Court Opinion

ID: 9443241
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 19:15:23.079372+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:25.327081
License: Public Domain

POPE, Circuit Judge.
I concur. But I wish to add some observations as to my own views in the matter.
The trial court’s conclusion as to the application of the doctrine of collateral estoppel is based upon the fact that the individuals who were defendants in Dollar v. Land were represented by the Government attorneys, who took over the defense and controlled the case. The propriety of the application of that rule in cases involving private persons, and where no question of sovereign immunity arises, must be conceded. Souffront v. Compagnie Des Sucreries, 217 U.S. 475, 30 S.Ct. 608, 54 L.Ed. 846. The court thought that logic and reason required the application of the same rule here, so as to require a holding that the United States was bound by the former judgment.
I am not satisfied that our citation of Land v. Dollar, 330 U.S. 731, 67 S.Ct. 1009, 91 L.Ed. 1209; and Land v. Dollar, 341 U.S. 737, 71 S.Ct. 987, 95 L.Ed. 1331, is a complete answer to the trial court’s reasoning. When the first of those opinions was written the only issue was whether the suit was actually one against the United States, and' hence whether the suit was maintainable at all. The acts upon which the trial court based its conclusion of a collateral estoppel occurred after that time. And although the later of these two opinions says: “We have heretofore held that judgments entered in the instant cases would not be res judicata against the United States,” yet I am not satisfied that this can be regarded as the final word on this question, notwithstanding things said by Mr. Justice Frankfurter, and papers filed in connection with the pending petitions for certiorari, may have been sufficient to advise the court that Government counsel had handled the case and that a problem of collateral estoppel might be involved. Certainly the question had not then been argued to the court.
But apart from those two opinions, I cannot agree that the rule commonly applied to private parties must be extended to the United States in this case. No case has ever so held. Language quoted by appellees from Drummond v. United States, 324 U.S. 316, 65 S.Ct. 659, 89 L.Ed. 969, is mere dictum. United States v. Candelaria, 271 U.S. 432, 46 S.Ct. 561, 70 L.Ed. 1023, also relied upon, in addition to being a case *554where Government 'counsel represented a plaintiff, presented facts where the only title involved was one claimed by an Indian tribe, and where no separate Government title was involved.
I am not willing, here for the first time, to enunciate any such rule as that relied upon by appellees, nor to brush aside the contrary statements in Carr v. United States, 98 U.S. 433, 25 L.Ed. 209 and United States v. Lee, 106 U.S. 196, 1 S.Ct. 240, 27 L.Ed. 171. I think that the situation here is such that the rule urged by appellees would, as a practical matter, prevent the Government from claiming its immunity.
Appellees bring this aspect of the case to a sharp point by the statement in their brief that “when the Supreme Court decided in 1947 that Dollar v. Land could be maintained, the Attorney General was put to his choice, to stay in or to go out.”
When an individual holding public office is sued, as here, it is not in the public interest that he should not be defended.1 I think that a public policy that he should be defended and the propriety of his challenged acts asserted, is fully consistent with the rule of sovereign immunity. Yet appellees would have it that if the Attorney General provides this defense, the Government is bound practically to the same extent as if it had been properly made a defendant in the first place.
The argument that litigation should have an end, that the private litigant who sues the public officer as an individual should not be denied the fruits of a hard won victory, is not without appeal. But I think that the public policy behind the rule of sovereign immunity is one which must prevail against these other considerations.2 That, in my opinion, is why the ordinary rules of collateral estoppel should not apply here.

. I have no doubt that Congress might authorize the defending officer to hire private counsel and provide for reimbursement to him of this expense. In that ease, I would think, it would not occur to anyone to claim a collateral estoppel against the Government. I see no necessity for a different result from what the Attorney General has done here, to accomplish substantially the same thing.

. A case in which the primacy of the principle of immunity was expressed is United States v. U. S. Fidelity & Guaranty Co., 309 U.S. 506, 513, 60 S.Ct. 653, 84 L.Ed. 894.