Court Opinion

ID: 9454180
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 18:38:30.16053+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:00.148348
License: Public Domain

BLACKMUN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent from that portion of the majority’s decision which relates to interest. Although for me the issue is not free from all doubt, I dissent because: (1) It is established that interest is not recoverable against the United States in the absence of an express provision for it in a statute or contract. United States v. Thayer-West Point Hotel Co., 329 U.S. 585, 588, 67 S.Ct. 398, 91 L.Ed. 521 (1947); United States v. Goltra, 312 U.S. 203, 207, 61 S.Ct. 487, 85 L.Ed. 776 (1941). (2) The pertinent portions of the Social Security Act, 42 U.S.C. ch. 7, under which this court in Hoffman v. Gardner, 369 F.2d 837 (8 Cir. 1966), ruled in favor of benefits for this claimant based upon self-employment earnings, concededly contain no specific provision for interest on past due benefits. (3) I do not and cannot read a provision for interest into the then language of 42 U.S.C. § 404 which called for “proper adjustment” of an error in a social security payment. (4) A government representative has power only to act within the bounds of his authority. Federal Crop Ins. Corp. v. Merrill, 332 U.S. 380, 384, 68 S.Ct. 1, 92 L.Ed. 10 (1947). (5) In a mandate and non-consideration situation of the kind presently before us, the Merrill rule should apply to a then United States attorney as well as to a lay representative; this stands in contrast with a government lawyer’s settlement discretion such as was exercised in Swift & Co. v. United States, 276 U.S. 311, 48 S.Ct. 311, 72 L.Ed. 587 (1928). See In re Gsand, 153 F.2d 1001 (3 Cir. 1946). (6) Rule 60(b) (1), Fed.R.Civ.P., authorizes relief from an order because of mistake or inadvertence. Furthermore, that rule is to be liberally construed. In re Casco Chemical Co., 335 F.2d 645, 651 n. 18 (5 Cir. 1964); 7 Moore’s Federal Practice, para. 60.18 [8] (2ed. 1968). (7) The district court’s order providing for interest was a clear mistake, within the meaning of Rule 60 (b) (1), and not only an inadvertence. The claimant, it seems to me, would make too much of Judge Harper’s ready characterization, 277 F.Supp. at 484, of the interest inclusion as “certainly an instance of inadvertence”; it is also a self-evident mistake which does not require the redundancy of supporting evidence. (8) The interest inclusion was in no respect a considered judgment of the *838district court and thus was not, in my view, “judicial error,” as the claimant would describe it and as to which the reasonable time provision of Rule 60(b) might well be approximated with the time for appeal. Instead, it was joint counsel error. (9) It was acknowledged at oral argument that the order was one drawn by claimant’s counsel. (10) The granting of relief under Rule 60(b) is primarily a matter for the discretion of the district court. 7 Moore’s Federal Practice, para. 60.19 (2 ed. 1968); Assmann v. Fleming, 159 F.2d 332, 336 (8 Cir. 1947). The ruling of the district court should not be set aside except upon a clear showing of abuse of that discretion. Farmers Coop. Elevator Ass’n Non-Stock v. Strand, 382 F.2d 224, 232 (8 Cir. 1967), cert. denied, 389 U.S. 1014, 88 S.Ct. 589, 19 L. Ed.2d 659. (11) I am not at all persuaded that Judge Harper’s ruling amounted to an abuse. (12) Obviously, the parties’ mutual acceptance of the form of the order was no contract. Their production of the order was at the district court’s request and was an accommodation to the court. There is nothing in the record suggesting that the claimant, in return for interest, bargained away a claim for costs against the government. See Steiner v. Nelson, 309 F.2d 19, 21 (7 Cir. 1962). (13) In re Merry Queen Transfer Corp., 266 F.Supp. 605 (E.D.N.Y.1967), is a case, where interest was mandatory under the governing New York statute. Its omission from a decree was held curable by motion under Rule 60(a) made 13 months later and after an intervening appeal. A defense of waiver was held to be frivolous. The case is thus the factual opposite of the present one and is authority that relief is available to the government here under Rule 60(a). (14) The reversal gives the claimant a windfall at the expense of public funds.
The adverse party here is the United States Government. While one may not always like the sound of the phrase, it is a truism that “the government is not just another party litigant.” It seems to me that Mr. Justice Frankfurter’s words in Merrill, supra, 332 U.S. at 385, 68 S.Ct. at 3, are pertinent:
“The oft-quoted observation in Rock Island, Arkansas & Louisiana R. Co. v. United States, 254 U.S. 141, 143, 41 S.Ct. 55, 56, 65 L.Ed. 188, that ‘Men must turn square corners when they deal with the Government,’ does not reflect a callous outlook. It merely expresses the duty of all courts to observe the conditions defined by Congress for charging the public treasury.”
I would affirm the district court’s exclusion of the interest provision.