Court Opinion

ID: 9478966
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:04:35.036606+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:44.616192
License: Public Domain

RYAN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
My colleagues acknowledge that the trial court applied an incorrect legal standard in its decision to deny plaintiffs’ contempt motion. They proceed to make their own determination under the correct legal standard whether, on the record below, defendants should have been found in contempt. Applying the correct legal standard, my colleagues find that defendants have taken all reasonable steps to comply with the injunction, and hold that defendants should therefore not be found in contempt. Manifestly, this is an improper appellate factual determination, and one which usurps the trial court’s function.
Our authority is limited to determining: 1) whether the trial court applied the correct legal standard; 2) whether the trial court’s underlying findings of fact are clearly erroneous; and 3) whether the trial court, if it applied the correct legal standard to record-supported facts, abused its discretion. See, e.g., Taylor & Gaskin, Inc. v. Chris-Craft Industries, 732 F.2d 1273, 1277 (6th Cir.1984).
Having found that the district court erroneously employed the incorrect “good faith effort at compliance” legal standard instead of the correct and distinctly different “substantial compliance” or “all reasonable means to comply” legal standard, General Signal Corp. v. Donallco, Inc., 787 F.2d 1376, 1379 (9th Cir.1986); In re Crystal Palace Gambling Hall, Inc., 817 F.2d 1361, 1365 (9th Cir.1987), this court’s duty is to reverse the trial court’s judgment and remand the case for determination under the correct legal standard; it is not to make its own determination whether the defendant’s conduct, correctly measured, is contemptuous. That is the exclusive prerogative of the trial judge whose twelve years of intimate familiarity with this litigation affords him a much better perspective of the case than we have, and who, in all events, has the exclusive authority to find the facts. While I recognize that my colleagues have simply applied the correct legal standard to the trial court’s findings of fact, that is an appellate short-circuiting that is beyond our authority. We have no way of knowing what facts the trial court might have found had it been aware that “[g]ood faith is no defense for failure to comply with a court order.”
I would reverse and remand for trial court determination of the alleged contempt under the correct legal standard.