Court Opinion

ID: 9490583
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:48:01.295746+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:11.229933
License: Public Domain

NOONAN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
This ease is an easy one if prior law is still good law. We have explicitly held that the D’Oench, Duhme doctrine bars suit based on oral statements not found in the bank files after the federal receiver has taken over the bank. Brookside Associates v. Rifkin, 49 F.3d 490, 495 (9th Cir.1995).
The court acknowledges that “it would be inclined to apply the D’Oench doctrine” but does not do so because two recent Supreme Court decisions have called this special federal common law doctrine into question. The question is heightened by the Supreme Court’s treatment of Motorcity of Jacksonville v. Southeast Bank, 83 F.3d 1317 (11th Cir.1996), vacated and remanded for reconsideration sub nom. Hess v. FDIC,—U.S.-, 117 S.Ct. 760, 136 L.Ed.2d 708 (1997). However, as the FDIC’s spirited argument makes clear, it is not a foregone conclusion that the Eleventh Circuit was wrong in following D’Oench. The Supreme Court has not overruled D’Oench, a case that has been in force for 55 years. The Supreme Court has laid down as a rule for reasons good and sufficient to itself: “If a precedent of this Court has direct application in a case, yet appears to rest on reasons rejected in some other line of decisions, the Court of Appeals should follow the case which directly controls, leaving to this Court the prerogative of overruling its own decisions.” Rodriguez de Quijas v. Shearson/American Express, 490 U.S. 477, 484, 109 S.Ct. 1917, 1921, 104 L.Ed.2d 526 (1989). It seems to me, with all respect to my colleagues, that they flout the rule.