).
As the majority indicates, the abuse of discretion standard for the timeliness factor was well established in this circuit in Michigan Association for Retarded Citizens v. Smith, 657 F.2d 102, 105 (6th Cir.1981). Until now, however, our court has not addressed the standard of review for the other three 24(a)(2) factors. The majority view here chose a bifurcated standard following the minority of other circuits which have considered this question. Both the Second and Third Circuits have expressly adopted a single “abuse of discretion” standard for review of denial of a motion pursuant to Rule 24(a)(2). United States v. Hooker Chemicals & Plastics Corp., 749 F.2d 968, 990-92 (2d Cir.1985); Harris v. Pernsley, 820 F.2d 592, 597 (3d Cir.1987). The rationalization behind a single “abuse of discretion” standard is clearly articulated by the Second Circuit:
Although this more relaxed standard of review may tend in practice to blur somewhat the distinction between intervention as of right under Rule 24(a)(2) and permissive intervention under Rule 24(b), the great variety of factual circumstances in which intervention motions must be decided, the necessity of having the “feel of the case” in deciding these motions, and other considerations essential under a flexible reading of Rule 24(a)(2), particularly in government enforcement actions, are precisely those which support an abuse of discretion standard of review.
... That task is best left to the district judge, particularly this judge, who has lived for the last five years with this action.... He especially is in a far better position than we to weigh the advantages to be derived from appellants’ participation as intervenors....
Hooker, 749 F.2d at 991 (citations and footnotes omitted).
The foregoing construction more closely accords with my own notions of what an exercise of judicial discretion should be. We should not shackle every judge with rigid tests for the exercise of discretion for the one is inconsistent with the other. In this type of case I do not believe this is necessary. The trial judge is in possession of a wide variety of considerations in exercising his discretion. To require some type of bifurcated technical adherence runs not only against general notions of equity jurisprudence but detracts from his ability to make that overall, broad and general exercise of discretion which is most likely to yield a productive and just result in the case at hand. When judges are appointed under Article III of the Constitution, they are expected to possess good judgment. *349That judgment, and not some narrowly binding technical criteria, is the quality which best assures a just and sensible decision and should be the foundation for a judge’s exercise of discretion.
While I therefore would not follow a bifurcated standard of review for the reasons indicated above, even under such standards the district court should be affirmed. The district court based its denial of intervention on two of the four Triax standards. First the court held that Grubbs did not have a substantial interest in the litigation. Second it held that the parties would be severely prejudiced by the intervention. The latter of course is one of the several considerations to be taken into account in determining the timeliness of an intervention motion. See Michigan Association for Retarded Citizens, 657 F.2d at 105.
As the majority admits, the district court’s determination that the motion to intervene was not timely is necessarily governed by an “abuse of discretion” standard. The Tennessee trial judge here, who presumably would know more about the case than we from his closer familiarity with it, believed that intervention “would prejudice the original parties to the action and very possibly threaten the relief now being afforded.” The majority opinion does not discuss this express finding of prejudice but instead cites an alternate “implicit” finding of undue delay made by the district court as a basis for reversal. It seems that if a district court is to be reversed for abusing its discretion, that reversal should be based upon the district court’s expressed findings rather than other “implicit findings” which are viewed by our court with greater weight.
Next, and perhaps most important, District Judge Higgins here concluded that the causal link between the crowded condition at the intervenor’s facilities and the remedy imposed in the instant suit was simply too attenuated to constitute a “substantial interest” on behalf of the intervenor. In other words, to allow intervention here would allow the tail to wag the dog. Even were we to review this holding “de novo” I would affirm. While the intervenor’s facilities are undoubtedly overcrowded, those same conditions will remain even if the remedy in the instant suit is removed or altered. The court found and the inter-venor expressly conceded that other categories of inmates were growing more rapidly in numbers in intervenor’s facilities than the Tennessee Department of Corrections inmates awaiting transfer. The result is to enlarge substantially the scope of the litigation at a late date and in my view it is thus a question of whether we are now adding excess baggage to the original suit which was commenced or whether the subject matter involved in the original litigation is itself excess baggage to another and very large problem posed in other institutional facilities to which the original plaintiffs are not parties.
Finally, our circuit’s case law holds that intervention should not be allowed where the intervenor’s interests are discrete and may be protected through “separate and independent avenues of relief that were not designed to be pursued through a unitary enforcement procedure.” Brewer v. Republic Steel Corp., 513 F.2d 1222, 1223 (6th Cir.1975). See also Bradley v. Milliken, 828 F.2d 1186, 1192 (6th Cir.1987). Here intervenor’s interest involves issues of local politics and concerns and would be better protected in a separate suit or in a different forum altogether.
In sum I believe that the decision of whether to enlarge the already protracted litigation of this case by the introduction of entirely new issues is at the very best a decision which ought properly to be left in the district court. The result of the majority’s opinion will be to vest a large administrative control in one single federal judge, a control extending both to state and municipal penal institutions justified only by the fact that inevitably the operation of one must affect in some way the operation of the other. This is certainly not an adequate basis for mandating a joinder, least of all where it is the considered judgment of the district judge in charge of the litigation that it would not promote the legitimate interests of the parties.